Beyond the Outsourcing Stereotype: Krakow’s Software Houses

You’ll find inspiration and realize that your ship hasn’t yet sailed.

Just watch, learn and apply the knowledge to your own business.

Krakow's Software Houses

With the rise of new technologies: robotics, artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain, the outsourcing industry has been shaken at the core.

Big industry leaders are lining up to face the speed and scale of digital transformation.

In Krakow, the digital revolution is at its peak.

Our quest now is to analyze some of the finest game-changers of this revolution.

Lots of software houses thrive in Krakow, from multinationals to local companies.

But, because we are Inbound evangelists, we’ve picked for our research successful companies that leverage content strategy in their marketing stack.

Come out, come out wherever you are: the content marketing, the social media strategies, the branding efforts!

Everything will come to light in the following blog articles. So, stay tuned for more!

But first, let's dig a bit into the Krakow IT success story.

Krakow’s IT Environment

First things first.

Let’s see which are Krakow’s assets in the IT outsourcing market:

• Income tax exemptions: the amount of tax exemption varies according to the value of the investment, its location and the size of the company
• The largest Polish market for BPO, R&D and IT, considering players employing at least 1000 persons

• Top cities of the future: Krakow ranks 9 in FDI’s report European Cities and Regions of the Future 2018/19. FDI is a service developed by the Financial Times, providing industry-leading insight and analysis, mostly investment-related.

• Business-friendliness - Krakow ranks second in FDI’s report European Cities and Regions of the Future 2018/19

• Krakow ranks 6th in Tholon’s Services Globalization Index. The index analyses the performance of a city based on talent skills, business catalyst, cost, quality of life, digital and innovation

• Local talent pool: the second-highest talent pool in Poland according to McKinsey's report "Poland 2025: Europe’s new growth engine"
• High-quality university education. In the QS EECA University Rankings 2018, the Jagiellonian University came in 14th among 200 of the best universities in Emerging Europe and Central Asia region

• Krakow Technology Park: one of the most innovative R&D centers of its kind. It provides an industrial base for Krakow’s 15 higher education institutions and over 140 research centers. By 2017 the Krakow Technology Park managed to sign up 250 ventures which created 14,700 jobs.
• Incubators and accelerators that bring together startups, mentors and investors: Hub:raum by Deutsche Telekom, KPT Scale Up
• Important tech conferences are held in Krakow:

1. ACE! largest regional conference in Central Europe for building software
2. Digital Dragons, the leading game industry event in Europe
3. Cloud Developer Days
4. Devoxx, a developer community event
5. 100+ tech meetup groups, with more than 100 members

Now that we've got the Krakow IT story covered, we can move on to our software houses.

Codete - IT consulting and software development for digital business

Website: https://codete.com/

No. employees: 120+

Technologies: Java, Scala, AI, Blockchain

Services: DevOps, cloud computing, blockchain, big data, quality assurance, data security

Verticals: e-commerce and retail, travel, health, advertising, automotive, logistics, media, entertainment, fintech, crypto

Key clients: Leonardo Hotels, BMW, Home24.de, Wells Fargo, Total Fyber, KIA Motors, Probooking, Prosieben, Deloitte, Cisco

Offices: Krakow, Lublin, Berlin (HQ)

Managing Director: Artur Olechowski

Based in Berlin, but with Polish roots, it’s no wonder that Codete has among its clients, lots of German companies.

While many software houses in Poland go for North-American, Canadian, Scandinavian contracts, Codete doesn’t shy away from other markets.

With a portfolio with world-renowned clients, a continuously growing website traffic and being the host of a plethora of tech events, Codete can be an inspiration for every Polish software house.

Sharing IT knowledge is at the core of Codete’s existence: from CodeteCON, the tech conference, to meetups and workshop hosting, Codete understands how leadership is born.

It’s all about building trust and a thriving community around you, educating the stakeholders.

But, if you want to find out more, you’ll have to keep an eye on our next blog post.

Miquido - Building AI-powered digital products supported by data science

Website: https://www.miquido.com/

No. employees: 150+

Technologies: Java, Angular, Flutter, Swift, Kotlin, React Native, Angular, Golang, AWS, Kubernetes, Azure, Machine Learning

Services: software development, quality assurance, UX/UI wireframing, product design

Verticals: business, fintech, consumer goods, tourism, healthcare, social media

Key clients: Skyscanner, TUI, Aviva, Nestle, Herbalife, Santander

Offices: Krakow (HQ), London, Berlin

Reviews: 4.7 - Clutch (14 reviews)

CEO: Krzysztof Kogutkiewicz

One of the youngest companies we’ve analyzed so far, Miquido has been on the market since 2011 and has delivered 90+ apps. And to name just a few of their clients: Skyscanner, TUI, Nestle...

Awarded by Deloitte in 2016 in its Top 50 Fast Technology in CEE (2016 edition), Miquido has an inspirational growth story.

To know their story you’ll have to follow us in our next blog post, where we’ll tackle how Miquido does its inbound marketing, how it builds brand awareness and its social media presence.

Railsware - Great Products, Great Code

Website: https://railsware.com/

No. employees: 60+

Technologies: Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Angular

Services: mobile development, web development, AI and machine learning services

Verticals: business, fintech, finance

Key clients: Sendgrid, Calendly, Brightbytes, Quorso, Google

Offices: Krakow (HQ), Kiew, New York, Dubai

Reviews: 4.9 - Clutch (10 reviews), 4.9 - Glassdoor (11 reviews)

CEO: Yaroslav Lazor

12 years, projects for 60+ organizations, in 12 countries, collaborations with big names such as SendGrid, Google and Calendly - meet Railsware.

Nominated by The Manifest as a top player in Ruby on Rails development, Railsware is a software house with an inspiring growth story.

To know their story you’ll have to follow us in our next blog post, where we’ll tackle how Railsware does its inbound marketing, how it builds brand awareness and its social media presence.

Wrap up

This was just a glimpse of our 4 blog post series on the thriving Krakow IT outsourcing market.

This is part of a bigger playground, a playground where the rivalry between software houses in Poznan, Warsaw, Wroclaw, and Krakow gives birth to innovation and a strong tech community. It’s a rivalry that is shaping cities and mentalities.

But, before getting to the core of the subject, let me give you some spoiler alerts from my research. In short, these are some of my findings:

1. On the long-term, trying to find new business models from developing one’s own product, might be the best choice. Simply put, outsourcing does not scale. Companies such as Railsware (see Mailtrap) try to move the outsourcing stereotype having more like a SaaS approach. This comes natural, when you have 5+ years history of product development, right?
2. The power of open-source: you can open up to a whole new audience. Railsware seems to be good at it.
3. Embrace other types of management. Railsware just went for holacracy, a structure where every employee is involved in the decision-making process
4. Be all-in for events: from hackathons (the case for Miquido), meetups and workshops (Codete), conferences (Miquido is organizing Mobiconf), be where your stakeholders are: future employees and clients. Don’t forget that real-life connections are really valuable.
5. Scarce talent pool? Go abroad and hire. As projects come pouring in, why not? (Codete is offering relocation packages for developers from Ukraine)
6. Employer branding - take it to a whole new level when the competition is fierce. Hire an employer branding specialist if need be, like in the Miquido case.

Are you hooked already?

You can find out more software houses stories about it in our ebook: The Growth Marketing Secrets of Top European Software Houses - Poland Edition 2019