Slava Mirowski - Swiss EP EiR Adapting and Striving to create value
Read more about Slava’s profile, his work with great startups in Vietnam and how he pivoted from planned in-country support to remote.
Slava Mirowski has gathered a commanding amount of experience in product development by working with multinational startups, corporations and from extensive freelancing worldwide. For a value-driven and determined young professional such as Slava the world is a vast pool of opportunities.
Meeting “The One” - When Slava became aware of the Swiss EP Entrepreneur-in-Residence program, he saw it as a timely opportunity to share his expertise, but also to explore a new, promising country.
Getting Off to a Tough Start - On March 14th, a week prior to his scheduled arrival to Vietnam, Slava was travelling through Russia when he heard the disappointing news: his visa to Vietnam was suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Undeterred, Slava returned to Poland and, with the support of SwissEP Vietnam immediately transitioned all his planned coaching and mentoring activities online. Within the Vietnam ecosystem, Mirowski went to work with two accelerators, SHTP - Incubation Center in Ho Chi Minh city and ThinkZone in Hanoi. Slava’s job was to support startups in his role of Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EiR), focusing especially on helping teams apply a more agile product development methodology. The process was intense with multiple webinars and two mentoring sessions per week with three startups, TepBac, iSalon, and HouseCare.
“I was very impressed with Slava’s work because he did a very thorough job. He would really analyze their [startups] businesses in a holistic way, look at a bigger picture and advise and guide in a very structured manner.” said Catalina Catana, Head of ThinkZone’s Accelerator Program
Thriving on Challenges - Communicating virtually had its challenges, not to mention some language differences, but this didn’t stop the work
“I don’t consider cultural differences or small language barriers as difficulties”
Slava shared with us. For him, it’s the essential work anyone should go through when entering a new market.
“I just became more descriptive using collaborative tools and this worked out pretty well for us.”
Ms. Loan, CEO of TepBac, certainly agrees: “Every exercise gives me the opportunity to look back, track the statistics, take notes on past things; it helps me understand my product and my market. Our Farmext app has doubled the number of users during the 3 months of social distancing and border lockdown. The exercise we did builds up a well-rounded business profile for me to present the business with strong conviction.”
With the virtual approach, Slava’s workshops were no longer limited to a certain number of people. Going digital not only helped reduce the resources required for each event, but also allowed him to reach and benefit many more startups and organizations in need. Every hardship became a learning or, even, an opportunity to thrive.
With a new normal comes a new set of challenges, and Swiss EP, our EIRs, partners and startups are rising to the occasion to continue delivering value to our stakeholders, customers, and partners.
I want to thank Slava. I think any startup needs a mentor as soon as possible. For a startup, mentoring is more valuable than money.
Ms. Loan CEO of TepBac