Differentiating Criteria and Segmentation of Polish Startup Companies

The results presented in the article are the first Polish analysis of startups, which are considered as a source of innovation and which are gaining in importance in the country’s economy. In order for the country to efficiently support this group, more insight into the most important features characterising it, for instance location, used legal forms, employment and its forms, sources of financing and other resources, propensity to export or sources of innovation must be gained. Thus, the conducted study was aimed at identifying and characterising the population of economic entities considered as Polish startups according to applied criteria. In order to do so, a database of those entities was created, an original research questionnaire was prepared and a nationwide survey was conducted in collaboration with the Startup Poland foundation. Subsequently, a segmentation analysis was performed in order to isolate conspicuous classification groups and to identify important features in each group. The presented research results constitute the beginning of regular analyses in that scope.