Dominik Válka, Petr Lyčka, Marek Vašírovský, and Matyáš Hošek from the media agency Serious media regularly attend Meet&Deal. Together, they work on campaigns for the biggest European e-commerce players. What deals do they regularly take away from Meet&Deal?
“Selfmade business man.” 5 companies in 3 years
If you don’t know Dominik Válka yet, take a look at his story. It would certainly be worth a longer conversation, but at least in brief. “It’s a classic story. As a salesman for a media house, I sold advertising. After about two years, I got a bit familiar with the field and started flirting with the idea that I could develop it on my own axis.
The situation unfolded in such a way that at the end of 2015 I agreed with the bosses that I would leave and start my own agency. TISCALI continued to support me and helped me in the beginning by keeping me good conditions. And that’s how Serious media was created, where I gradually added other media houses. We started cooperating, for example, with Datart, Alza, Packeta, the Digital people group, and other partners through the CZ and SK market.
Packeta helped us expand about 4 years ago, which opened the way for us to Hungary and kind of showed us the direction we’re going today, which is the direct purchase of media outside the Czech Republic. And it gave us the goal of gradually becoming number one in direct advertising purchases through Central and Eastern Europe and in the future also DACH.”
Good deals are made with a good mood
You won’t see [Dominik] on Meet&Deal otherwise than with a smile. He is a certified negotiator, so he may have a better starting position than many participants. But you can’t say he’s going strictly after the deals. The Meet&Deal events are taken by his colleagues as team building, where you can also do business. In his words, it’s a nice time spent with colleagues. He even says it ends up cheaper for him than if he took his colleagues somewhere else. And we haven’t even talked about the closed deals yet. But let’s start.
“In our business, deals are typically created on a monthly basis so that they make sense. In the pipeline for next year, we are currently negotiating with partners from Meet&Deal in the range of millions, and we still have a lot of hot leads to develop,” he smiles. I can’t forget the deal with Jakub Kantor, Brand Strategist & Architect with Level C certification and founder of Kantor Studio, with whom he also struck a deal at Meet&Deal. I’m personally happy about that too.
It should be noted that Dominik and actually everyone from Serious media are doing well. “We are growing nicely even with a small team. We will close this year with a turnover of around 90 million CZK. Our key partners include Datart, Alza, Packeta, Trinity, Istyle, who have always pushed us further at some milestone. And also several other agencies that we help with purchasing for their clients and are also developing this segment. At the end of the day, we’re all in this together, not against each other.”
See you next time
At Meet&Deal vol3, he quite spontaneously became a big part of the raffle for a good cause. He bought 55 tickets for 200 CZK. He thus contributed more than one-tenth of the collected amount. And for that, a big thank you, Dominik.
Dominik and actually everyone from Serious media have modest expectations for the upcoming Meet&Deal events. They just want to have fun. Do you think Meet&Deal helps the guys from Serious media move their business forward? To that, I got a simple answer from Dominik: “100%. It’s much easier to agree with people at a meet when you know them from the meet.”
Do you want to get to know Dominik and the other Serious media colleagues in person? Come to the next Meet&Deal event. The guys won’t be missing.
