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InPost’s Rafał Brzoska and David Foenkinos on reinvention

Tech LeadersMonday, November 2, 2026· 2 videos

Briefing

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InPost’s locker gamble paid off

Rafał Brzoska says InPost's defining strategic turn came in 2010, when it shifted from letters to parcels as digitization hollowed out traditional mail. The company chose automated parcel lockers to avoid the cost structure of home delivery and to differentiate itself from DHL, UPS, FedEx, DPD and GLS. Early uptake was minimal despite roughly €30 million in deployment, making the move a high-conviction bet rather than an incremental rollout. The result, in his telling, was the foundation of a logistics model that helped turn a domestic operator into a broader European contender.

Brzoska calls for EU 2.0

Brzoska argues that Poland's economic rise validates EU integration but also exposes the bloc's need for reform. He frames a more selective, faster European Union 2.0 as essential if Europe wants to stay competitive against larger, more agile rivals. The core message is not anti-European but pro-execution: fewer bottlenecks, more strategic focus, and clearer industrial priorities. For business leaders, the pitch is that scale alone is no longer enough if decision-making remains slow.

InPost beat monopoly with design

When InPost entered postal services in 2005, it confronted a legal monopoly protecting letters under 50 grams for the state-owned Polish Post. The workaround was strikingly literal: metal plates were added to envelopes so they exceeded the threshold. That product tweak survived a court challenge and became an emblem of regulatory arbitrage through design rather than lobbying. It also illustrated Brzoska's broader thesis that rigid rules often reward the boldest operators.

Brzoska rejected €12 million exit

Before InPost became a recognizable logistics name, Brzoska says he turned down a €12 million offer from a US fund in 2001. The decision came after he had already built a sizable leaflet-distribution business while studying economics in Kraków. By graduation, the company was delivering more than 1.5 billion leaflets annually across Poland. In retrospect, the refusal to sell early reads as a formative test of conviction over liquidity.

David Foenkinos traces late vocation

David Foenkinos, now 51, says literature arrived late and unexpectedly rather than through family inheritance or youthful obsession. He did not enjoy reading as a teenager and describes himself as distant from the literary world before a medical crisis changed his trajectory. Published at 26 after sending out a manuscript, he then spent years with a relatively modest readership. His breakthrough came later, proving a slow-build career can still produce mass appeal.

A 1991 illness changed everything

For Foenkinos, the decisive turning point was a severe heart illness at 16 in 1991, followed by months in hospital and intensive care. In that period, books became both refuge and propulsion, opening a path toward writing. He cites Kafka, Dostoevsky, Françoise Sagan, Romain Gary and Milan Kundera among the authors who marked him. The episode is presented less as biographical color than as the origin point of an artistic vocation shaped by fragility.

Foenkinos writes through insomnia

Foenkinos rejects the mythology of a fixed, orderly writing practice. He says he sleeps very little and treats insomnia as part of his creative machinery, sometimes writing in bursts of just 10 minutes. That irregular rhythm, he suggests, can outperform longer scheduled sessions at a desk. The implication is that literary productivity may come from intensity and instinct rather than discipline alone.

La Délicatesse crowned slow ascent

La Délicatesse stands as the work that moved Foenkinos from a relatively confidential author to a mass readership. Its success did not emerge from an overnight debut but from years of persistence after early publication at 26. That arc reinforces the broader theme linking his account: reinvention, delayed recognition and resilience after adversity. In business terms, it is a reminder that breakout moments often rest on long periods of under-the-radar accumulation.

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