Przygody Przedsiębiorców · Przygody Przedsiębiorców

Dlaczego startupy uciekają do USA? Brutalna prawda | Patrycja Brzozowska

·1 hr 1 min·4 clips

Patrycja admits years of psychotherapy revealed her drive was built on narcissistic wounds, but her internal dialogue is now rooted in genuine self-awareness rather than facade.

1. Przygody Przedsiębiorców interviews Patrycja Brzozowska, co-founder of MOS, a preventive health startup building an AI-personalised supplement and wellness benefit platform for the US corporate market. 2. Patrycja is a founder based in San Francisco who previously built and sold WellBe, a mental health employee benefit, to Benefit Systems; her investors in MOS include VC firms Mowens and Smok and angels Ania and Tomek Karwatka. 3. The episode's core question is why ambitious Polish founders are building for the US market rather than Poland, and whether AI will render employee benefits irrelevant by eliminating most workers. 4. MOS delivers personalised health recommendations and supplement subscriptions sold to companies as an employee benefit, distinguishing itself from generic wellness apps by integrating with users' actual life context — work hours, family load — rather than issuing blanket advice like 'do 10,000 steps.' 5. The platform's clinical director is Oliver Zollman, who built the Blueprint protocol with Bryan Johnson as his first physician; the team also includes Stanford-affiliated behaviour psychology researchers. 6. Patrycja closed a pre-seed round with Mowens, Smok, and several angels including Ania and Tomek Karwatka, and relocated to San Francisco with her partner and dog. 7. On AI eliminating jobs, Patrycja argues firms will shrink headcount but compete intensely for the remaining top talent — humanistic skills, people management, and AI implementation expertise — making benefits more rather than less important. 8. She describes a large Polish publicly listed transport company that received an AI upgrade offer but still writes everything on paper, illustrating the uneven adoption landscape Polish startups navigate. 9. The main reason for choosing the US over Poland is that Bay Area concentrates the world's highest density of health-conscious early adopters and companies with large wellness budgets — two conditions absent in Poland at the same scale. 10. Patrycja says Poland's HR benefit market is specifically innovation-resistant, and cites the WellBe experience: it was unsellable in Poland's B2B2C mental health format until Lyra and Ginger had normalised the model in the US first. 11. Polish VCs invested partly because the US market size creates a mathematically larger exit multiple — Patrycja acknowledges that relocating to San Francisco was a factor in securing local VC support. 12. Ania Karwatka challenged Patrycja in their pitch meeting with a 'Black Mirror' scenario: that employers could use the health platform as covert performance surveillance rather than genuine employee support. 13. Patrycja responded that she controls the narrative and would decline revenue from clients she believed intended to weaponise the data, while acknowledging the concern appears in real sales conversations. 14. The host poses a harder question: in a future of top-talent scarcity, will employers require workers to maintain health standards — as Premier League clubs implicitly do — as a condition of employment? 15. Patrycja draws the employer limit at creating opportunity, not imposing mandates, arguing that the wellness industry's perfectionism narrative is itself psychologically harmful and that research on longevity shows missing social occasions is worse than drinking a glass of wine. 16. On whether unhealthy lifestyle choices should incur higher taxes or ZUS contributions, Patrycja declines to answer directly and redirects to the individual's right to make informed choices, including conscious indulgences. 17. When asked what excites her most about MOS, Patrycja says she is personally tired of the optimisation culture of biohacking and wanted to build something that encourages small sustainable steps rather than perfectionist routines. 18. The conversation shifts to Patrycja's self-disclosure: she describes years of psychotherapy, acknowledges her early drive came from narcissistic wounds, and says her internal critic — the fraud syndrome voice asking 'why you?' — is the daily companion of every high achiever. 19. Founders who are dissatisfied with conventional career paths and interested in the psychology of high-achieving women building international startups will find the second half of this episode particularly compelling. 20. Listeners expecting a how-to guide for starting a health company or a startup metrics breakdown will find the episode too philosophical and anecdote-heavy for practical extraction.

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