Jakub Konečný (Bridgewater): I’ll happily sacrifice the brand, but never the culture

In this episode of the CEO na ostří nože podcast, we talk to Jakub Konečný, founder of the IT staffing agency Bridgewater. In less than four years, he built it into one of the most stable IT outsourcing companies on the Czech market, and in 2021 he sold three quarters of it to the Slovak company Titans. Today he runs its Czech branch.

He founded his own company because in previous jobs he saw people who weren’t happy at work, and as a manager he couldn’t change the culture. “The fish rots from the head,” he says. So he built Bridgewater on values he believes in: openness, constructive feedback, authenticity and teamwork. The start was tough. A business plan he had cautiously halved still missed its targets, and after two years the company was close to bankruptcy.

Values, Konečný says, show most in a crisis. The company always shared its P&L with employees, even when it was losing money. When there wasn’t enough cash for salaries during Covid, he stood in front of the team and said so plainly. More than 70% of people then voluntarily cut their pay for six months so the company could survive. For him, authenticity means nobody has to put on a mask at work and everyone can be the same as they are with friends. Feedback is given straight away and without sugar-coating, whether it’s about a mistake or praise.

Culture, he says, can’t be kept without consequences. The company hires for values, not for skills that can be learned. Several times it had to part ways even with top salespeople who brought in the highest margins but were toxic for the team and put their own success above the team’s. “The team always matters more than any individual,” he says.

Bridgewater received several acquisition offers. Konečný turned them down because he feared that a big industry player would cost the company its values. With Titans, he says, it was “love at first sight”: they shared the same views on expansion, fairness and how to treat people. After a year of getting to know each other, Titans, with the help of a fund, bought out the original investor’s stake. Konečný gave up the Bridgewater brand himself; nobody forced him. For growth into other countries, one strong brand makes sense, and the founder’s ego has to step aside. But he wouldn’t sacrifice the culture. If Titans had wanted to hide the numbers from people and impose processes that didn’t fit, he wouldn’t have done the deal. Merging systems, CRM or back office makes sense, he says. But culture and rituals are sometimes better left local. The Czech team is more agile and isn’t afraid of mistakes; the Slovak team analyses more and decides more slowly, and both approaches can be right.

What else will you learn in the podcast?

• Why he couldn’t change the culture at a company he didn’t own

• How openness helped the company survive Covid

• Why you should part ways even with your best salesperson if they’re toxic for the team

• How to choose a strategic partner that won’t threaten your culture

• Why it isn’t always wise to merge cultures in a merger

• Why in-house recruitment teams are often weaker than specialist agencies

Jakub Konečný shows that a brand is just a name, while culture is what holds a company together. Anyone who wants to grow through acquisitions and mergers has to be clear in advance about what they’re willing to sacrifice and what they aren’t, and then stand by it.