About

About me

My name is Ján Valko. I have been running my own travel agency for twenty-six years. I think of it as my startup — it began as a one-man business, today it stands entirely on the internet, and right now I am rebuilding it into a company largely run by artificial intelligence.

An agency that grew up on the internet

It all began twenty-six years ago, when I registered my business as Ján Valko – Sunflowers. In the very second year, in 2001, we launched our first website — and since then we have operated essentially entirely online.

That meant learning a second trade alongside travel: online marketing. Advertising on Google, later on Meta as well, which today carries the same weight for us as Google. Over those years I lived through several major transformations of the internet — above all in search and SEO — and learned a great deal about marketing in general, but chiefly about the online kind.

The years after the pandemic

After the pandemic, everything in the travel business was different. A great deal changed, and I will put it honestly: I paid little attention to the company I had spent a quarter of a century building. Processes were neglected, the internal system outdated. Our website was in a dire state and the prospects of fixing it were slim — it would have cost money we did not have. So I started optimising and gradually shedding paid services.

What artificial intelligence changed

The big change was the arrival of artificial intelligence in our business. Without it, the company I had built over twenty-five years would, I believe, have folded.

What helped most was that with its help I could set things up myself — from the server through the website to our internal system. That is how I gradually got things like the mail server running, along with other work we would otherwise have had to pay someone outside to do.

As the models improved and agents arrived, I saw enormous potential. Once I had thought it through: almost everything done in our company can be entrusted to artificial intelligence. The work here consists mostly of clicking a mouse and typing on a keyboard — and that is exactly what a machine can do today. It can put together an offer, it can help the sales team.

That is why, in early August 2026, I began building the whole company around agents. I believe the potential of artificial intelligence is nowhere near explored — and that it will be an enormous thing for the future.