An Interview With Anna Walkowska: From Business Opportunity to Community in Saudi Arabia

Anna Walkowska grew up in Chojnice, a small city in northern Poland, in a country fighting its way from a closed communist system toward something new. Her father was a construction entrepreneur. Her first computer was an Atari bought at Pewex, one of the only stores back in communist Poland where you could purchase goods with foreign currency. She spent 25 years building technology companies in Warsaw and helping construct that city's startup ecosystem. She watched Poland transform from scarcity to strength within a single generation.

Then Saudi Arabia found her.

Today Anna is Co-founder and General Manager of ProperGate Saudi Arabia, a construction technology company whose platform is deployed on major projects across the Kingdom.

Aside from her accomplishments that would make any parent proud -mashallah- Anna is genuinely one of the nicest people I've met in this industry. We've had many fun conversations, but with this interview I wanted to learn more about Anna while exploring magazine-like format. So ladies and gentlemen, I present The origin story of Anna in a magazine-like format.

Saudi Venture Hub's Creative Copywriter; and the writer of this article, Ahmed Albatati sat down with Anna to understand what that decision looked like from the inside — what Saudi Arabia taught her that 25 years of European company-building had not, and what she would say to the European founders still watching from a distance.

Before the interview, it is worth understanding the concept at the heart of this article, so I'd like to drop some Saudi game on a concept that revolves around respect, manners, unity and honor. (Dramatic, I know. But life is pretty dramatic.) because it explains something about Saudi Arabia that no market entry report will tell you.

The diwaniya — also known as the majlis, meaning "a place of sitting," or the mulhaq, the separate receiving space attached to a Saudi home — is one of the oldest and most important institutions in Arabian social life. In its traditional form, it is a dedicated room or structure where a host receives guests: family, friends, neighbours, colleagues, anyone who comes. The door is open. Coffee and dates are served. Conversation flows without agenda or deadline.

The majlis is not a meeting room with comfortable chairs. It is a fundamentally different concept. In a meeting room, you arrive with a purpose, you conduct business, you leave. In a majlis, you arrive as a person. You are seen, heard, and assessed not for what you are selling but for who you are. Whether you listen as well as you speak. Whether you are comfortable with silence. Whether you show genuine curiosity about the people around you or merely perform it. Whether you come back.

The mulhaq takes this further. It is physically separate from the main home, a space designed specifically for receiving guests who are not yet close enough to be welcomed into the family's private world, but who are being considered for that deeper relationship. It is the architecture of trust-building made literal: a dedicated space for the process of becoming someone worth knowing.

For a European businessperson, this architecture can feel unfamiliar and even inefficient. Nothing is being decided. No agenda is being advanced. But that is precisely the point. The decisions that matter in Saudi business are made between people who trust each other, and trust is built in the majlis, across many visits, over time, before it is ever called upon in a commercial context.

European companies that bypass this process — that arrive with a deck, schedule a meeting, and expect to close — are not just being culturally insensitive. They are misunderstanding the sequence. The pitch is not the beginning of the relationship. It is something that happens after the relationship already exists. Companies that get this right build positions in Saudi Arabia that are almost impossible to displace. Companies that do not spend years wondering why a market this large keeps producing so little return.

Anna Walkowska got it right. Here is how she describes what that looked like from the inside.

AB: Let's start from the beginning. Where do you come from, and how did that shape who you are today?

AW: I was born in Chojnice, a small city in northern Poland. I grew up in a country that was fighting for its own transformation, from a closed communist system toward democracy, economic freedom, and a place in the modern world. That context shaped everything about how I think. From a very young age, I had an enormous appetite for growth, for knowledge, for building things that matter. Poland was changing, and I wanted to be part of that change.

Two passions were planted in me very early, and both came from my father. He worked in construction his whole life, and in 1986, when I was seven years old, he became an entrepreneur. That same year, something else appeared in our home: an Atari 65XE computer, bought at Pewex. That Atari became my best friend for years. Later came an Amiga, and with it a growing fascination with technology, with logic, with the idea that you could build solutions to problems through code and creativity.

Looking back, I think I inherited my love of construction from my father. I sometimes joke that concrete runs through my veins instead of blood. And from that Atari bought in Pewex, a passion for technology took root that has never left me. Construction and technology: two inheritances that eventually became one company.

I moved to Warsaw, studied, built my career, and watched my country transform into something extraordinary. Today Poland is the tiger of Europe, a G20 economy, a global hub for technology talent, a country that went from scarcity to strength within a single generation. I am one of those people who grew up hungry for development and never lost that hunger. I think that's what drives everything I do.

AB: You spent 25 years building technology companies and Warsaw's startup ecosystem. What did that journey teach you?

AW: It taught me that knowledge is only valuable when you share it. I built three technology companies, in hosting, in PropTech, and now in ConTech, and alongside that I helped build Warsaw's startup community through organisations like Reaktor Warsaw, Startup Poland Foundation, and Startup Grind Warsaw. I believed deeply that if we connected the right people, shared knowledge openly, and created the right conditions for entrepreneurs to grow, Poland could punch far above its weight globally.

And it happened. Polish engineers, Polish entrepreneurs, Polish technology — today it's recognised worldwide. I'm proud to have been part of that. But I also realised something: the knowledge we built, the methodologies, the systems, the way of thinking about technology and process — it doesn't belong only to Poland. It belongs to whoever is ready to use it to solve real problems.

AB: So what brought you to Saudi Arabia specifically?

AW: Saudi Arabia found me at exactly the right moment. ProperGate had already been deployed across major European construction projects, with all major Tier One contractors working across EMEA, and we had proven that our approach to construction logistics works at scale. But I kept looking at the scale of what Saudi Arabia is building and thinking: this is where this knowledge is needed most.

The numbers are staggering. Trillion-dollar capital investments. Mega-projects that are genuinely unprecedented in human history, cities being built from scratch, stadiums, entertainment districts, cultural landmarks. The construction ambition here is unlike anything else in the world right now. And where there is massive construction ambition, there is massive need for smart, efficient, digitalized logistics.

But beyond the numbers, what struck me was the intention. Saudi Arabia has a vision, Vision 2030, and the leadership is fully committed to making it real. When I went through the CODE GATE programme, supported by the Ministry of Telecommunication and IT, I experienced something I hadn't expected: genuine, top-down support for innovation. The government isn't creating obstacles for entrepreneurs. It's removing them. It's building the platform for companies like ProperGate to come here, to contribute, to grow.

In Poland, fifteen years ago, I spent years convincing people to believe in startups. Here, that belief already exists. My job is simply to execute.

AB: What exactly is the problem ProperGate solves on these construction projects?

AW: At its core, it's a waste problem. Waste of time, waste of materials, waste of resources — visible every day on every major construction site. A concrete mixer arrives and there's no crane or pump available, no inspector on site, no access confirmation at the gate, and you either wait or reject the load. Prefabricated elements come in the wrong sequence and the crew stands idle. Reinforcement steel arrives two days early and blocks the laydown space needed for something else. A driver reaches his assigned gate to find it closed. The scale of loss is enormous, and it compounds every single day.

What makes it worse is that most people on site have simply stopped seeing it as a problem. The waiting, the rerouting, the idle crews — it's become the background noise of construction. Accepted. Expected. Normal. But normalised waste is still waste.

The root causes are less visible: a lack of forward planning, the absence of a holistic view across the project, and fragmented communication. Most construction projects have a Construction Logistics Plan, but it lives in a PDF that nobody reads, a document shared once and forgotten before the concrete is even poured.

ProperGate addresses all three root causes in a single system. Together with the project's logistics director, we build a detailed Construction Logistics Plan that lives inside the platform itself, where it is executed, monitored, and optimised every day. Every stakeholder, the contractor, the supplier, the driver, the security guard, the crane operator, the project manager, works from the same living logistics plan, with a shared real-time picture of what is happening and what is coming.

We also built AI Meeting Intelligence into the heart of ProperGate. It records, transcribes, and analyses every coordination meeting using AI models that understand each language. The system automatically identifies action items, assigns them to the right people, flags unresolved contractual and financial issues, and generates personalised summaries for each stakeholder based on what they actually need to know. The project manager sees something different from the site supervisor. Everyone gets exactly the information relevant to them.

Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 is ambitious, and it is absolutely achievable. But it will be built project by project, team by team, decision by decision. That is exactly what ProperGate is here to support.

AB: What have you learned from the people you've met here that has changed how you approach your work?

AW: Patience. And humility.

I have ADHD, so my mind moves fast, always has. I want to share everything I know immediately, solve every problem at once, and move at maximum speed. But working here has taught me that real, lasting change doesn't happen that way. The people I've met, project managers, logistics coordinators, site supervisors, they want better solutions, but they need to understand them on their own terms, at their own pace, in their own language.

That insight has shaped how I'm building ProperGate's presence here. Our interface needs to work in Arabic, in Hindi, in whatever language the person using it speaks. I'm thinking about partnering with universities to teach construction logistics management to the next generation of Saudi professionals, meeting students where they are, in an environment where they're open and ready to learn.

The lesson is: success isn't about how advanced your technology is or how fast you can deploy it. It's about genuine partnership. Earning trust, speaking the right language, literally and figuratively, and being patient enough to let real change take root. That's something I've learned here, and it's made me a better builder.

AB: You've described feeling like you truly belong here. Can you explain that?

AW: It's hard to explain rationally, but I'll try.

When I'm here, whether I'm in a meeting in Riyadh, walking through a construction site, or standing in the desert or the mountains, I feel an energy that I don't feel anywhere else. It's something in the land, in the light, in the air. I sometimes joke that maybe my ancestors were from here, because the feeling of belonging is that strong.

But more than the physical environment, it's the people. I have been so fortunate to meet extraordinary human beings here, Saudis, Jordanians, Egyptians, Polish, Lebanese, people from Cyprus, Bahrain, Morocco, Portugal, Canada and the UK, who are open, generous, collaborative, and genuinely supportive in a way that fills me with energy. There's a warmth and a peacefulness here, alongside an incredible drive and ambition. For someone like me, who runs on emotion and energy, this environment is extraordinary.

I came here for a business opportunity. I stayed because I found a community.

AB: What would you say to other European entrepreneurs who are considering expanding to Saudi Arabia?

AW: Come. Come with humility, come with curiosity, come ready to listen and learn as much as you share. Saudi Arabia is not just a market. It's a movement. A country consciously transforming itself, investing in its own future, and welcoming partners who want to be part of that story.

The knowledge we've built in Europe over decades, in technology, in construction, in logistics, in digitalization, is enormously valuable here. But it only becomes valuable when we bring it with respect, with patience, and with genuine commitment to the people and the vision of this country.

I came here as a girl from Chojnice who grew up hungry for change. I found a country that shares exactly that hunger. That's not a coincidence. That's alignment.

Saudi Venture Hub is based in Riyadh. We work with European companies navigating Saudi market entry, from legal structure and compliance to the relationships and presence that turn a licence into a business. If you want to understand what genuine commitment to this market looks like in practice, we are available for that conversation.