Borys Musielak is an investor, engineer, and entrepreneur, currently managing SMOK Ventures, a US venture capital fund investing in early-stage software startups in Central & Eastern Europe. Borys’ entrepreneurial experience includes co-founding Filmaster, a startup for film fans to get personalized film recommendations which got acquired by Samba TV back in 2015. Borys is also very active on the Polish startup scene, where he’s a board member of the Startup Poland foundation and has co-founded ReaktorX, a remote-first startup acceleration program.

Borys talked to us about turning his passion for films into a successful startup that created a Netflix-like recommendation system. We discussed early Polish arthouse cinema and how Borys had grown the company from 2010 to its acquisition in 2015.

Borys also shared why he decided to start investing and become a VC, and talked about all the things he had pioneered in the Polish startup scene, including creating a first coworking space dedicated to startups, an accelerator program, and events that contributed to growing the Polish startup community.

We also discuss the evolution of the Polish and Eastern European startup scene, and why large enough domestic markets can be detrimental to the creation of innovative startups on a global scale. Borys also shares very interesting insights regarding the Polish and European VC scene and highlights the niches developing within the Polish startups.