Hello everyone, my name is Stanislav Tsys – this is the project https://onlineteam.me. Today, we will discuss and break down the topic of small businesses in Poland. I have conditionally divided this topic into 4 parts:
-
Starting a business in Poland – I will briefly talk about where we started;
-
The Polish market and Polish clients – I will discuss some of the specifics of this market. I will share how Polish (or European) clients differ from Russian-speaking clients;
-
Business support – I will briefly explain what to pay attention to, what expenses await you in the future;
-
Ecosystem and investments – I will touch on this issue because many people come to Europe to get money and investments.
We can help you solve any task!
Stanislav TsysHead of UniConsultingAre you planning to start a business in Poland? Start a company or a private enterprise? We will help you bring your business to the Polish market from scratch until the first sales. We will develop: a strategy for entering the Polish market, open a remote legal entity or IE, will do accounting and registration of your employees. Leave an application for introductory consultation
Real Small Business in Poland
The first thing you need to understand and decide on is your activity. It’s good if you are transferring your activity to Poland, meaning you are doing the same thing here that you did back home. For example, if you have a restaurant or pizzeria in Ukraine, and you are transferring the establishment to Poland. You bring some technologies, the name of your establishment, and continue your business in another country. It’s bad when you start from scratch in a new place.
But in both cases, you will have to determine your PKD (Polish Classification of Activities). That is, you must correctly indicate the types of activities you plan to engage in. This is a question that should be approached responsibly. When we first opened a company in Poland, the person to whom we paid for legal services registered a bunch of PKDs for us. According to the documents, we were engaged in everything from iron ore mining to tourism. This is nonsense because any inspector who sees such PKDs will conclude that something is wrong with the company. That’s the first point.
The second point is that PKDs affect VAT (or as it is called in Poland, VAT). Depending on the PKDs you choose, you may or may not have to pay tax right away. Some PKDs automatically obligate you to pay VAT and maintain additional accounting. Personally, we selected consulting services as one of our PKDs. And this activity requires additional reporting and working with VAT. Fortunately, in the past 1.5 years, we have not provided paid consultations, which allowed us to avoid all the “trouble” related to VAT.
But, nevertheless, it cost us nerves. Don’t make such mistakes, remember this feature of Polish business. Another point is that you shouldn’t have too many PKDs. There are 10 PKDs that you must take. All the rest are optional. We don’t recommend choosing PKDs that are not directly related to your activity.
Next, you need to consider licenses and additional accesses that you may need. A simple example – we are currently thinking about a second direction of business (eyelash extensions). For this, you need a certain license, a medical certificate, to officially engage in this activity. The same goes for the restaurant and many other types of business. Therefore, you should find out if you need to gather papers and accesses to conduct the business you’ve chosen in Poland.
The next point is registration. A business needs to be registered. There are two ways to do this. The first is online registration – you go to a special website, enter all the necessary data, come up with the name of the company, and register it from your computer. In the future, you will still need to go to a notary to officially certify everything.
The second way is through a notary. You go to the notary, he provides you with a pre-prepared statute (the constitution under which you will work). Then, you will either choose the PKDs yourself or with a translator (if you don’t know Polish), affix stamps, and certify the documents. In the end, you leave the notary with a nice A4 document and a large number of papers stating that now you have a company.
The documents are then sent to the court by the notary. But personally, you don’t have to do anything more. A few days later, your business is registered in the system. In general, the registration process is quite long. Moreover, the organization responsible for registering foreigners in Poland doesn’t really like online registrations. I think you understand why – if everyone could quickly open a fake company to obtain residency in Poland, the situation in the country would be sad. Such “entrepreneurs” are quickly identified and sent back home.
The Polish Market and Polish Clients
As I mentioned, we managed to work with a number of Polish clients. These were both private entrepreneurs and large companies with a huge number of employees. In short, I will talk about this experience. First of all – clients here are completely different. There is a different mentality, different accents, different negotiation rules, and, including, rules for sales and paperwork management.
Let me give you a few examples. A Pole should receive an invoice in the national currency. While we all convert everything to dollars, in Poland it’s different. Our first invoices were issued in dollars, and many clients looked at us sideways because of this. Later, one Polish client came to us and said: “Guys, convert all of this to zloty, keep your rate and price, but ask for our currency.”
The second point is related to emails you send. Polish people have a strange attitude toward emails. They don’t read them. In this regard, it’s even worse than with us. Therefore, I recommend you follow this rule: calling is always better than writing, and meeting in person is always better than calling.
Next point – the Polish focus is not on packaging the offer. There is a clear focus on quality and customer service. Polish people pay more attention to the client themselves and even forget about unnecessary packaging and pomp that we have in Ukraine. If you, for example, make landing pages or work in internet advertising, you will love it in Poland. There is a vast untouched field of work for you and your colleagues. However, Poles need to be shown the value of the product. Tell them – let me make you a great website, not a business card website that isn’t responsive on different devices.
But if you plan to open a restaurant business or are an entrepreneur who won’t be working in the B2B sector (business-to-business), then remember the following: functionality is more important than design. Customer orientation might be a more winning strategy than beautiful flyers. And if you achieve success both in packaging and customer orientation – success is definitely waiting for you.
To summarize, I want to remind you that Poles indeed have a different mentality. I recommend you be cautious and gradual in your actions. Don’t call and pressure the client. Try to feel the market as soon as possible, feel the clients, and work in it a little bit. By the way, the last point – cold calls in Poland also work. They work even better than in Ukraine, Russia, and other CIS countries.
Business Support
If you’ve been looking for information about small businesses in Poland, you’re probably interested in this. In Poland, there are 2 types of expenses: fixed and variable. Fixed expenses include, for example, a legal address. An interesting point – it can be virtual. But this option isn’t very good – with a virtual address, it’s harder to obtain residency rights in Poland.
Our legal address is the place where we are currently located (a coworking center). And we also receive correspondence here. The next expense is the accountant. Personally, we outsmarted the system a little – we hired an accountant after a year of work because we wrote a special paper that allowed us to do our annual reporting ourselves.
In general, accounting is a delicate issue. Before you try to cheat in this area, you should consult with knowledgeable people. In any case, sooner or later, you will have to hire an accountant. We realized this from personal experience when we first started our business.
At first, our team handled invoicing, balancing the debits and credits, and submitting forms to the tax office. But when we got a little deeper into this system, we realized that without an accountant, things wouldn’t work. We still issue invoices today. But balancing debits and credits, especially if you work with multiple currencies and regularly convert – it’s very complicated. So, don’t save on this. Especially since an accountant’s fee is from 250 zlotys.
But their fee is calculated based on the number of invoices. For example, we have 30 invoices a month, and they process these 30 invoices for us. We pay them around 480 zlotys per month (this is the full amount). The next point in terms of expenses is any other variable expenses that can turn into fixed ones. You can hire employees, take out a loan for the company, or buy a company car. There are many other examples of fixed expenses, but I don’t see the point in discussing them.
I will share my experience and knowledge about the ecosystem in Poland (and in Europe as a whole). Let’s start with some life hacks. The first life hack is getting 10,000 zlotys to start your business. The idea is that you start a business and, under a special program created to support small businesses, you receive the money. To get the money, you need to have a business plan that shows how you intend to spend these funds. You also need to have an original idea. If you want to open another shawarma stall, you’re unlikely to get the money.
The second thing you should know about the Polish ecosystem is that in Poland you can get money and investments for your startup. Moreover, there is a video on our channel with Rostislav (the CallPage project), where he talks about how he and his team received investments. Recently, they received one million dollars in investment. The European Union also sponsors a lot, and this resource can be used. So far, we haven’t done this, but it is possible. Even Poland, as a country, derives significant benefit from EU programs.
For example, we previously worked in the coworking space “Business Link,” which was and in some ways still is our client. It is the largest coworking network in Poland. And right on the key items in the coworking space, there is a sticker: “The European Union participated in the development of this project.” In general, I recommend you explore the opportunities that the EU offers to beginner entrepreneurs.
Personally, I’ve heard many examples of people receiving additional investments specifically from the European Union. Krakow deserves special attention (the video is shot from here). Krakow has a cool startup and investment environment. By visiting coworking spaces and hangout spots, you will feel the unique atmosphere of this city firsthand. That’s all from me. Like, subscribe to our channel, and ask questions. I will answer them either in the next video or in text.
