When I was approached by Toptal, a blue chip and highly successful outsourcing firm backed by top VCs to host a post from their blog, I speculated about how Kraków might look through the eyes of their community,

I know about Toptal from listening the the awesome Mixergy.com - a podcast by Andrew Warner where he does insightful interviews with successful entrepreneurs.. Toptal are a regular sponsor of his show. They provide top class developers to entrepreneurs, and solve the recruitment problem. From what I can tell Toptal  competes on quality rather than price.

So talented Toptal Developers and entrepreneurs, what can I tell you about Kraków Poland?  

It's more than the top outsourcing destination in Europe.

Many global companies have put RnD centres here. If you want to know about investment opportunities, and potential sources of clients, check Krakow Silicon Valley - Why not talk by Ramon Tancinco of Cisco , the OMGKRK portal and its group on Facebook Aspire and Open Coffee Krakow

Although Google for Entrepreneurs has moved a couple of hours north to Warsaw, T-Mobile's Hub.raum and other co-working centres lead a very dynamic Startup scene, and every startup needs a CTO and development team.

"We did not come here for cheap labour"  said Wojtek Burkot - when Head of Engineering at Google Krakow, "we came for Talent". With EY Entrepreneur of the Year competition winner, Codewise, Estimote - world leader in iBeacon tech, Brainly - a leader in social learning, and Base leader in Mobile CRM, Kraków is bursting with high profile startups. Azimo - valued in 2015 at US$100 million - is here too. Innovation Nest, led by Piotr Wilam - founder of Onet.pl Poland's Google/Yahoo hybrid supports the startup community

There area plenty of opportunities, plus Krakow is reckoned to be one of the top places in Europe to live - and visit for tourists which dynamic nightlight, numerous restaurants, lovely old town as well as the booming economy.

Come on over - Toptal visitors. If you are an entrepreneur - it's a serious place for business as well as a great place to live and work. If you are a freelance developer and want to be somewhere cool, relatively inexpensive and fun while working for global clients, Krakow is awesome from April-October. If you are looking for "cheap developers" it's the wrong city.
Krakow is great value for money, a good place to find clients, investors, business partners,people and technology, but not cheap.