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It has been quiet at  GammaRebels headquarters ever since the Polish accelerator graduated the first batch of companies. But as we have learned, the accelerator has just finalised an agreement with Google for Entrepreners whereby it will leverage Google pool of advisors and mentors to support international and Polish startups out of its new location in Cracow.

Cracow already has a pretty active startup community I covered in my post just a couple of weeks ago. Now it might be able to raise its profile internationally. According to Wojtek Burkot, the head of engineering at Google in Cracow, Google aims to create a central meeting point for local tech startup comunity, and help Cracow emerge as an entrepreneurial hub.

Startups are offered to join the three-month long acceleration program to get mentorship and 12,000 Euro for 10 percent of the equity.

Now, I might challenge the International angle. If a startup team plans to leave their home country, why stop in Cracow instead of going all the way to Silicon Valley? In the end, there are the same stumbling blocs for Poland and the US alike: work permits, different culture, foreign language, but more importantly the barrier to enter the US market remains just as high as when the team was in its own country.

Perhaps it would make most sense for an American startup that wants to expand further East, but for that there are the teams like Springstar and soon I am sure there will be Morten Lund’s GoGlobal.

Here is what is happening with GammaRebels’ first batch. The cloud-based productity app integrator BusyFlow, originally from Lithuania, has been a runner-up at London Web Summit (whilst its competitor German Hojoki has been a runner-up at London LeWeb just this month). ARNav continues to work on its augmented reality navigation program, whilst eOffer Social provides support for small businesses with product offers on Facebook.

On the other side the website of Game Disrupt, the social gaming company no longer exists. QRCao redirects to mobile app development company Appvetica, which developed the original app. Appvetica has recently been featuring its new app at The Next Web (it turns iPhone into a remote for gaming consoles such as Wii). Social Identity website builder from India Reshmesh.com redirects to a webpage in Japanese, so I suppose the project has been dropped in its original form.

Yep, startups do fail, more of them fail than succeed, startup acceleration too is a risky business. Let’s see how the play with Google is going to turn out for GammaRebels and Cracow.

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