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Growing together

Where you work influences how you work – and we are here to prove this to be true. The Black Pearls VC offices are located at an extraordinary venue: Olivia Business Centre in Gdańsk is a thrilling conglomerate of startups, large corporations and science people. All that accommodated in a setting of contemporary architecture. Oh, how we love such combinations!

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We have been linked with this special part of the city since the very beginning. Just a few years ago, the vicinity of the University of Gdańsk was nothing but a patch of undeveloped land. But thanks to the effort of Maciej Grabski, President of Olivia Business Centre, this is now a dynamically growing business neighbourhood. This new district is going to be crowned with a 150-metre Olivia Star, the most cutting-edge high-rise building in this part of Poland. The foundation stone for this project was laid on 30th June.

Our favourite spot in the area is the O4 space. It stretches over three storeys of Olivia Four building. The ground floor houses a multimedia conference centre, and two other floors are occupied by offices, social facilities and co-working space. The place is teeming with energy and creativity. Many startups choose it for their place of business, this is where they meet each other and their corporate partners. If you add to this mix the proximity of the University of Gdańsk, where many of our current (and future) partners come from, and project Olivia Campus, which helps students from Gdańsk universities begin their professional life, there is little doubt why we too chose O4 to be the Black Pearls VC location. To be at the heart of it all.

For a venture capitalist like us, the everyday nearness of startups can be the best possible occasion to understand their needs and characteristics. Moreover, the fact that we neighbour strong firms and entrepreneurs allows us to tap into their knowledge and experience, thus create better ways of getting through to investors. A good illustration of that is our close cooperation with Maciej Grabski himself, who takes up the role of a business angel in some Black Pearls VC projects.