Jiří Paták (ex-Chytrý Honza): We went from market favourite to renegade and nearly lost key contracts

In this episode of the CEO na ostří nože podcast, we talk to Jiří Paták, founder of the financial product comparison site Chytrý Honza and now owner of Patron GO. He founded Chytrý Honza in 2008, when people weren’t even used to comparing prices online and simply took whatever financial products the “savings bank on the corner” offered. The name refers to Honza, the clever hero of Czech fairy tales who always outsmarts the stronger side, just as the ordinary customer was meant to outsmart the big bank.

The company was built on three values: the idealistic belief that customers can beat the big players, faith in full digitalisation, and teamwork. Within nine years, revenue climbed to almost half a billion crowns. Paták says the culture changed as the company grew up, from a “happy childhood” through adolescence, when absolute freedom ends, to adulthood with rules and structure. The first major clash came with the acquisition of the advisory firm Bonnet. Paták describes it as a “clash of civilisations”: startup people who started work at 7 a.m. met a team used to long lunches and leaving at four. In the end, both sides were united by the belief that technology helps customers, advisers and banks alike. A hybrid model combining digital and personal contact is, according to Paták, what wins on the market today.

The turning point came in 2016, when insurer Aegon invested. Paták admits he was proud at the time and that “rose-tinted glasses overshadowed all rational thinking”. The company had three shareholders: a large multinational, a local fund and Paták himself. All major decisions had to be unanimous. When Aegon, under pressure from its own shareholders, decided to leave Central and Eastern Europe, it became “dead weight” and the company couldn’t make decisions. Paták stepped down from management and a foreign CEO took over. But none of the original values carried on. The company stopped innovating, went through major staff changes, and of fifty key people only seven or eight remained. Banks and insurers started turning to Paták directly, because “the market favourite had become a renegade” and the company risked losing key contracts. Paták bought the shares back, stabilised the company and sold it to the DRFG group in 2019.

Today, he sees his biggest mistake as misjudging how mature the company was. A startup whose plan won’t survive the first two or three months struggles to coexist with a corporation where every percentage point of deviation from plan matters. If he could, he would have waited two or three years before letting a big player in. But the values, and part of the team, are still with him. He keeps in touch with former colleagues who now work at banks, brokers and online companies, because they are still “fighting for the original idea, just in different jerseys”.

What else will you learn in the podcast?

• How company culture changes as a company grows up

• What happens when a startup culture meets a conservative one

• Why requiring unanimous shareholder decisions can paralyse a company

• How to tell whether a company is mature enough for a big investor

• Why consumers are more vulnerable in finance today than fifteen years ago

• How banks and insurers have changed over the past decade

According to Jiří Paták, the story of Chytrý Honza shows that bringing in a big investor isn’t just a financial decision. When a company loses the values and people it was built on, it falls apart faster than the numbers can show. And a company’s legacy is ultimately the team that carries its idea forward.