Make Your Mark Blog

i met a really interesting young entrepreneur from poland today called jaroslaw kotowski, but he thankfully let me call him jerry. 

he recently started up a company called geomedika, a ‘medical tourism’ company that offers full service polish medical treatment services to international clients - without the long waits and high fees.  they offer treatment in general surgery, orthopaedic surgery, plastic surgery and dentistry.  (i hate to mention it but do you remember the episode on coronation street when that crusty-but-fabulous blanche went to poland for a hip replacement?  jerry’s company facilitates trips like that.)  

anyhow, we met to discuss ways he can promote the business here and also to explore how the youth forum of lewiatan (the polish confederation of private employers) can develop a polish-uk young entrepreneurs network as part of global entrepreneurship week.  this network, he said, would be particularly beneficial to him and others like him and it’s something i’ll definitely be working on and thinking about for other countries.    

at 19, just months after graduating and poland joining the eu, jerry moved to london to gain some international experience.  he landed a job at harrods (the day before he was about to pack off home), worked there for a bit, made some money, and then returned home to continue his studies and set up his business.

but in poland, he explained, it’s a lot harder to start a business than it is in the uk.  jerry cited bureaucracy as one barrier (e.g. it took him an exhausting 45 days to register his company as a general partnership and this was generally due to inefficient public services) and the expense of owning a business as another (e.g. it costs roughly $400 US a month to pay insurance for one employee, 40% of the average wage). 

in spite of these obstacles, jerry is an entrepreneur.  for him, entrepreneurship makes perfect sense:  it offers more professional development opportunity than a job at a large corporate, it allows him to express his individuality, he has a lot more fun and can, hey, make a profit, too! 

over and out

chris spavin 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 7:37 pm and is filed under Entrepreneurship, Global. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.