Expodia: Firstly, thank you Lukáš very much for your time, and welcome again to the Innovative Digital EXPO with FORECOM. Can you tell us a little about yourself?
Lukáš Lískovec: Thank you. I’ve been in the digital technology business for quite a long time. I think it’s been about eight or nine years. Plus, I started university. During that time, the roots of the things that I do today were formed. And I started with general digital marketing, PPC (pay-per-click) and all that stuff. But as a freelancer, my client base started to grow. And I saw that clients wanted more people because they needed more scale. And that’s why I started the company, because I wanted to help them in other areas.
Expodia: How would you define “helping”?
Lukáš Lískovec: Yeah, it’s like the helping was mostly related to the skills I had at the time. That’s digital marketing skills, running PPC campaigns, helping with website analytics, and stuff like that. But later on, the company’s skill set grew because I also hired other people, mostly freelancers. And because of that, we covered more complex areas. Today it’s communications, marketing and sales, and also data, like the revenue operations area. Generally speaking, we help companies grow through many activities. Through a network of freelancers. We offer different types of collaboration to our clients.
Expodia: How did you build the Foundation of Forecom?
Lukáš Lískovec: Basically, I started with digital marketing mainly because I wanted to start my own projects, such as e-shops or some websites. And this time I knew that I had to understand marketing because otherwise, I would have to pay someone for my projects. So I started doing it mainly because I wanted to do some other projects later on. But it ended up that basically what I started learning became like my business. I haven’t done other projects, or I’ve done some projects over the years, but the main business for me is the agency and things around that. It basically evolved from my wanting to run a business.
Expodia: One point is about you having the vision like you said you self-educated yourself, and you had a clear goal of where you want to go. But when you started Forecom, did you have some partners with whom you built the company itself?
Lukáš Lískovec: Many people have worked with me, but I am the sole entrepreneur. I do have a lot of colleagues, though, and we currently have a few people on full-time as well. So there are more of us now, but I don’t have partners.
Expodia: In which year did you start to set up the company?
Lukáš Lískovec: I founded the company in 2019. But I would say the company started as a business and not just as a freelancing company two years ago, in 2021.
Expodia: How many people are working behind Forecom?
Lukáš Lískovec: This year is very crucial for us, and we are scaling up a lot compared to last year. So now we have four full-time people and about 20 freelancers working with us.
Expodia: You worked mostly with freelancers, but what was the challenging part for you during the Covid time?
Lukáš Lískovec: Luckily, we didn’t have the same problems as other companies at the time. I built the company remotely first. That’s very good to mention. Otherwise, I think we are still quite small in the industry we are in. But the year-on-year growth is still quite big for us. But as I mentioned, we’re still a small company, and smaller companies grow faster than larger ones.
Expodia: I always say one of the big key elements during Covid was Zoom meetings, Google Meet, and others. Thanks to them, we could operate in these times. Because we’re talking about digital marketing, but digitization in general, how important is it for you?
Lukáš Lískovec: For us, it’s a key part of the business because we manage operations, we use a lot of tools to help us manage people, communication teams in the company and so on. And we have it as a requirement that all the people who work for us use these tools. For us, it’s something we’re used to, and we work with it quite seamlessly. From our point of view, it’s fine for us, and we help our clients with it through digitizing the marketing and sales process and things around that. So we see a lot of value in that. We offer that to our clients as well.
Expodia: I know how dedicated you are, how you operate and also let’s say as you describe how you put the focus, what would you say are the key benefits as a company that comes to you? Are you looking for partners or also most likely for customers?
Lukáš Lískovec: Yes, we work with Cloudsaler, for example, a company that develops custom solutions for clients. So they do, for example, e-shops or also custom CRM and all the software that is customized and needed. And we help them with some expertise in marketing and sales and CRM. So that’s one example. And we have quite an extensive network of freelancers. They are also able to offer their expertise to partners, and they can leverage the freelancer network through us and also with the management of those freelancers that we offer.
Expodia: So you mentioned network and for myself, I always say networking is key in this business, and I’m honored that FORECOM is joining the Innovative Digital EXPO on the 27th of July in the Prague Congress Centre. What do you expect from EXPO?
Lukáš Lískovec: As I mentioned in past in our discussions, I think there is a need for events as recent years were poor and perspective. So I’m looking forward to doing something else than usual. We are remote-first, so we have a lot of calls, and we usually work with clients also remotely. So every possibility of having some offline networking or offline events is good, and I’m looking forward to that. Also, I’m looking forward to the mixture of the companies that will be there I think definitely are inspiring, and being part of that and talking with them, will be great.
As I’ve mentioned in our discussions in the past, I think there is a need for events because the last few years have been poor and promising. So I look forward to doing something different than usual. We’re remote-first, so we get a lot of calls and we frequently work with clients remotely. So any opportunity to do some offline networking or an offline event is good. I’m looking forward to it. I’m also looking forward to the mix of companies that are going to be there, I think they’re definitely inspiring, and to be a part of that and talk to them is going to be great.
Expodia: Super. That’s your expectation. But what can the people who are coming to your stand C 36 expect from you as a company?
Lukáš Lískovec: We’ll be able to discuss our experience and expertise with them, and we’ll be sure to share what we’ve learned over the years. And I think we have some pretty interesting experience in helping B2B companies grow through different areas like account-based marketing, using CRM, especially HubSpot, and lead generation in general. So we can certainly discuss that, but we can also discuss all the technology in marketing and sales and other things.
Expodia: Because every year we always say the trend is your friend and everything changes. But how would you describe the vision and mission of your company this year?
Lukáš Lískovec: At the core of Forecom is the fact that we connect technology and people, and that’s at the heart of what we do. And basically, what we do now is not that important. Everything is changing in marketing and sales and technology in general. So we may adapt to that, but we’ll still sort of believe in the core vision of the company, which is connecting technology and people, which is what we want to do in the decades to come, and we’ll see.
Expodia: If we were to meet for coffee a year from now and talk about what Forecom has already achieved from it. What would you tell me?
Lukáš Lískovec: As I mentioned, growth and scaling are absolutely critical for us this year. So I’m hoping that a year from now we’ll be a bigger firm with at least ten full-time people and a bigger network of freelancers, with more clients and more revenue. So we’ll be like a more influential company in the area of Europe that we cover.
Expodia: Lukáš, thank you very much and see you at the Innovative Digital EXPO.
Lukáš Lískovec: Thank you for the interview, and we look forward to the EXPO.
Mr. Lukáš Lískovec was interviewed by Armin Khani.
You can meet FORECOM at the Innovative Digital EXPO 2023 at stand C36