Insights
80 redundancies, and I couldn't tell a soul
The most devastating experience of my professional life.
Leo Judkins, Founder, The iGaming LeaderBy 2010, PokerStrategy had gone from 5 people in Gibraltar to over 400 in under 3 years.
I was responsible for 10 of the 18 languages we operated in.
Then the poker market collapsed.
I knew what we had to do before almost anyone else did.
And I couldn't tell a soul. Not friends. Not colleagues sitting two desks away from the people I was about to put at risk.
80 people. Then 40 more. Both rounds in the same month.
These weren't abstract employees.
They were the people we'd moved to Gibraltar with. Expats who'd uprooted families and built their lives around something that no longer existed.
We ran the group sessions. I watched faces change in real time. I left with them in that second round.
It was the most devastating experience of my professional life.
Until I bumped into Mikko at SBC Lisbon a year later. He'd been one of those people put at risk. Weeks of not knowing if his family's life in Gibraltar was safe.
He was fine in the end. But he didn't know that for a long time.
A few beers turned into many.
And he told me the honesty during that period had meant everything to him.
We both teared up.
Because I'd carried that alone for years. No peers to ask. No one I could talk to.
Just a decision. And the weight of it.
It's one of the biggest reasons I built The iGaming Leader.