Pavel Pinkas joins AI startup Rankett after selling Persoo

Pavel Pinkas, founder of the Czech service Persoo, which he sold to Slovak rival Luigi's Box at the end of 2023, is joining the young startup Rankett as Founding Partner and Chief Sales Officer. The company helps brands stay visible in the answers given by AI models — ChatGPT, Gemini and others — and has already surpassed 10 million crowns in annual revenue in its first year.

The sale of Persoo, valued by CzechCrunch at somewhere between one hundred and two hundred million crowns, was meant to create a European leader in e-commerce search. Pinkas received half the sum in cash and half in shares of the combined company, and committed to staying on in the business until the end of 2026. From a founder, he turned into a top executive within a structure that had a board of directors and formal processes — something he says took getting used to.

He completed his task ahead of schedule: in the two years after the merger, Luigi's Box's revenue doubled, surpassing 250 million crowns in annualized recurring revenue (ARR) this year. Having hit that target, Pinkas is stepping down from his executive role but remains a shareholder in the company.

His next step is the startup Rankett, founded by 22-year-old Vojtěch Oravec, who previously worked alongside Tomáš Mikolov. The company specializes in making brands visible inside AI chat interfaces. Pinkas and Oravec were introduced by investor Michal Zálešák of the Lighthouse Ventures fund — the same fund that had earlier backed both Persoo and Rankett. It was in fact Pinkas who had once recommended that Zálešák invest in Oravec's project.

This time the entrepreneur is joining on terms tied to results rather than cash: he will only receive a stake in the company if it hits certain targets. “I'm going into this the same way Vojta is — taking a risk, not as a passive investor,” Pinkas explains. His job is to scale the business into foreign markets, build out a sales department and strike strategic partnerships, freeing up Oravec to move to Silicon Valley and work with American clients.

Pinkas says the situation reminds him of the early days of Persoo eight years ago, when he had to explain to clients why website personalization even mattered. “Today that same logic has moved up a level. If AI doesn't recommend you, the customer won't even reach you,” he says of the emerging agentic-commerce market. Rankett's clients include Sconto, Rossmann, BrainMarket and J&T Banka.

The startup's growth rate is striking: just two months after launching at the end of last year, its annualized revenue reached one hundred thousand dollars (about two million crowns). This year the company has grown 400%, and by year-end it is aiming for annualized growth of 600% — meaning current revenue of around 10 million crowns, with a target of reaching 15 million. Most clients still come from Czechia and Slovakia, with foreign markets accounting for only about 15% of revenue — a ratio that Pinkas's arrival and Oravec's move to the US are meant to change.