The Blog

Semantic Visions was part of the Pale Fire Capital portfolio for more than a decade. At the time, large-scale semantic text analysis was still more of an emerging vision than an established business segment. Today, Semantic Visions is one of the leading providers of open-source data analytics, serving banks, investment firms, global manufacturers, media outlets, and multinational corporations, including SAP … Read more

Pale Fire Capital entered Aukro in 2019. Over the past five years, the auction platform has undergone a deep strategic transformation, bringing significant changes to the user experience, a return to its auction roots, international expansion, and a new approach to marketing. This article from Hospodářské noviny summarizes Aukro’s journey to its current state, where more than 6 million products … Read more

On the evening of April 25th, 2023, another event organized by the Klub investorů took place, entitled “Where are we?”. Jan Barta from Pale Fire Capital evaluated the risks and opportunities in current markets and also presented a few investment ideas. He shared his insights and experiences with the audience, providing a clear vision and practical tips, and outlined how … Read more

Jiří Ponrt has been appointed the new CFO of the American giant Groupon. Starting today, he will fully replace Damien Schmitz in the company’s top management. Ponrt joins Groupon from Pale Fire Capital (PFC) on the recommendation of the current Groupon CEO and one of PFC’s partners, Dušan Šenkypl. For this job, Jiří Ponrt plans to relocate from … Read more

The American Groupon has a new CEO. One of the partners of Pale Fire Capital, Dušan Šenkypl, will fully dedicate himself to managing the company’s transformation.

The board of directors of the American company Groupon has appointed Dušan Šenkypl as interim CEO. In this executive role, Šenkypl will actively lead the transformation of Groupon and oversee the daily operations … Read more

Prague, January 9, 2023 – The largest Czech auction portal Aukro.cz will be headed by Peter Topor from January 1, 2023. The current CEO Jan Sadílek will continue his work at Aukro and will now be in charge of the Collectors’ and Antiques area and will become Marketing Director.

Aukro is strengthening its management team. Peter Topor, who previously … Read more

After more than four years, Roivenue and our paths have diverged. We have found a strategic investor, ScanmarQED, who is buying 100% of the company.

ScanmarQED has its own portfolio of marketing analytics products. Roivenue will help with sales to its own clients as well as expansions into Western European and North American markets where it has built … Read more

Following the announcement of PFC’s first investment in Groupon in January this year, and the addition of partners Dušan Šenkypl and Jan Barta to Groupon’s Board of Directors, PFC is collaborating closely with the Groupon leadership team to help build a strong technology team to transform the company’s overall strategy.

Vojtěch Ryšánek, who previously served as CTO of Aukro.cz … Read more

In September, Jan Balatka, who has many years of experience in semantic analytics and machine learning in global business from Deloitte Czech Republic, took over as managing director of Semantic Visions in September. He is accompanied by our partner Petr Krajíček.

Diana Rádl Rogerová, who was until recently a partner at Deloitte together with Jan Balatka and is … Read more