In 2001, a friend asked me if I would like to start a company with him. Word got out, so in the end, we were four – a bunch of acquaintances who didn’t exactly know what they were doing. Among other activities, we did not have time for the company and this was fully reflected in the first financial statements.

In 2004, after graduating from university, I turned my attention back to the company. I had the ambition to run it and over time we agreed to rewrite all shares to me and my sister. It was then, that Pantheon became a FAMILY COMPANY.

In addition to solving common system integrations, we started by selling used hardware – our goal was retail. At that time, however, prices and margins began to fall sharply, so we switched to wholesale. We exported to the Middle East, Asia, or Africa. We gradually added ATMs, that left Slovakia for Hong Kong and Turkey.

I enjoyed this job. Pantheon had about 5 employees at the time. However, margins continued to decline and there was an opportunity to focus on software development. I did not say no to the offer – there was significantly more money in this area. At the time, I didn’t even think about whether I was going to “build a big business” or where I want to be in 20 years. It is very fashionable today to talk about it this way, but in reality, I would be lying.

In 2009, we signed our first contract in Silicon Valley. We were a good group, who enjoyed their jobs. In 2011 we opened our first office in the US and in 2013, we started to expand to Banská Bystrica & Žilina.

Thanks to the growth, we were able to gain new experience and transform it into our own product portfolio in the field of network technologies, such as lighty.io, CDNF.io, SandWork, and EntGuard. We also managed to create a comprehensive HR system, Chronos, which facilitates the management of all personnel processes, including records and attendance management of all employees.

We had more people at the peak than we could manage. It’s time to cut back a bit and make quality a top priority. Even today, we are still working on clearly communicating to employees, what work environment we support through our expectations and their benefits.

This year, we celebrate 20 years since our inception. During that time, we repaid our debts and took the opportunity to grow. We learned that growth is not directly proportional to the quality and we prefer to stay smaller, but more valuable for us and our clients. We have found that we will always look for and prefer people who are not afraid of challenges and self-reflection.

I am proud of our journey until now and I look forward to everything that comes. Mainly from the product point of view.

Tomáš Jančo, CEO