How Smartlook's founder handled a Cisco buyout windfall

Petr Janošík, founder of the Brno-based startup Smartlook, sold his company to the American tech giant Cisco in 2023 for a sum in the billions of crowns. But the real test for the entrepreneur wasn't the deal itself — it was figuring out what to do with a sudden windfall of tens of millions of dollars.

Smartlook built software that showed companies how users interact with their websites and apps. It was Janošík's third entrepreneurial venture and the first to reach a global exit. “I wanted to show that you can build a company out of Czechia, out of Brno, that's just as good as an American one,” he says.

The decision to sell matured at the moment when Smartlook was preparing a new investment round of around 20 million dollars and planning a bigger push into the US market. The exact value of the Cisco deal was never disclosed, but the money arrived not all at once but in instalments — and even the first tranche forced Janošík to rethink how he managed his personal finances.

“I understood it wasn't about buying three apartments, a house for my parents and a car, and calling it done. Suddenly I had to decide what to do with tens of millions of dollars,” the entrepreneur admits.

His first idea was to launch his own venture fund focused on SaaS projects — an area he knew well. But he quickly realized a fund isn't a passive investment; it's effectively a new business that demands constant attention. He dropped the idea.

Since his capital was in dollars, while Czech banks mostly offered products in crowns, Janošík turned to the multi-family office model — essentially running a real casting call among consulting firms, as if he were hiring staff for his own company. He ended up choosing Family Office Partners, whose first piece of advice sounded almost paradoxical for an investor: do nothing at all for a year.

According to the firm's partner Oldřich Myslivec, after an exit entrepreneurs lose an important internal filter — in business they used to have a CFO or partner nearby who could say “this idea doesn't make sense.” After selling the company, that safeguard disappears, while plenty of people suddenly show up eager to help spend the money.

Janošík experienced this firsthand: besides the venture-fund idea, he considered setting up a family charitable foundation, but stopped halfway through. “I realized I had no idea what I actually wanted to pass on to my children. I hadn't settled anything about investments or strategy. So why create a structure at all?” he says. He shelved the decision for two years before returning to it with a clear head.

Today Janošík isn't building a new startup — instead he works at Cisco, invests in tech companies, and continues building a system to manage the capital from one of the most notable Czech deals of recent years.