It wasn’t a blind leap of faith, but rather, it was a process that I thought through for many years. From 2010 to 2018, I closely monitored data points that would validate my hypothesis. Who would have known that those initial observations would prove correct…and that I was about to stumble upon one of the greatest economic success stories of our time.

Our history as Poles is something that has always fascinated me. Poland is a nation caught in the crossfire of extreme ideologies and the shadows of bygone empires. Our homeland, has been perpetually ensnared by its geography, flanked by historical giants whose influence has seeped through our annals for ages. This shared history of resilience and turmoil is a double-edged sword for us Poles — it forges a strong sense of unity among us, yet it also underscores the divisions that challenge our cohesion. It’s a paradox that unites us as much as it divides us, serving both as the bond that binds us together and the force that wrenches us apart.

This is our unfortunate history.

It is a history that has shaped our collective personalities, motivations and culture. It’s so deeply engrained into our psyche, that the overwhelming majority of us are not even consciously aware of it.

Our history is deeply embedded within our collective identity, shaping our character, ambitions, and societal fabric. Unbeknownst to many, the intricacies of our history influences us at a subconscious level, dictating our strengths and, more critically, exposing our vulnerabilities.

These vulnerabilities, I argue, are what tether us from reaching the peak of our collective capability — a capability that is vast and untapped.

The journey to unlocking this potential necessitates confronting and healing from the intergenerational scars that distort our collective psyche and negatively impact our decision-making.

This introspection may prove uncomfortable, yet it is essential. My hope is that through this exploration, you embark on a path of personal growth and foster a dialogue within your communities. Together, embracing this challenge, we can step forward to actualize the immense potential that lies dormant within us, charting a course towards a future defined not by our past traumas but by our shared aspirations and achievements.

Our journey toward realizing our full potential is both a personal and collective endeavor. It requires not just an understanding of our shared history but also a deep, introspective look at how this history shapes us today.

When I moved to Poland in 2018, I, too, was initially unaware of how deeply these historical imprints had woven themselves into my own DNA, until I immersed myself within a population who was virtually genetically identical to me (add a mental note here as I will return to this later in the article).

As a Polish-American and an immigrant, I grew up with my parents instilling in me a strong sense of identity and a reverence for our past. This experience is not unique to me; it resonates with many Polish-Americans. Even those among us whose ancestors embarked on a journey to a new world three generations ago still cling tightly to the traditions and customs of our ancestors. I personally know folks of Polish descent, who still send their kids to Polish school, smoke kielbasa, make Żurek for Easter and marry other Polish Americans. It’s fascinating to see how proud these people are of where they come from, regardless of how long ago they left Poland.

This remarkable attachment to our heritage, a defining trait of the ‘Polonia’ or Polish Diaspora, is rare among diasporas worldwide. It underscores not just a connection to our heritage, but a living testament to our resilience and unity. It is this profound bond to our roots, combined with the willingness to confront and heal from our historical traumas, that will propel us towards realizing the vast potential within us. By embracing our past, engaging in self-reflection, and fostering community dialogue, we can break free from the chains of intergenerational trauma and step into a future where our collective strengths are fully realized.

A Short History of Me, A Polish American

My family and I emigrated from the Polish People’s Republic (PRL) in ’89, fleeing the horrors of a complete economic implosion known as the fall of communism. Inflation in Poland had been picking up steam, as a monolithic centrally planned economy tried to make a U-turn towards Free Market Capitalism. Things were so bad in Poland, my family and I escaped in order to seek asylum in the United States, and start the long arduous process of legal immigration.

My father had a lot of cousins in the US as most of my grandmother’s siblings emigrated in the 60s and 70s. Most of them couldn’t even speak Polish. And then there was us…not a single word of English, but all the enthusiasm in world to start something new. Our family helped us get on our feet in the early days, which allowed us to quickly realize the American Dream.

Upon our arrival we immediately became a part of the local Polish Catholic Community, centered around the Polish-American Nexus in the Northeast: The National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa. Saturdays was Polish School and Sundays was Church, always in Polish and always amongst other Polish-Americans. We lived in a sort of small version of Poland, a tiny landlocked island, with only a few thousand inhabitants.

Little do most Poles know, but the Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa is a historical landmark in the United States. St. John Paul II visited it before he became the Pope, as well as US Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson & Ronald Reagan. The Shrine attracts pilgrims and tourists annually and is regarded as an epicenter for Polish American culture and community.

Being Polish American is something that is very unique in and of itself. You’re not quite Polish, yet not quite American either. You’re stuck somewhere in-between. You have this bizarre feeling of connectedness to your history, and yet you resent it at the same time. It’s something that’s just there…you can’t explain why but you know it exists.

If Polish-North America was a country, including Polish Canadians, we’d be a country with over 11 Million strong. That’s more than all of Sweden and the Czech Republic. Polish North America is so large, that US Presidents campaign to get the Polish American vote, as the majority live amongst the swing states. We even have our own cultural phenomena such as Polka music, Dyngus Day and the Pulaski Day Parades.

Now, I know this may sound shocking, but for as long as I could remember, I was always ashamed to be Polish. I didn’t know why, but it was just some instinctive feeling I could never shake. But my parents always stressed the importance of learning the language, keeping the traditions, and always remembering where we came from. The Shrine was always a place where we could feel comfortable doing that and those Polish Americans around me also kept a tight bond with their past.

I went on to finish my degree in Physics from Villanova University, and quickly assumed one of the vocational stereotypes we Polish men undertake: I became a software developer.

I ended up founding my first company Nooch, which brought me from the East Coast to the WestCoast. The San Francisco Bay Area. Home of Tupac, and Steve Jobs. As a software developer, I spent a lot of time on GitHub and StackOverflow. Github is a repository for lots of open-source software and StackOverflow is an internet forum where developers help solve each other's problems.

One of the things that always stuck out to me, was the sheer number of Polish last names on both of these platforms. And this wasnt something that happened every once in a while, it was like 1 out of every 5 usernames I came across. And all of them lived in Poland.

This realization made me think…”if there are so many software engineers in Poland, and such a shortage here in Silicon Valley, then why are there no Polish Tech Unicorns (A Startup with at least a $1B Valuation)?” Estonia already had tons of them. Clearly the prerequisite of a successful startup ecosystem was an abundance of talent, as I learned in my career in Silicon Valley. Therefore it had to be one of the core axioms for a successful startup ecosystem. I began to conduct further due diligence on the Polish Tech Ecosystem, and starting in 2013, I started spending a month or two during the summer meeting the locals in tech. And what I discovered further intrigued me.

Poland’s Massive Potential

The local ecosystem was clearly still developing, and the majority of software companies there were all consultant shops, better known locally as Software Houses. Software Houses rarely ever raised money from investors, and instead resorted to professional services. This gave them access to capital, in an otherwise capital depleted environment. There were no venture backed companies because there simply was no venture funding. But over the years things slowly got better and in 2017, the Polish Development Fund (PFR), (i.e. the Polish Sovereign Wealth fund) announced that it was taking meetings to invest in its first batch of new venture capital funds. This initiative would effectively seed the first generation of the Polish venture backed companies and start accelerating its own tech ecosystem.

In 2018, a friend of mine alerted me of this program, and shortly thereafter I raised a ~$17MM USD fund, as one of the first deep tech funds in the region. This is what ultimately pushed me over the line to make the move to Poland. By 2020, right before the Covid pandemic, we committed to our first investment in a quantum computing company as Atmos Ventures.

From 2020 to 2022, Atmos Ventures invested in 9 companies, all from deep tech and enterprise software backgrounds. And all the while I wanted to continue my research and be able to validate my hypothesis that Poland had the potential to become a force to be reckoned with in the global tech race. After all, I was investing in the region, so I aught to be 100% sure that my investments were going to return. I published an article with this analysis in the Fall of 2021.

The Israeli Tech Ecosystem and Its Parallels with Poland

In 2020, I visited Israel for the first time, and I was given a book called Startup Nation.

Startup Nation talks about a country Israel, that is basically on an island because the folks living around it want to wipe them off the face of the earth. It’s about the size of New Jersey, yet they have the highest number of Unicorns per capita of any country on the planet, including the United States. It was a place that started with literally nothing but traumas from the horrors of the holocaust….and a small patch of dirt in the middle of the desert. Yet they turned it into an economic miracle, seemingly overnight, and they did this with just a few million people. The population of Israel has the highest number of engineers and scientists per capita in the developed world, and a wave of Jewish refugees from the former Soviet Union in the 90s made that number grow even more. By 2014, the country had already minted its first unicorn, Ironforge, and is second only to SV as the most competitive tech ecosystem in the world. They were small, so they had to think big and global from day one, and most of them set their sights on the US market first.

The significant momentum in Israel’s development was sparked by a government initiative known as the Yozma Group. This program, which operated on a ‘fund of funds’ model, closely resembled the structure of our own Polish Sovereign Wealth Fund, and Atmos LP: PFR. It started in 1993, and was the tinder match Israel needed to get its VC-backed startup ecosystem brewing. After 1993 its clear as day that the combustion was sustainable, and the Israeli ecosystem was off to the races.

Now the big difference between Israelis and Poles has to do primarily with their personalities and character traits. An Israeli friend of mine who lives in Warsaw once told me a funny but fitting adage:

“If you give an Israeli a problem, he will provide you with 12 solutions. If you give a Pole a solution, he will provide you with 12 problems,”

and this, ladies and gentlemen, is the core symptom that points us to the number one problem holding us Poles back from realizing our full potential.

Polish People’s Worst Enemy is Themselves, and Directly Threatens its Massive Potential.

Now, let’s go back to my sudden realization of my own character flaws after immersing myself in this completely new environment in 2018. This realization wasn’t the final light bulb moment, but rather the beginning of a new journey, where I’d try to find answers to why we all had these bizarre yet similar complexes as Polish People.

In 2021 I read the book, “It Didn’t Start with You,” which presents an innovative method for addressing traumatic legacies that have been transmitted across generations. The author, Mark Wolynn, is a renowned expert in the domain of inherited family trauma.

The book suggests that many psychological and physical issues such as depression, anxiety, chronic pain, phobias, and obsessive thoughts may originate not within our direct life experiences or brain chemistry imbalances but from traumas experienced by our ancestors. Groundbreaking scientific studies, affirm the theory that trauma can be inherited, a concept previously intuited by many. The book builds on research by esteemed figures like Rachel Yehuda, a neuroscientist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and Bessel van der Kolk, a psychiatrist and author of “The Body Keeps the Score.

Despite the original trauma bearer’s possible death or the loss of the trauma narrative, the emotional impact can persist, subtly woven into gene expression and everyday language, significantly influencing our mental and physical health. For over two decades, Wolynn has applied his therapeutic insights in working with individuals and groups, developing the Core Language Approach. This approach, outlined in the book, includes diagnostic self-assessments to identify the hidden fears and anxieties communicated through common words, behaviors, and physical signs. It also uses genograms to trace family histories and emotional patterns, alongside techniques like visualization, active imagination, and direct dialogue, to foster reconnection and healing, offering pathways to overcome enduring challenges that may not respond to traditional therapies or medications.

I personally suffer from clinical depression, and have known it for the majority of my life. It was only until recently that I began to notice how this disease had developed the following complexes that we as Poles all share to some degree.

An Inferiority Complex, masked by a thin veneer of a superiority complex is something that the overwhelming majority of us not only feel, but can also see in daily Polish life. The other is the Scarcity Complex, which not only do us Poles possess, but the majority of the population of Central and Eastern Europe, or the former Warsaw Pact nations.

An Inferiority Complex can be described as: constant feelings of inadequacy or insecurity in your daily life due to a belief that you are physically or mentally inferior to others. Something I’ve noticed about living in Poland is that many Poles irrationally feel that they are inferior to the rest of Europe or the West. Many see Poland as a backwater country, or the back-office of the rest of the world, when in fact, we as Poles have so much to be proud of, both from the present and the past. The thin veneer of a superiority complex I mentioned earlier can be seen in the designer clothes we wear or the Italian sports cars we cannot afford, and the air of entitlement that this subsequently creates. These complexes are subconscious, and manifest themselves as anger, resentment, or our favorite pastime: complaining.

The problem with this inferiority complex is that if we cannot love ourselves, how can we possibly have any sense of respect towards others? The net result is a collection of personal anecdotes of Poles taking advantage of others both here in Poland and in the US. Many years ago when my family and I were still asylum seekers in the US, we were taken advantage of by many Poles who promised to help us fast track our Green Cards, only to fall prey to some scam perpetrated by people who were “trying to help out their community.” Because the majority of us are insecure about our own subconscious shortcomings, we project that unconsciousness towards our peers and our communities.

This Inferiority Complex goes hand in hand with our Scarcity Complex. A scarcity complex refers to a mindset where an individual consistently feels like they don’t have enough, leading to behaviors driven by a sense of scarcity. This complex can relate to various aspects of life, including money, time, relationships, or other resources. People with a scarcity complex often experience persistent anxiety over running out of these resources, which can influence their decision-making and overall mental well-being.

I believe this is a net result of the engineered poverty we experienced under the boot of communism. Under communism, people had to figure out how to get by and engaged in ‘cwaniactwo’ or ‘hustles’ to ensure their short term well-being. This short-term thinking may have proven to be effective in those days, but in a society where resources are no longer scarce, this mentality is a bug and not a feature.

As an investor in Poland, I have personally seen founders who have many side hustles and find it hard to focus on only one thing. This kind of thinking makes it difficult for the founder to realize success in their primary aspiration, and inadvertently ends up failing in both their side hustles and their primary aspiration. I have also noticed that in Poland and CEE, the culture of “paying it forward,” does not exist whereas it is the modus operandi in US business culture.

These two complexes, when combined create a very toxic, self destructive business environment that thwart our collective potential. I have seen it and have also experienced it first hand. I’ve heard some absolutely outlandish horror stories of people who clearly optimized for the short term and completely disregarded the long term cost. As an American, it’s hard to wrap my head around but if an individual has always been exposed to this kind of environment, it’s nearly impossible for them to see things under a different light. It’s even harder to point out the unconscious to someone whose core beliefs dictate that “this is how things are done,” and “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”

How To Fix these Software Bugs in our Society

It’s no secret that we as Poles have been dealt a rough hand for centuries. Beginning with the partitions of Poland, where we were relegated to second class citizens, only to regain our independence 5 generations later. Shortly thereafter, the Third Reich and the Soviet Union carved up Poland and sent it into one of the most terrifying periods in human history. For the Polish and Jewish population living in Poland, the circumstances felt like an apocalypse. From 1939 to 1944, the Nazi Germans exterminated 17% of the Polish population, including 3 million Polish Jews, who were an integral part of our society. The irreparable damage this caused our ancestors still plagues us to this day in the form of mental illness and behavioral complexes.

It’s unrealistic to expect an entire population to recognize and agree on the same character flaws that you perceive. Often, what one individual notices, others may not fully grasp, especially if their environment doesn’t encourage diverse perspectives. Many people grow up surrounded by others with similar thought patterns, which can normalize negative and self-destructive attitudes. These individuals might not see these traits as problematic because they’re viewed as “normal” within their cultural context. However, by identifying and addressing these negative traits within ourselves, we can liberate our minds from a form of mental bondage that we often unknowingly impose on ourselves. This self-awareness can be a powerful step toward personal growth and freedom.

I’m not sure if this is something we can fix within a decade but I am convinced that it is the major roadblock on our way to building a powerful tech ecosystem. The Israelis also have their traumas from the past, but I think that over the millennia, they have figured out how to heal from those traumas and stay united. Our history is obviously much shorter than that of the Jewish people so perhaps we still need some more time to learn how to heal from our unfortunate history.

Your Call To Action

If you’ve gotten this far in the article, I would recommend you grab a copy of It Didn’t Start With You (in Polish: Nie zaczęło się od ciebie. Jak dziedziczona trauma wpływa na to, kim jesteśmy i jak zakończyć ten proces) and start with your own Self Assessment by the author. Mental Health is still something that is unfortunately frowned upon by Polish Society, and the data for that is clear.

“Poland, like other countries in the WHO European Region, has significant challenges when it comes to ensuring access to mental health services. 60% of patients who have reported needing mental health support say they do not seek help due to stigma. There are just 9 psychiatrists per 100 000 population in the country and waiting times are long. 3.7% of the Polish national health budget is spent on mental health care, which is low compared to some other European countries.” — WHO

My hope is that this article begins to raise awareness in our communities and throws cold water on the stigma of taking care of our mental health. What should be stigmatized is the current dismissive attitude towards taking care of one’s own mental health.

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” — Leo Tolstoy

John C. Maxwell, an American author and speaker, once said, “Most people want to change the world to improve their lives, but the world they need to change first is the one inside themselves.” Many people criticize the world’s problems, but few work on improving themselves. I have been on my own journey of healing and growth for years, and it’s still an ongoing process. By confronting the uncomfortable truths about ourselves, we can achieve remarkable things. Only by doing this can we unlock our full potential, paving the way for a future shaped by our aspirations and achievements, not our past traumas.

This is the key to our limitless potential.

The invention of calculus by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz in the 17th Century transformed our understanding of the world (We still don’t know who should take credit so we’ll be sure to mention them both) and paved the way for advancements in various fields such as physics, chemistry, biology, economics, pure mathematics, and all areas of engineering. The genius of calculus lies in its ability to deal with changes — it enables us to analyze how a quantity changes in relation to another variable, typically time.

Differential equations, a central part of calculus, encapsulate these relations. They’re used to depict how things change and evolve over time, under the influence of various factors. Think of a double pendulum, for instance. The motion of this system is intricate and unpredictable. However, with differential equations, we can represent this complexity and study how the system evolves over time. In essence, calculus, and by extension, differential equations, have become our primary tool for understanding dynamic systems in nature and technology.

The equations mentioned earlier represent a double pendulum system’s dynamics, illustrating the interconnection between different parts of the system and how it evolves over time. However, they depict an ideal situation, devoid of real-world elements such as friction or air resistance. Consequently, when these models are applied to practical scenarios, the results deviate from the theoretical predictions due to these omitted factors.

On the other hand, machine learning (ML) approaches these problems from a different perspective, aiming to decipher the system’s physics from the data it is given. Despite its ability to start from scratch and approximate anything, machine learning’s strength can also be its weakness. It requires substantial datasets for training and considerable computational resources. Moreover, because it’s a generalist tool — capable of addressing a wide range of tasks — it may not excel at solving specific, complex problems as efficiently as specialized approaches.

Imagine the relationship between machine learning and first principles physics, and their implementation complexity, being represented on a graph:

It illustrates that pure machine learning, despite its generalist nature, is difficult to implement for modeling complex physics systems. At the same time, capturing minute discrepancies using only first principles physics — the foundational mathematical equations that describe our system — also presents a significant challenge.

By capitalizing on the advantages of both first principles physics and machine learning, we create a synergistic approach that optimizes model training. This integrated method demands significantly less data and computational resources, delivering solutions more rapidly compared to exclusive reliance on either first principles physics or pure machine learning. This harmonized approach presents a highly efficient and effective path for solving complex problems.

How does this translate into real world applications?

Modeling a double pendulum using physics-informed machine learning is a fun proof of concept, but is still only an interesting science experiment. The real question is, how do you use these concepts to solve real world problems?

Traffic management presents a compelling application of physics-informed machine learning. If we envision traffic as a fluid flowing within a conduit — vehicles being the ‘fluid’ and roadways the ‘conduit’ — we begin to see the underlying physics at play, namely fluid dynamics.

Traffic flow shares common variables with fluid flow, including density, pressure, and flow velocity, all of which fluctuate over time. The Navier-Stokes partial differential equations, which are fundamental to fluid dynamics, can serve as our base model:

However, real-world traffic is more complex than fluid in a pipe. It’s here that machine learning steps in to capture the discrepancies. For instance, whereas fluids tend to flow faster in narrower conduits, traffic flow slows down as the number of lanes decreases. Machine learning can model these inconsistencies, refining our traffic model.

This enhanced, physics-informed machine learning model can then be integrated into a product designed to monitor, predict, and manage the impact of disruptions like construction or road closures on traffic flow. It could optimize detour routes and manage traffic in a way that minimizes disruption, leading to significant time and cost savings for all road users. This example exemplifies how the fusion of first principles physics and machine learning can offer tangible, real-world benefits.

One Small Caveat

Physics-Informed Machine Learning (PIML) indeed holds great potential, but when it comes to its implementation, we hit a stumbling block. There’s a well-known communication gap between physicists and computer scientists, primarily due to their different lingos and approaches. A simple pendulum motion, described by a straightforward differential equation in physics:

translates into a somewhat less intuitive script in Python, a popular high-level programming language:

def recomputeAngle(self):
        scaling = 3000.0/(SWINGLENGTH**2)

        firstDDtheta = -sin(radians(self.theta))*scaling
        midDtheta = self.dtheta + firstDDtheta
        midtheta = self.theta + (self.dtheta + midDtheta)/2.0

        midDDtheta = -sin(radians(midtheta))*scaling
        midDtheta = self.dtheta + (firstDDtheta + midDDtheta)/2
        midtheta = self.theta + (self.dtheta + midDtheta)/2

        midDDtheta = -sin(radians(midtheta)) * scaling
        lastDtheta = midDtheta + midDDtheta
        lasttheta = midtheta + (midDtheta + lastDtheta)/2.0

        lastDDtheta = -sin(radians(lasttheta)) * scaling
        lastDtheta = midDtheta + (midDDtheta + lastDDtheta)/2.0
        lasttheta = midtheta + (midDtheta + lastDtheta)/2.0

        self.dtheta = lastDtheta
        self.theta = lasttheta
        self.rect = pygame.Rect(PIVOT[0]-
                                SWINGLENGTH*sin(radians(self.theta)),
                                PIVOT[1]+
                                SWINGLENGTH*cos(radians(self.theta)),1,1)

Fortunately, a relatively new language named Julia offers a solution. Julia is designed to make complex mathematical concepts more readable, while still retaining high-level programming attributes. Consider the example of simple harmonic motion we mentioned earlier:

# differential equations
simplependulum(du, u, p, t) = (θ=u[1]; dθ=u[2]; du[1]=dθ; du[2]=-(g/L)*sin(θ))
bc2(residual, u, p, t) = (residual[1] = u[end÷2][1] + pi/2; residual[2] = u[end][1] - pi/2)
bvp2 = BVProblem(simplependulum, bc2, [pi/2,pi/2], (tspan[1],tspan[end]))
sol2 = solve(bvp2, MIRK4(), dt=dtframe) # use the MIRK4 solver for TwoPointBVProblem

(These code snippets were taken from Rosetta Code for animating a pendulum, for both Julia and Python)

The Julia equivalent is not only easier to read and understand, but also performs comparably to low-level languages like C and C++. This is a game-changer, as traditionally you had to trade-off readability for performance, and vice versa. Julia breaks this norm, enabling us to leverage the best of both worlds, and thus becoming a promising tool for the realization of PIML’s potential.

Bringing Scientific Computing (and Quantum) to the Masses

The realm of scientific machine learning is poised for a transformation with Julia, unlocking the power of high-performance scientific computing for machine learning engineers, data scientists, and non-technical users for the first time. This revolution doesn’t just stop at high-performance computing; it ushers us into the quantum-ready future. At QDC.ai, we’re pioneering this seismic shift, crafting a range of products designed to make High-Performance Computing (HPC) and quantum computing accessible to all.

One of today’s key challenges is the intimidating learning curve associated with HPC, making it difficult for an average developer to tap into the potential of mathematical solvers for tackling complex combinatorial optimization problems. QDC.ai is bridging this divide, making large-scale optimization problems more approachable by merging the universes of HPC and conventional machine learning, while keeping our eyes firmly on the quantum horizon.

Imagine the power of integrating our product, OMNIS, with Snowflake, defining your optimization problem in natural language, and then witnessing the system autonomously generate all the differential equations that describe your problem within hours. This process is not just streamlined and efficient, but it also lays the groundwork for quantum computing, making your operations quantum-ready right from the get-go. Execute your algorithm, retreat for a coffee, and return to gauge the outcome and refine as necessary.

This quantum-ready vision is the future we foresee for scientific computing and large-scale optimization problem-solving. The necessity to recruit specialized math and physics PhDs to model your optimization problems is fading away. With the power of generative A.I., you can expedite your processes, economize, and eliminate countless consultation cycles to define your optimization problem, all while being prepared for quantum computation.

The blend of Generative AI and scientific programming is not only set to enhance our capability to solve intricate optimization problems, but it also paves the way for quantum-ready solutions, all while substantially reducing computational resource demand. As AI continues to expand, we need sustainable solutions that aren’t reliant exclusively on escalating computing power. In our data-abundant world, where decision-making processes can be unbearably protracted, we’re developing a solution that enables swift, efficient decision-making and alleviates analysis paralysis.

At QDC.ai, we’re crafting a future that democratizes access to high-level, quantum-ready scientific computing, and makes the world more efficient. Our mission is to revolutionize the approach to large-scale optimization problems and shape the future of decision-making in a data-centric, quantum-ready world.

Physics Informed Machine Learning — The Next Generation of Artificial Intelligence & Solving… was originally published in The Quantum Data Center on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Most VCs pretend to believe they are domain experts in deep tech. That’s right, I’m coming clean… Our egos tend to get the best of us, and most of the time, we just nod and smile as if we understand your pitch. In reality, we’re lost, but doing our best to use pattern recognition from other pitches, publications and opinions from our network to become domain experts. I’ve missed out on a few deals that made it big, simply because I didn’t understand the product, the market or the use case. In retrospect, I cannot begin to imagine the number of founders who COULD have made it big, but were instead tossed into the scrap pile of failed startups — simply because they “lost” the investor.

Developing trailblazing technology is really difficult. Applying that tech to tackle incomprehensibly large, domain specific challenges such as climate change or supply chain optimization is even harder. Making money whilst doing it (“Defensible ROI”) is close to impossible. This is why the market values successful deep tech companies in multiples higher than traditional VC backed startups. It also should not come as a surprise that deep tech startups who are founded by PhDs tend to raise more cash, have quicker time to unicorn status, and have more favorable terms when raising capital, according to Sophia Yu of Foothill Ventures.

“Based on the overall number of deep-tech companies that get founded every year (not that many), a disproportionately high number of billion dollar companies are deep-tech.” — Ali Tamaseb of Data Collective

More than ever, the world’s greatest minds are breaking from the norm of academic research to start world class companies. Not only are they breaking from the norm, they are succeeding. This article is designed to help you, the technical founder of a deep tech startup, help best position your startup to investors and understand what we look for when considering a seed investment.

Fundraising for scientific commercialization

Before we begin, I want to set a foundation for this discussion to ensure the information outlined is relevant to you, your company and your technology:

• The stage of your company is one at which the founders want to commercialize a piece of technology that is at or right before the “Proof of Concept” stage
• The “Proof of Concept” stage is defined as a small project to test whether the prototype or some selected feature or functionality has commercial opportunity/feasibility (Most founders will already have a prototype at this stage)
• You may have already received angel investment(s), or your team is spinning out of a University
• There has to be some level of demonstrated technical execution in that you as a team have established milestones and met those milestones within a predictable manner
• A clear plan and path to commercialization within a reasonable time frame (Realistically, you should begin to see some commercial traction in the third year post institutional financing)

Make sure that what you are pitching is actually deep tech

What is deep tech? Deep tech is a term coined by Swati Chaturvedi, CEO of Propel(x), in 2015, to differentiate tech startups built on commonly available technologies and those engaged in long-term scientific and technological R&D.

To better understand if your company is truly “deep tech,” I find it helpful to consider the following two categories;

First is “Defensible Technology.” Defensible in the sense that it’s tangible intellectual property that can be protected but also incredibly difficult to reverse engineer. This is why most deep tech originates from the University, because it combines the bleeding edge of research, science and engineering. For example, if you’ve written a proprietary algorithm for Natural Language Processing (NLP) that outperforms industry benchmarks, that’s deep tech. Inversely, if you’re using an API such as Google’s Speech-to-Text, this would not be considered deep tech.

The second category is the “Data Moat.” If you’re a company that has developed a means of acquiring data which provides a considerable advantage over the competition, you’ve built yourself a data moat. In some cases, the two categories will overlap in that you need one in order to satisfy the other. I have come across companies where the technology itself may not be considered impressive, but they developed unique ways of acquiring high quality data that is at least one order of magnitude better than the competition.

<Hack: Investors love moats and the ability to have a protectable/competitive advantage. Be sure to highlight and reinforce both your technology and data moats during your pitch>

What is the technology and who is the team behind it?

As mentioned before, a lot of VCs like to pretend they know deep tech. Sure, some may be PhDs with strong technical backgrounds and experiences — I am not disparaging the gifted ones. You, as the domain expert, in many cases will need to “dumb it down” and utilize “lowest common denominator” explanations to ensure your pitch is fully comprehended. Remember that you’ve been completely immersed in your research, and what you think may be a simplistic version may be way too complex for your audience. Come up with one sentence that drives home what your technology does, and what the vision is.

<Hack: Take 60 seconds and do a LinkedIn and Google search of your investor — many times, you can find out where they studied, what they studied, which can help you gauge their technical knowledge/experience>

For example:

“Our Synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) satellites use a form of radar that is used to create two-dimensional images or three-dimensional reconstructions of objects, such as landscapes. The SAR algorithm generally applies to phased arrays. A three-dimensional array of scene elements is defined, which will represent the volume of space within which targets exist. Each element of the array is a cubical voxel representing the probability of a reflective surface being at that location in space.”

In the sentences above, the founder focuses on the “what” instead of the “why.” I see this a lot with deep tech founders that are too excited about the technology, rather than the broad application. A better opening pitch would be:

“Only SAR (synthetic aperture radar) satellites can collect images day and night and in any weather. Our constellation of small and agile SAR satellites is able to revisit the same location in space daily and even sub-daily, enabling a level of change detection that’s never been possible before. Our constellation is designed to make SAR imagery accessible to all at a fraction of the cost and provide a variety of access options to meet industry requirements.”

The above sentence illustrates WHY the investor should care, how it has broad commercial applicability and objective ROI. There’s no need to dive into the specifics of the algorithm, the mathematical models or scientific elements of the technology — you’ll have time for that during due diligence. Just keep it simple so you can gauge investor interest and field the first set of questions: Technical, business, data acquisition or anything in between.

<Hack: Think about every word said or typed costing $1 — ensure your message is as efficient as possible and “costs” the least amount with the highest impact. Many times, less is more.>

In addition to the technology, investors want to know the team that’s been collaborating on the technology. How published are they? How many times has their work been cited? Does the team have a track record of working with each other in the lab? Has the team had a successful exit? What about business experience, like fundraising and closing revenue?

All of the above are important inputs which allow investors to determine if the team is capable of building a real deep tech company and can withstand the highs and lows of the startup journey. A purely technical pitch without a business plan to back it up will increase the odds of failure, and VCs are always looking to de-risk their investment as much as possible.

<Hack: Deep Tech, by default, is a long term investment, and funds will need to cash out of their investments in less than a decade. If they don’t see a well defined commercial application, the odds of seed investment are very low. Remember, investors are investing in a company, NOT a science project. Although your tech may be really cool, if it’s not solving a real world problem that creates value and generates revenue, it may be too early for commercialization.>

How far along are you?

Think of product market fit as a continuum scale. On one end, product development, while on the other, revenue generation. To determine where you are, ask yourself some questions: Are you currently piloting Proof of Concepts (PoCs) with customers? Still defining market fit? Secured a signed purchase order? All are important, but what’s critical is conveying to investors where you are and how quickly your team can achieve revenue growth, cognizant of how difficult the technical execution is.

If you’re developing Quantum Computers, you won’t likely be at a phase where you’ve secured customer contracts, however you can demonstrate technical execution on a bootstrapped budget with a limited staff. Perhaps you’ve made enough breakthroughs in physics, where the remaining part of development is purely productization. Most importantly, you should have a pipeline of customer commitments and have numerous data points on what your future customers need.

From our SAR example, at the PoC stage you will likely be speaking to large enterprises who are interested in paying you to get access to your proprietary satellite data. You may not have satellites in the sky, but you’ve demonstrated that there are customers who are willing to pay a premium for your product when launched. As an investor, I want to see that you are building a product based on demand coming from the market and not just innovating in a vacuum. I want to see how well you are able to combine your demonstrated technical execution with real world data coming from the market.

<Hack: Many startups offer free proof of concepts (POCs), however many times this offer gets abused by prospective clients. If your technology is truly groundbreaking and drives a hard ROI, then charge for your PoC. You must ensure target customers have “skin in the game,” otherwise they may just be test driving your technology which will waste critical sales and development cycles. Your POC should transition to being called: PO (purchase order) on Completion.>

How much are you raising and what is it for?

Setting your deep tech company’s seed valuation is more art than science. You obviously want to keep as much equity as humanly possible, but you also want to make sure that your Series A, or subsequent funding rounds are reasonably priced. For example: You can raise $4 Million for 10% equity, but that would value your company at $40 Million post money. The expectation is always to raise the next round at a higher valuation, and at a decent return multiple. So, based on the industry you’re in, is a $120–200 Million post money Series A realistic? If not, you may need to reconsider your seed raise so that you don’t set yourself up for failure later on.

Considering current market dynamics, a typical raise for a seed stage deep tech startup is approximately $4 Million for 25% equity. Most of this capital will be invested into R&D, with a small portion going into Business Development. This should be outlined in your business plan, along with who you intend to hire with salary and equity requirements.

Another component to fundraising that investors look for is not only the amount you’re raising, but how long of a runway will this capital provide the team. Typically, startups will raise enough seed capital to support approximately 2 years worth of development. This timeline provides you enough time to execute on the most important technical milestones, plus a 6 month buffer for your next [Series A] fundraise..

One mistake I often see first time founders make is not raising enough initial capital to give them the runway they need. They make the rookie assumption of, “I’ll just go out and raise some more cash when I need to,” not realizing that fundraising is incredibly time consuming. Remember that while you’re fundraising, you will not have time to focus on product/technology and business development. Fundraising is also NOT something you can outsource, and the Leadership Team must be the ones driving this. Your seed round may go fast, but subsequent rounds will be held to a higher standard of scrutinization.

<Hack: Raising more money than you need is better than raising too little. Yes, you may need to dilute your ownership, however 25% of a billion dollar company is far greater than 75% of a $100M one. Investors will also hold you accountable to ensure that you are not going overboard with your monthly burn rate during quarterly board meetings. Stick to the budget you had originally pitched and use the additional capital for sustainable growth.>

How can you ensure investors become value added partners?

As much as an investor is choosing you for returns, you should be choosing your investor based upon the value they can bring to you. Of course, capital is most important, but if the team can truly execute on the vision, then you should be able to best select investors that can help bring scale to your vision.

Do your homework on the portfolio companies your target VC has invested in and be ready to ask questions on how that investor brought tangible value to the company.

Today, I see investors going above and beyond to support their portfolio companies. Especially for deep tech investors, value is being demonstrated in unique ways such as access to other scientific domain experts, massive compute environments, and connections to large corporations who are building platforms/ecosystems to support your work.

<Hack: Before you start pitching your ideal VCs, rehearse as much as humanly possible, and rehearse it with people who are further removed from the technology than you are. If Public speaking frightens you, sign up for an improv acting class to help you learn techniques on how to engage your audience on the fly. Start by pitching either friendly VCs or VCs you don’t mind passing on the round. Those VCs at the bottom of your ranking should be used as practice to polish your pitch. Once you hit the top of your list, you can go in with a lot of confidence knowing that your top picks will likely receive the message you intend to convey.>

Optimize and close!

So there you have it. Those are all the considerations you should have before fundraising for your deep tech startup. After several pitches you will start to develop your own “Machine Learning Model” on what works and what doesn’t across different types of investors. You’ll end up with different versions of your pitch deck built for various audiences and tailor one for each new investor meeting. You may want to consider having one deck for the PhD investor that actually knows a thing or two about the topic, and you’ll have another deck for one that’s the more traditional former Investment Banker or MBA.

<Hack: You should consider having different presentations for when you are pitching in person vs virtual, and ones that you email after your meeting. For a virtual presentation, could you include a video to change the audience engagement so it’s not a static slide by slide presentation? For in person meetings, VCs see loads of death by powerpoint, so the less text you have and the more engaging you can be, the more they’ll be engaged with YOU. >

At the end of the day YOU are front and center. VCs don’t invest in a deck or just technology, but YOU as the individual and the team. I need you to convince me that you are the best person to execute on this vision, and can inspire others to join you on this journey

Happy Pitching!

I remember the first handful of meetings I took from startups when I arrived in the summer of 2015 in Warsaw. In those days the VC ecosystem in Poland was almost non-existent compared to what it is today, and the only option for companies to secure capital was to secure services contracts, a definite deal breaker for West Coast VCs. But things have changed dramatically since then and access to capital has increased by several orders of magnitude.

A Short History on the Polish IT Sector

In the early 2000s, Poland was just on the verge of opening up to the greater global market. As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, Why I left Palo Alto, California for Warsaw, Poland & Is Poland the Next Big Global Tech Hub?, Poland has always maintained a strong culture in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM). This is a common feature in most of the former Warsaw Pact countries. At the same time, Poland was beginning to undergo a digital transformation of most of its public and private sector.

These two ingredients created the perfect environment for cultivating and growing the future Polish IT Economy. According to a 2017 report by the Polish Ministry for Economic Development, the number of enterprises grew by a CAGR of 10.1% from 2009–2014. In terms of the total number of entities, the Polish ICT sector accounted for 7.6% of the EU market in 2014, and it had no plans on slowing down. The quality of Polish engineering talent was world class and was also incredibly inexpensive compared to North America. Companies such as NetGuru, Future Processing, Euvic, Neoteric and Transition Technologies flourished as they began to grow substantially outside of the Polish market.

And finally in 2017, programs like Bridge Alfa and PFR Ventures would provide the boost in Venture Capital the ecosystem so desperately needed.

From Consultants and Services to Global Products

2020 was a real tipping point in the Poland’s Technology Sector. The COVID-19 Pandemic catalyzed an unprecendented demand in digital transformation around the globe, and Poland’s economy was one of the least affected in the developed world. Software Consultants (or Software Houses as they’re better known here in Poland) began to hone their offerings to provide more scalable products and solutions, and some went as far as spinning out separate companies dedicated to these products alone.

One notable example was Vue Storefront, which raised $17.4 Million in October of 2021. Vue Storefront was borne of Divante, an e-commerce software house founded in 2008 in Wrocław Poland. Partick Friday and Filip Rakowski created the Vue Storefront technology as an open-source project while working at Divante, before eventually spinning it out into a separate startup in 2020.

Other Software Houses such as Netguru have dominated the market by providing full stack application development, and are specializing in the field of Machine Learning and Data Science. Objectivity is delivering Quantum Computing Solutions to its customers.

The Next Generation of Multi Billion Dollar Polish Tech Companies

Vue Storefront is just one example of a handful of examples that have emerged onto the market since 2020. The next generation of Polish Unicorns are being incubated in some Software House somewhere inside of Poland.

No matter the size, Polish Software Consultants have an interesting perspective on the market, given their exposure to clients and real business problems over the last few decades. Even small shops of no more than 25 employees, who have been around for several years receive real time feedback from the market on what matters most to customers.

According to clutch.co, there are almost 1,000 software houses operating in Poland today. Even if only 1% of those software houses were to find some interesting product-market niche, this would account for a potential of 10 new unicorns.

Given the increase in frequency of software houses spinning out new products and companies over the last few years, I’m sure that some of Poland’s newest unicorns are hiding somewhere in some codebase at a Polish Software House today.

The societal implications of Quantum Computing are so mind blowing, it will make the computing revolution of the 20th century look primitive. Quantum computing is the only hope we have for making life 100% sustainable on this earth and will allow us to develop new means of energy production and storage. It will transform all walks of society the same way modern day computing changed our world in the 20th century.

But why…what on earth is Quantum Computing, how does it work, and why should I care?

I get this question asked a lot, and so far, I don’t think anyone anywhere has given a good mainstream answer as to the “why” of quantum computing. And it’s not surprising, considering how difficult it is to take something so complex, and to simplify it in such a way that is succinct and understandable.

That is why I’d like to provide my explanation here in this article, and make Quantum Computing a little more mainstream. In order to do so, I will simplify it as much as possible, and aim to be concise, in order to get you to a place where you’ll actually “get” it. My goal is to get you to feel excited and optimistic about the future, so much so that you’ll want to tell at least one other person about quantum computing.

So let’s start with the qubit, the fundamental unit of of a quantum computer.

The Bit and the Qubit

Everyone remembers classical bits from modern day computers. Bits can be represented as either a zero (0) or a one (1). The qubit on the other hand can be a zero (0), a one (1), or a superposition of the two. The illustration above gives you a more concrete idea as to how superposition is represented in a qubit. One way to think of superposition is by using probabilities; there’s a 70% chance that the qubit is a one (1) and 30% chance that it is a zero (0). Therefore, classical bits are Deterministic, and quantum bits are probabalistic. (This will be important to remember later on)

But what exactly is superposition?

In quantum physics, tiny, subatomic particles do weird things, like when a particle “knows” you’re observing it. Why? We have no idea, and when physicists first observed this phenomenon they assumed their lab equipment was just faulty. When you’re “observing” a particle, it behaves like a particle, and when you’re not observing it, it acts like a wave. If none of this makes any sense, I highly recommend watching this video before going any further. It does a great job at explaining the particle-wave duality observed in quantum physics. It’s both fascinating and creepy that particles “know” they’re being watched.

Problems so hard, even computers can’t solve them

Now, why does all this superposition stuff matter? Well, it’s a neat hack to solve extremely difficult problems, really fast. As you can see in the figure above, these types of large-scale problems lead to something called combinatorial explosion. One combinatorial explosion example is when your local Amazon truck delivering packages needs to find the most optimal delivery route.

If a truck has three packages on board, it has 6 possible combinations of routes it can take. But if it has 9 packages on board, it has 362,880, or 9! (factorial) possible routes. Scale that number to 60 packages or 60! (factorial), and the number of possible routes is more than the number of particles in the known universe, 10⁸¹, or a number that is 81 digits long!

Computers are primarily brute force machines. That is a direct result of their deterministic unit of measurement, namely a zero (0), or a one (1). They have to test every single combination of each route in order to find the optimal route. But when you’re dealing with 10⁸¹ possible combinations of routes, it becomes impossible for any classical computer to find the optimal route. Even if you had all the computational power in the world, it would still take a literal eternity to find the optimal route.

These problems give logistics companies nightmares, and force them to make “best guesses.” Finding THE optimal route in real-time is the holy grail of logistics and solving this problem will save countless dollars, hours and fuel, and decrease waste and carbon output.

Another example of combinatorial explosion is molecule simulation. Electrons and atoms interact with each other constantly and simultaneously, and as their numbers grow, simulating them on classical computers becomes impossible. The molecules simulated today are rather small, and pale in comparison to understanding certain things like protein folding or catalysis. If quantum computers could simulate molecules, the same way we simulate classical physics in video games, we could run clinical drug trials virtually in mere days as opposed to countless years. We could understand how plants capture energy far better than our solar cells and create batteries that are as efficient as nature itself.

To put it plainly, because qubits have this probabilistic feature called superposition, we can design algorithms that look for all possible solutions to a problem at the same time. We will no longer be limited to the deterministic limitations our classical computers impose on us to brute force their way to solving a problem. This will allow us to solve problems that normal computers today are simply incapable of solving, unlocking a new world of exciting possibilities.

Hopefully now you understand why the societal implications of Quantum Computing are so massive. Something of an inconvenient paradox for humanity is that human well-being and energy consumption per capita are highly correlated. The more energy we burn, the better off we are. That means we need to develop clever ways of producing and storing energy. If we have a better fundamental understanding of how nature and quantum mechanics do this, we’ll be able to live in a world with more energy consumption at 100% sustainability.

That is why we at the Quantum Data Center are working hard to solve these problems. We know that our futures depend on it and we want to ensure a prosperous and safe world for all of humanity.

If you want to be part of our mission, share this article with your friends, and make sure they share it with their friends. The least you can do is to help raise awareness of this truly revolutionary new technology.

Over the last few months, I have been contacted by many friends back home in the US asking me if both the War in Ukraine or the Post COVID world, have affected my decision in staying in Poland. My answer still remains an incredibly firm YES.

As you all probably know, I moved from Palo Alto, California, to Warsaw, Poland.

I believe that there are a series of economic and cultural reasons that make the Polish capital a great place to live in. From cheap rent to high-quality local food, and great options for vegans, Warsaw offers a range of services and business opportunities that make it the most dynamic and attractive capital in Central Europe, if not all of Europe.

However, the capital’s expansion is just the tip of the iceberg in Poland’s incredible economic transformation.

In the last thirty years, Poland can boast the highest levels of growth among Central and Eastern European countries since the fall of the Berlin Wall that make it the sixth largest economy in the European Union, on track to overtake Italy within a decade. According to a KPMG report, between 2009–2019, Poland experienced an average GDP growth of 3,6%, which prompted the Global Equity Index FTSE Russell to reclassify the country from the status of an emerging market to a developed one — an amazing feat that makes Poland the first Central and Eastern European country to earn such recognition.

In this article, I am going to further expand on Poland’s economic success and argue it is a country that holds the most promising economic prospects in Europe for years to come.

From Command to Free Market Economy

Dominik Andrzejczuk on Twitter: "In communist Poland, bread lines, hunger and poverty were the norm, all with a false sense of "equity."It's painful to see Western communists adorn this horrible ideology when this is what awaits them.How many times are we doomed to repeat history before we finally learn? pic.twitter.com/fdRzobJOz3 / Twitter"

In communist Poland, bread lines, hunger and poverty were the norm, all with a false sense of "equity."It's painful to see Western communists adorn this horrible ideology when this is what awaits them.How many times are we doomed to repeat history before we finally learn? pic.twitter.com/fdRzobJOz3

Few people realize the dire living conditions Poles had to endure before the fall of the communist bloc in 1989. Fruits of a centrally planned economy saw the introduction of a rationing policy in the 1980s that forced citizens to line up in hours-long queues to get basic products like bread, milk, or meat. Scarce selection was followed by even worse quality and the economy was on the brink of bankruptcy. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, the collapsing Polish economy went through a ‘shock therapy’ that saw an adoption of liberal economic policies outlined by the Washington Consensus agreement, allowing the country to enter the Western market and attract foreign investors. The effects were remarkable. Per Euronews, in less than thirty years, Poland’s GDP increased eightfold to $15,431 per capita. Consequently, the quality of life has also increased by more than 10% since the 1990s, raising the average life expectancy to 77 years.

Foreign Direct Investment

This incredible achievement is due to several factors. Just in terms of public foreign investment, Poland has received an overall of €208 billion from the EU between 2007–2020, laying the ground for the rapid development of different sectors of the economy such as real estate or construction. The growth has not gone unnoticed amidst international companies such as Goldman Sachs, IBM or Capgemini who decided to expand into the Eastern European market. In March of 2022, Google announced an additional $700M investment in its Warsaw based center, as well as $10 million to local organizations helping refugees from the war in Ukraine. This move by Google strongly signals their faith in the region regardless of the geopolitical stakes.

On top of that, Poland is not lacking behind when it comes to innovation. Video game development has become the country’s trademark thanks to the enormous success of CD Projekt, responsible for the design of world-renowned games such as The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077. Today, there are three hundred game developing companies in Poland and twenty of them are listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.

A Resilient Economy

Over the last thirteen years, the Polish economy has shown remarkable resilience to the financial crisis caused by the burst of the American housing bubble in 2008, and the still ongoing Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. When all of Europe was enduring a painful recession, notching considerable losses in 2009 and 2011, Poland enjoyed a growth of 1.6% and 4% respectively. In a comparable manner, the outburst of the pandemic took an even bigger toll on the global economy with countries like the UK reporting a devastating 9,5% loss. The Polish economy remains, as the World Bank report says, as one of the least affected by the pandemic, notching a first recession since 1991 of ‘only’ 2.7% in 2020, while the OECD global average was 5.5%. One of the main factors was undoubtedly the swift implementation of its own stimulus package. It prevented a sudden increase in unemployment levels and mitigated the scale of social and economic repercussions on the population by providing necessary liquidity and tax relief for small enterprises.

Poland has been ranked sixth among 23 rich countries in an index compiled by The Economist comparing how well economies have done during the pandemic.

Tech Expansion

Last but not least, Poland’s tech expansion is something that goes surprisingly unreported. The IT and ICT sector employs over 430 thousand people and the whole industry aggregates for 8% of the country’s GDP. As I mentioned in my video on leaving Palo Alto, Poland ranked fourth in the number of STEM graduates per 100,000 inhabitants. Moreover, Poland was listed among countries with top PISA scores responsible for estimating the average score in maths, science and reading among school students. Both factors will, without a doubt, reciprocate in a promising and skilled workforce that will help carry out the technological and digital transformation regarded as a stepping stone for becoming an advanced economy, a goal to which Poles have been working extremely hard.

The War in Ukraine

On February 24th, 2022, Russia launched a full scale invasion of Ukraine, which triggered one of the largest migrations the continent has ever seen. Since then, nearly 4 million border crossings from Ukraine to Poland have been recorded, at the time this article is being written. It has been nothing short of miraculous to see how this has unified Poland and our brothers and sisters in Ukraine.

The invasion subsequently mobilized Poles across the country to volunteer their time, money and living spaces to help the refugees in need. To date, some 1.2 Million refugees have applied for PESELs, Poland’s National Identification Number, signifying that a large portion of Ukranians intend on staying in the country. Like Poland, Ukraine’s population tends to be highly skilled in the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths), giving Poland’s already fast growing tech ecosystem more firepower.

To conclude, Poland is no more a hidden economic gem but a fully-fledged developed economy. The Polish transformation is as worthy of teaching in schools and universities as the Chilean miracle carried out by the Chicagoan school in the 1980s that saw the country go through a similar ‘shock therapy’. Throughout the past three decades, the country proved to be an invaluable outlet for many Western businesses and thanks to its amazing geographic location, it has the potential of becoming the necessary ligament between Eastern and Western Europe. This in turn will solidify European integration, crucial for competing with the economic powerhouses like the US and China.

I am very proud to be part of the process and invite you all to consider Poland as not only a potential investment, but a country on whose shoulders the future can be built on.

Since the outset of the war, I’ve been volunteering to help Ukrainians in the IT Sector return to some sense of normalcy. The Russian invasion has completely disrupted the Ukrainian Economy and one of the largest human migrations on the European continent is underway.

One of the other things thats hard to dismiss is the amount of virtue signaling that has come out of this conflict, most likely because virtue signals are getting a whole lot of traction on social media. Virtue signaling alone is a rather hollow endeavor, and if you as an individual or a company do not live up to your signals, eventually it will come to light.

I recently learned that the American Tech company, Alchemy, has fired its entire QA team without warning on March 14th. To add insult to injury, this happened after Alchemy made a public statement in support of Ukraine.

Alex Zaichenko, Former Head of Quality Assurance at Alchemy says on LinkedIn that the company fired “the entire QA (UA) team just in a day, without any warning and notice period and even simple ‘thank you for your service guys’ on March 14th.

Members of the team were promptly revoked of their access to work email and other productivity software. “The funny thing is that I was in a meeting with an Alchemy client when the account was deactivated and I was thrown out of the Myth: Real ‘support’ of Ukrainians” says Alex. The myth of course being the stark dichotomy between Alchemy’s virtue signaling and the reality on the ground.

Apparently Alchemy had made a post on LinkedIn about how grateful they were that Alex was their Head Of QA, but that post has since been deleted.

I have personally reached out to members of the Ukrainian Alchemy team, and they have confirmed that Alchemy did in fact pay them bonuses from the support their Twitter page annouced on March 8th but that is where the help stops.

Firing an entire team, during this time of extreme strife is a bit immoral and unethical. Especially when some members of the team suspect that the company hired an Offshore Indian Team Theecode Technologies to replace their team in Ukraine.

Since the beginning of the conflict, social media has been rife with virtue signals from the West. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with voicing your support on the topic, but actions like this run counter to your signals, Timothy Lee.

We will be working with the former QA Team from Alchemy to ensure that they get back on their feet and hit the ground running with new opportunities.

In the meantime, I would caution companies from the West to really make sure that their virtue signals align with their actions. Actions like this will only create more anxiety and more strife for those people this war affects.

TL;DR — A short history on how Silicon Valley and Israel become Tech Powerhouses and how Poland is following in their footsteps.

Silicon Valley is an interesting place. For some reason, most of the largest tech companies are all headquartered there. When you walk up and down University Ave in Palo Alto, it’s common to eavesdrop on conversations and hear things like, SQL databases and the hottest continuous integration tools. It’s also difficult to believe that less than 100 years ago, the Bay Area was nothing more than a collection of fruit orchards.

Why is that? What was the catalyst? What vectors had to be in a perfect alignment, in order for that ecosystem to get rolling? After all, Palo Alto was nothing more than a fruit orchard in the mid twentieth century. Sure the weather’s nice, but there are plenty of places in the US where the weather’s great. So why the Santa Clara Valley?

Let’s start with a short and brief history lesson. Leland Stanford founded Stanford University in 1885 in Palo Alto California. In 1909, Stanford University’s president David Starr Jordan invested $500 (or $15k in today’s money) in Lee DeForest’s audion tube, the first major high-tech venture-capital investment in the Valley. This sparked a culture of entrepreneurship for decades to come.

Then in 1956, William Shockley, one of the co-inventors of the silicon transistor, moved from Bell Labs in New Jersey, back to his hometown of Mountain View California, where he founded Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. His paranoid management style eventually drove eight young scientists to leave Shockley and found their own company, Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957.

One month after opening its doors in 1957, the USSR launched Sputnik and the Space Race was on. In 1961, JFK announced that the US was going to put a man on the moon, and in order to do so, the Apollo program had to figure out how to stick an astronomical amount of computing power, into a small, lightweight box. Luckily, Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor had designed the planar integrated circuit in 1959, and was looking for a customer. A perfect match.

For the next decade, the US Government was the primary customer of those chips, which ultimately blasted the tech ecosystem to the Moon (pun intended). Out of Fairchild, came the venture funds Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia, and the tech giants Intel, SanDisk, AMD and so on. Now we’ve got ourselves an ecosystem.

The US higher education infrastructure is also one that attracts top students from abroad. In 2019 the percentage of Foreign Born Individuals to US Born in the Silicon Valley was 39%. This disparity helped Silicon Valley fill high tech jobs by importing its workforce from abroad.

So in Summary, here are the vectors that proved to be enough to provide the spark that would ultimately catalyze The Silicon Valley:

1. A Culture of Entrepreneurship
2. A High Density of Highly Skilled Workers
3. A lot of Public Capital to catalyse a reaction
4. Large investments into high tech areas
5. Immigration

Israel

I’ll provide another example just to really drive my point home here. Let’s take Israel as an example. Here’s a country that is basically an island with no natural resources. Instead of water at your borders, you have other countries trying to take you off the face of the earth. So the Israeli’s had to get crafty; the only way they could provide for themselves, is by reinventing the way they defended themselves. The Israeli military therefore needed to act fast and innovate, just like a startup. That’s why their military is very flat hierarchically and is a meritocracy in its purest form. This was the basis for a strong culture of entrepreneurship. At one start-up for every 1,844 citizens, Israel has more fledgling businesses per capita than any other nation.

Many of those recruits later attend college; about 45% of Israelis are university educated, and of those, many take up some form of STEM education. In 2007, Israel had the highest concentration of engineers in the world and the most scientists per capita than any other developed country, according to the Industry Trade and Labor Ministry’s Chief Scientist’s Intellectual Capital Report. For every 10,000 employees, Israel boasts 140 scientists and technicians and 135 engineers.

To accelerate economic growth, Israel’s government and private investors put $250 million into a venture capital (VC) development agency called Yozma (which means “initiative”). Yozma provided new Venture Funds with 40% of their capitalization, with the other 60% coming from private investors. These VC Funds kept all the profits they generated from Yozma’s contribution, minus a few points of interest on the principle. This really propelled the local Israeli VC ecosystem to where it is today.

Intel opened it’s 2nd headquarters in Israel, where Israeli engineers invented a new chip design now used in Intel’s mobility chips. Israel’s mobility chip division now produces nearly half of Intel’s revenues. In 1998, Cisco opened an Israeli research and development center with 700 workers. As it grew, Cisco acquired nine Israeli start-ups. The center played a critical role in developing the advanced, $2-million CRS-1 web router. The company has invested $1.2 billion in Israeli high-tech start-ups.

Immigration, a key source of Israel’s entrepreneurial base, boosted the country’s population from 806,000 at its founding to 7.1 million. From 1990 to 2000, about 800,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union migrated to Israel. About one in three of these individuals was a scientist, technician or engineer.

In contrast, Dubai, to take one example, has tried to attract companies from several industries — internet, media, health care, biotech, manufacturing, knowledge — but the firms it has attracted open service facilities, not centers of innovation. So no matter how much money or tax incentives you throw at something, you just don’t have enough to get an ecosystem started, if you don’t have the 5 vectors i mentioned earlier.

So what about Poland?

Does Poland have enough of the vectors I mentioned to catalyze a technology ecosystem? Well, let’s take a look.

Polish Culture of Entrepreneurship

Ironically, Poland’s culture of entrepreneurship started in the days of the Polish People’s Republic. Due to a centrally planned economy and state enterprises failing to produce a wide variety of goods and services, communism created economies of shortage. Many basic goods that we take for granted today, were simply unavailable in Poland before 1990.

I remember a story my father once told me. His grandmother would spend several months making Kozuchy, along with the rest of the village. Then, in the summertime, the entire village would travel to Budapest by train, bribing border guards along the way so that they could bring their contraband across the borders. When they finally arrived in Budapest, they bartered Kozuchy for Electric Razors, US Dollars, and other items that weren’t available in Poland. This was also the first time in his life that my young father had seen an Orange. Regrettably, as their train was departing, he dropped it, and it fell onto tracks, having to wait several more years before he could actually bite into one.

And this isn’t just one anecdote to prove my point, the New York Times wrote an article about this back in 1975 titled: “Black Markets Bloom in Eastern Europe.”

The article mentions countless examples of Eastern Europeans bartering for Western Currencies and products. It goes to mention: “In some Communist capitals, the visitor can illegally earn $70 for a used and ragged pair of American blue jeans.”

If you were to ask any Pole, either they, their parents or grandparents could tell you some story of the Black Market of those days. Except these weren’t black markets selling drugs and uranium, they were selling socks and gasoline. Jerzy Kochanowski wrote a book about the Black Market of Poland during the PRL (Polish People’s Republic). His book outlines all of the countless examples of anecdotes from that era.

Poland’s High Density of Highly Skilled Workers

The heart of every tech ecosystem is its people, and in particular, it’s highly skilled workforce. I opened this discussion with the fact that a casual stroll down University Ave in Palo Alto is met with a variety of intense discussions around technology. So how does Poland stack up? I’ve taken these data directly from Eurostat and published it on this Google Sheet here for everyone to review.

In terms of absolute numbers, Poland ranks #4 in Europe in terms of most STEM graduates educated over the last 7 years. It’s important to note that Poland sits right behind the highly developed nations of France, Germany, and the UK.

In terms of STEM graduates per capita over the last 7 years:

We’re in the #9 Spot.

So there is ceratinly room for improvement, but the margins for climbing the ranks are relatively slim. In order to command a top 3 spot, we only need to increase this figure by a mere 12,5% from today’s numbers, for the next 7 years.

Now here’s a figure that I find really fascinating and arguably one of Poland’s secret superpowers: its women.

On a per capita basis, Poland is #1 in terms of Females in STEM.

And #4 in Total Female Graduates, narrowly behind Germany.

It’s Also #1 by a considerable margin in terms of Female to Male Ratio of graduates.

One of the Valley’s weaknesses is it’s lopsidedness in terms of female engineeers in tech companies. According to Triketora on Github, who analyzes engineers at a lot of small to large businesses in the Bay Area, the percentage of female engineers in the Valley stands at a paltry 19%, whereas in Poland, that number exceeds 30%, according to NoFluffJobs. Israel’s percentage stands at 29% as of 2018, just behind Poland. That’s more than 1.6X more female engineers

Therefore not only does Poland have a high density of highly skilled workers, it also gets brownie points for phenomenal gender diversity.

Public Funding

In Poland there are two major public institutions that are responsible for providing VCs and tech companies with grants and public funding, those are NCBiR (The National Centre for Research and Development) and PFR (The Polish Development Fund). PFR Ventures in this case is Poland’s Yozma, which directly serves the budding VC ecosystem, and NCBiR is an entity that provides grants to startup companies and VCs alike.

NCBiR has deployed around $7B US into the Polish Tech Ecosystem since 2016. Of that, 65% or $4.5B went directly into Startups or VC Funds in the form of non-refundable grants. PFR Ventures has deployed around $0.5B since 2017 and will deploy an additional $250 MM over the next couple of years. That’s over $5B in public investment into the ecosystem. Israel’s Yozma, again for comparison, invested $250 MM by 1996.

PFR Ventures alone will have invested 3 times more than Yozma, and combined with NCBiR, will have invested 20X more than Yozma.

Now, what will that do to the local ecosystem? Well let’s go back to my previous chart on how Yozma propelled the Israeli tech ecosystem, and let’s take a look at how we’re doing here in Poland.

Looks an awful lot lot like 1993–1995 to me.

Google, Microsoft, Intel — Large Investments Into High Tech Areas

In October of 2021, Google annouced it was building a $2 Billion Cloud Data Hub in Warsaw. Google announced that it will occupy 14 floors of the newest Warsaw Hub Skyscraper and will be the largest development center on the continent.

This comes about a year after Microsoft announced it was investing $1 Billion into a data center just outside the capital, and plans on training over 150,000 Polish professionals, educators and students in cloud based and digital competencies.

Intel is entertaining the idea of building brand new, state of the art semiconductor factories somewhere in the EU, estimated to be worth around €80 Billion. Poland is on the shortlist. This would be in addition to the Intel’s largest R&D center in the EU, employing over 3,000 employees in Gdansk.

Immigration

The conflict in Eastern Ukraine triggered one of the largest migrations in the history of the European continent. The total number of Ukrainians who migrated into Poland as of 2015 is somewhere between the 2 to 3 million mark, with immigration trends continuing their rise.

Immigrants are moving to Poland from the Caucuses, India, Belarus and Russia, currently making up around 5% of the population. As the economic situation continues to improve in Poland, we can expect that this will only further fuel immigration into the country.

Now there’s one secret super power that Poland has that really no other country in the world possesses. Poland has one of, if not the largest and most dispersed diaspora out of any country in the entire world. There are roughly 20 Million Individuals of direct Polish descent living abroad, with 10 Million in the United States and roughly 6 Million in Europe.

Imagine if over the next ten years, 10% of those Poles returned home. That’s 1.6 Million People or 4% of the current population. Combine this with the fact that Poland has all 5 of the vectors necessary to start an ecosystem. These individuals would bring soft skills like sales, business and access to markets, that would propel the Polish economy even further.

So, does Poland have enough? Indeed. But Poland also has the potential to become the largest tech ecosystem in the world, if it repatriates a substantial portion of its diaspora. Add that final ingredient to the other 5 vectors and Poland can become one of the largest tech ecosystems the world has ever seen.

Is Poland the Next Big Global Tech Hub? was originally published in Musings on Deep Tech, the Economy and Venture Capital. on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Quantum Data Center….Sounds very buzz-wordy, but it’s actually far more complicated than just plugging an ethernet chord into a Cryo Fridge.

How exactly do you take classical data, translate it into quantum instructions, send those instructions to a QPU and in less than a microsecond, receive back quantum information, translate it back into classical information, and then display it to the user, and do it with virtually no margin of error? (If that sounds really hard, that’s because it is.)

The process of converting classical data into quantum data is one of the most overlooked, if not one of the most important parts of the quantum stack. And by overlooked, I mean, something that investors are not focusing on enough. Sure, qubit quality is incredibly important, as is the Quantum Processing Unit, but by not focusing on the control hardware that controls said qubits, that’s like skipping over the transmission of a car and only focusing on the engine.

In order to build the world’s first Quantum Data Center, we must first analyze why control systems are such an important component.

Quantum Control Systems

Take a look at the image above…in the red box you have the quantum processor, QPU for short. And in the yellow box, you have an entire rack of classical modules. This Rack is the QPU’s control systems, and in many ways, is as important as the QPU itself. This monstrosity of a system, is what converts classical data into quantum data and vice versa. Without it, good luck plugging your quantum computer into an ethernet jack.

I wrote an article several weeks ago, talking about how noise and qubit quality affects overall quantum computing performance. One way to address a lot of that noise is actually through these control systems.

We need to develop new ASICs that are tailormade for sending and receiving quantum information more effectively and new control algorithms to further reduce instabilities in magnetic fields, external disturbances, laser noise, etc.

We also need this rack so the rest of your datacenter can actually talk to a quantum computer.

ARTIQ & SINARA — Open Source Control Platform

ARTIQ (Advanced Real-Time Infrastructure for Quantum physics) & SINARA are leading-edge control and data acquisition systems for quantum information experiments. Many laboratories around the world have adopted ARTIQ as their control system, with over a hundred Sinara hardware crates deployed. ARTIQ & SINARA are both open source projects, whose control systems primarily cater to the Ion Trap and Neutral Atom community. They are deployed within institutions such as Universität Innsbruck, University of Oxford, University of Maryland, NIST, MIT and many more.

Within the industry, Oxford Ionics, AQT, ColdQuanta and Atom Computing are among some of the users controlling their qubits with these control systems. This standardization of the control hardware, is similar to the standardization of Motherboards in classical computers decades ago. This kind of standardization is essential if large scale quantum computing is to be realized.

Quantum Computing Should be Plug and Play

With the control hardware slowly being standardized, all that is left is the software layer that defines the interface to the device. In essence, what is required is a “Docker Container” of sorts, that allows any user to plug into any Quantum Device on the ARTIQ SINARA platform. The Quantum Device can physically reside in the data center, or it can be remote. All the user needs to do is supply the IP address of the device, and viola, you have a Quantum Data Center at your finger tips.

Writing Quantum Applications Should be Intuitive

Users who wish to deploy algorithms on this machine should only be concerned about how well their algorithms are written, and not what parts of the algorithm are run on quantum vs. classical devices. Another massive challenge in today’s NISQ (Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum computing) era is that users utilizing quantum computers need to optimize their algorithms so that the instructions are properly distributed to the right hardware. This provides for a poor user experience and a high barrier to entry, even in Hybrid Quantum Classical Regimes. Writing and deploying quantum algorithms needs to be intuitive, so that user‘s can adopt it quicker.

In this entire stack, what is tantamount is that both hardware and software are meticulously orchestrated, such that any noise or errors are eradicated. This leaves a massive opportunity for the creation of intellectual property, both on the hardware and software side of things. The entire system itself, from QPU to the software interface, can then be delivered to any datacenter around the globe. Whether you’re AWS or a Quantitative Hedge Fund with its own bare metal, users will be able to quickly plug and play any quantum device from the ARTIQ SINARA ecosystem. Users will then be able to take advantage of intuitive Quantum Applications that are shipped with these appliances.

This is why it’s so important to start building a Quantum Data Center today. There are endless challenges that need to be solved but luckily, a lot of these are engineering challenges. I am therefore happy to announce that we are building one of the world’s first Quantum Data Centers, right here in Warsaw, Poland.

Together with Nvidia’s DGX Superpod, we will be building the data center of the future. The Superpod will allow us to simulate qubits, and run the classical parts of our applications on hardware that is optimized for it, all done in a sustainable, carbon-neutral way.

For the next 5–10 years, Quantum-Classical regimes will be the norm, and having state of the art classical hardware is paramount to providing the best possible developer experience. We will also need to run most of our quantum algorithms today on simulators, given that the majority of quantum devices are not yet ready for production. This is why the Nvidia DGX Superpod is an essential component to get to full scale commercial quantum computing.

The establishment of the Quantum Data Center will address almost every aspect of the quantum stack, starting with the QPU and moving all the way up to the User Interface. By working on all aspects of the stack, we will establish an ecosystem here in Warsaw and begin to break ground for what will eventually be known as The Quantum Valley.

The Quantum DataCenter — What it is and Why We’re Building It. was originally published in The Quantum Data Center on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Semiconductors have been at the forefront of the newscycle since the start of 2021. The supply chain had been disrupted to the point where automakers had to halt production. The CCP has been engaging in quite a bit of sabre rattling with Taiwan, who is the world’s only manufacturer of chips. And Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is taking a tour across Europe, to see what city will land his juicy $95 Billion Mega Fab.

Semiconductors today are far more valuable than oil. They are present in every facet of our lives today. They’re the lifeblood of the digital economy. Without them, I wouldn’t be able to write this article, and you wouldn’t be able to read it on the device you’re holding in your hands. Life as we know it would grind to a halt. We’d be catapulted back to 1950 overnight.

Geopolitical Reasons

There are some serious geopolitical considerations when it comes to semiconductors. The unfortunate reality that almost all the world’s chips are manufactured on a single island leaves everyone vulnerable. But this also means that the US has an even greater interest to defend Taiwan.

Given that Poland is just a few blocks down the street from it’s Russian neighbors, we’ve always had an uneasiness to Russia’s escapades in the Ukraine. Although this pales in comparison to the situation between the CCP and Taiwan, I still wouldn’t call it ideal. If Poland were a strategic supplier of semiconductors to the rest of the world, the rest of the world would have a greater incentive to defend her. Becoming the world’s second largest supplier of today’s most valuable resource, puts Poland in a very strong position on the global stage.

High Concentration of Electrical Engineers

In my previous article, Why I Left California for Poland, I outlined the high concentration of STEM graduates in the country. Intel has long capitalized on this trend given its presence in the three-city region of Gdansk. Gdansk has a high concentration of electrical engineers, working in the field of semiconductors. Just this year, Robert Bogdanowicz and Michał Sobaszek have published their work on synthetic semiconductor diamonds, carrying on the semiconductor culture at the University.

As a Venture Capitalist I’ve come across many hardware companies in the region. In Warsaw, Satellite company Creotech SA manufactures hardware modules for its nanosatellites and draws most of its talent from the Warsaw University of Technology. Also coming out of WUT is ChipCraft, a fabless System on a Chip maker, designing biomedical SoCs.

It seems as though Poland’s Prime Minister is ahead of the curve, and is already courting Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel. Beyond the obvious economic implications, Polish leaders must also consider the massive geopolitical currency they gain, by subsidizing such a project. That’s why all sides of the aisle must come together and ensure that Multinationals such as Intel, are provided with all the resources they need, in order to establish brand new fabs here in the country.

In addition to Intel, we should also be courting the likes of Nvidia (who recently purchased ARM — the chip inside every mobile device), Apple and QualComm. Let’s use a significant portion of Polski Ład (Polish COVID-19 recovery fund) to fund these projects and assure to our partners in the semiconductor industry that costs are the least of their concerns. This incredible investment would pay itself hundreds of times over into the future, by providing high-tech manufacturing jobs to the population and cementing itself as the Taiwan of the Western Hemisphere.

Why Poland Should Strive To Become The SemiCon Manufacturer of the West was originally published in Musings on Deep Tech, the Economy and Venture Capital. on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.