Insights
Nobody tells you about the lonely part
You're not the only one.
Leo Judkins, Founder, The iGaming LeaderI've been recording a lot of conversations lately for the podcast. Founders, CEOs, operators. People who've built a name in this industry.
And the same subject keeps coming up, unprompted, in almost every single one.
Loneliness.
The quiet, persistent reality of carrying things you can't put down and can't fully share with anyone.
Most leaders I speak to don't name it straight away. But once it comes up, they all say the same thing: they wished they'd talked about it sooner.
Let me share what a few of them said.
The captain can't show doubt
Ramiro Atucha, founder of Vibra and Leander, put it better than I ever could:
“Imagine you're in a boat and all of a sudden the captain says: I have no clue where we are. People will start jumping out of the boat.”
So you don't say it. You carry it. And when you look for someone to talk to, you quickly realise there's nowhere obvious to go.
“If you talk to your wife, she'll support you, but she doesn't understand your industry. If you talk to your team, they'll panic.”
Nobody to call who doesn't have skin in the game
Nigel Eccles, co-founder of FanDuel, said something that stuck with me too:
“Even just psychologically, just sharing the challenge and the stress is really important. I just wouldn't want to do it on my own.”
Daniel Graetzer, the founder of MaximBet, had been through a brutal stretch — the kind that tests everything. Looking back, this is what he said:
“There were only so few people that really had no vested interest whatsoever in what I was going through.”
Think about that for a second.
Everyone around you has a stake in your answer
Your team has skin in the game. Your investors have skin in the game. Your family loves you but doesn't fully get it.
By default, almost every conversation you have is filtered through someone else's agenda.
Dan Phillips, who's built and scaled multiple businesses including Playtech and Playnetic, was the most direct about it:
“The old cliché... it's kind of lonely at the top. I certainly struggle with that.”
And Richard Dennys, who's run both Game Lounge and Webgains, had the most unsentimental take of them all:
“Business doesn't have feelings. It's not your friend. Everything about life in business is trying to kill you or get you fired.”
What happens when you don't fix it
The people around you who have nothing to gain or lose from your decisions are rare. And they matter more than most leaders admit.
The ones who figure this out early build informal networks of peers, people they can actually be honest with.
The ones who don't tend to look back and realise, like Daniel did, that their decision-making had quietly got worse without them even noticing.
“I didn't realise how poor my decision-making process had become.”
That is the cost of shouldering it all alone. Nobody tells you the job comes with that.
That's the question you should ask at your level.
Who do I have in my circle, without an agenda, that I can actually talk to?