Andy Rogers: The Secrets to Running 4 Companies in iGaming

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I've been quite patient with the strategy that I've got and in all those businesses that I ran, we were setting up threeear cycles. We were building to a three-year event. We were raising money and moving fast. I've always had a real interest in the design and structure of things. I like the combination of creativity and engineering. That led me on to launching my own agency like 3 months before I left university, which went really well and then really badly then okay in the end. It's expensive to be poor. You get worse deals. you get worse rates. Someone can see the blood in the water if

they're investing. You know, if you're dressed in cheap clothes and you want a good job, it's more difficult. Your success is directly proportional to the number of times you've said, "Fuck it. I'll figure it out." Welcome to the i Gaming Leader podcast. I'm your host, Leo Judkins, founder of the I Gaming Leader Mastermind. And on this show, I sit down with some of the most inspirational and forwardthinking leaders in our industry, diving into the real challenges, highstakes decisions, lessons that shape our industry. If you're a VP, director, or an executive in I gaming, this podcast is built for you. Before we dive in, a quick

thank you to our sponsor, Sumsub, the full cycle verification platform trusted by top i gaming operators worldwide. Sumsup helps onboard players quickly, stay compliant, and prevent fraud, all without slowing growth. More information in the description. Hey everybody, welcome to the i Gaming Leader podcast. I am here with Andy Rogers and we're going to have a very different conversation today because Andy, you're the quiet guy behind so much of the industry. We actually had a quick chat on WhatsApp before as well and you went through the podcast guest. I think 25% of the people you've worked with or consulted or were for. So really cool. You've

built multiple businesses, exited a few, managed through very challenging times. But 10 years ago, you started with something that many actually call the man plan. Deliberately staying behind the scenes while the industry shouts for attention. And um yeah, today I want to talk about your journey. I'd like to talk about the strategic decision- making under constraints and the stuff that went wrong, the decisions you made differently and the battle scars matter. So, welcome to the podcast, Annie. >> Thank you very much. Yeah, really nice to be here. I'm looking forward to this. >> Yeah, me too. We spoke actually before a few times, but we

met for the first time in Barca recently. It's interesting like not having met before. I don't know why that is, but let's start maybe with a quick intro. And for anybody that doesn't know you, >> for those that don't know, I I had a background. I did industrial design at university. I've always had a real interest in the design and structure of things. I like the combination of creativity and engineering. That led me on to launching my own agency like 3 months before I left university, which went really well and then really badly. Then okay, in the end, managed to to sell that off a

little bit of I call it golf money. You know, I play golf for two months and then worked out what I had to do. I then went to run I actually joined another company as a sales manager sales director anyway something in the sales department which I kind of felt was a step back because I'd run my own business for 5 years but actually I thought I'd go and get a proper job otherwise I'd go and run another of my own companies. If that went badly I'd be 32 and never had a proper job you know vertical. So I thought at at 27 or whatever

I go get a proper job. I ended up being a director at that business and then the managing director and it all went quite well. That was quite a good business. That was called Lightmaker and we opened a bunch of offices globally and did all sorts of shiny [ __ ] and it was it was good. We were hot for a very long for a period there. Then went into the media business where headunted from that business went into a media company in London. Launched a bunch of things there. Did some more digital stuff, ran their digital arm, ended up in gaming and social gaming

and building platforms and yada yada yada. business ended up getting bought by MediaTek where I went to join as MD in Spain and then formed Rocker as you say with a bit of a mad plan sort of 10 and a half years ago. So I'm sure we'll come on to the rocker journey a little bit but that's my background. Always always been an MD always been other than a brief period in sales always been like the sales part though I like people but I like the business of business. That's what I'm really really interested in. Always have been really I often say you know sometimes

it probably wouldn't have mattered whether I'd sold toothbrushes or or phones or clever rings or whatever. um I can get behind like taking something from somewhere to somewhere, you know, that's that and the just like the infinite chess moves around that. Maybe we'll touch on a bit later. >> Yeah, I'd love to talk about that because that's the big thing that I remember from our conversations before as well is that how obsessed you are with the intricacies of business, right? Obsessed maybe the wrong word, but like you love it. You love just the whole dynamics of business. So, I wanted to start with kind of

that biggest decision point leaving media tech if that's all right. So it's June 20 2015, you leave as a managing director running at the time more or less a third of Spain's online GGR. Then in February 2016, our Franco buys it. That's 8 months between you leaving and it being bought. From the outside, it looks like either you walking away from a significant acquisition payday or knowing something was coming and choosing to leave anyway. What actually happened? Did you did you know the sale was coming? >> Yes and no. So I joined with a particular re when when uh interaction was bought by Jessica and

the team there. She was the CEO and owner of the business. One of the most fantastic people you'll ever meet like in business people you'll ever meet, human you'll ever meet. Can't say enough nice things about Jessica. And she actually wanted to go and spend some time in Asia. So it worked out well that there wasn't two people at the top of that business. I kind of slotted in. I had a mandate to improve the metrics of that business. had as with all technology and all platform businesses had some challenges around technical debt. It had some challenges around delivery, had some challenges around client satisfaction, but

it had done broadly pretty well to establish itself in a market and there was a couple of approaches in terms of acquisition for that business. Jessica came back from Asia after a couple of years. Then there was two people at the top. Truthfully, I think Andre who's the co-founder of Pretty Technical, one of the businesses I now run, he was the CTO there. He left at at that sort of time as well and went on to pursue other things. Dan Gritzer who I think you know was also there at the time and dad stayed on but he was the COO there and so we all

we were a little little you know cabal of of of people that were running this business. Um my wife didn't want to move to Spain and I was commuting every week from the UK. So Monday morning 7:00 on the with the PWC boys and their ties out to Madrid every week coming back on a Wednesday and Thursday. Just didn't want to do that for much longer. Also, as we said earlier, I'd run other people's businesses by that point for at least 12 years, maybe a bit longer. So, I was very keen to do something myself. I could see the businesses in reasonable shape. I could

see that Jessica was back in the game and probably didn't need me. If there's two people saying the same things, we have quite a different approach to running businesses. Neither of them were right or wrong, I suppose, or more right than the other, but it was her business. And I was quite happy to actually get on with my own stuff. That business could have been sold in the time that I was there. There was a couple of approaches as I said that could business could have been sold in another six years time which none of us were really in control of. It happened to be

sold 8 months later. High fives to all those that were there and I'm glad I hope they did very well out of it. You know, all props to if you look at it now and would you have stayed for the sale or do you still feel it's the right decision? I know these things are so easy to say like with hindsight. How do you feel about it? >> I feel good about the decision in all honesty. I'm not hugely money focused. That sounds silly, doesn't it? But I'm more objectives focused. I feel like I'd done the job that I was employed to do. Um, and

I was happy with that. So, would I have made a different decision if I'd known it was coming in 8 months? Maybe. But then, if you're just sticking around for a payday doing yourself or anyone else a service, I I I don't think you are. So, I was happy with the job I'd done. Hopefully, Jessica and the guys would feel like I did a fairly solid job there for them and they got a result hopefully out of the end of it. Good. Everyone's winner, >> right? like you make decisions and then you shouldn't be looking back anymore. The for more will always happen. You know, like

we were talking about conference bookings and stuff, but it's the same thing, isn't it? It's just a different number, but it's the same idea. >> Yeah, for sure. Hindsight is a wonderful tip. >> Yeah, 100%. You um you spend 12 years as MDs for other people's companies, like you said, like maker, it's V traction. On a previous podcast which I saw, you mentioned you raised money, put businesses into administrations, hired hundreds of people during that time, full life cycle, right? The the good and the ugly. So when you started Rocker in 2015, Andy, what's what's what did that experience teach you? Because you could have

replicated a model like raise VC, scale fast, maybe exit, but you chose a different path. Why why is that? >> That's a good question. Why did I choose that path? Okay. So, look, maybe it's um maybe it's a a control thing. The biggest thing I learned from running other people's companies, bearing in mind, I ran my own for for 5 years before, then I did a whole bunch of my career doing it for other people, and then I've gone back to doing it myself. So what I learned from running other people's companies, no matter how lovely they are, and a lot of them were lovely

people, I tended to be brought in at a certain level when the business was big enough that they wanted to do something more structured and I'd come and help sort out that structure, that business stuff. What I learned was if the decision's good, it's their decision, and if it's bad, it's your decision, right? But when it's your business, it's always you as well. Like it's it's it's always you. Good or bad, it's you. So maybe there was a little control stuff there. I also didn't want to be reliant on shareholders early on. I think I'm probably accused by certainly by my friends or my wife

or maybe some people in the business here of having a slightly flighty mind, you know, in ter I have a lively mind like and there's lots of things that interest me and I'm I I would guess that there were you would modern in a modern world you'd test some elements of ADHD there, but I have a whole bunch of things that aren't ADHD in in my makeup. And one of the things is I'm quite patient and I gave myself a long time to achieve. I think Warren Buffett said it, investing is easy if you have an infinite amount of time. Um I've been quite patient

with the strategy that I've got. And so I didn't want to go I in all those businesses that I ran, we were setting up threeear cycles. We were building to a three-year event. We were raising money and moving fast. And I didn't want to limit myself to a three-ear cycle. a long time like 30 years ago I read about Chinese business plans that were 200 years multigenerational business plans that were 200 years how interesting is that right so I was like I could give myself 10 or 15 years for sure that's okay that's just like a so that was the main reason I didn't go

out and raise VC cash and do something there also I didn't know whether I wanted to build a product again early doors I certainly didn't want to be a gaming consultant in inverted commas I don't know enough about certain parts of gaming So I'm not a marketing person. I just know a little bit about all of it. And so actually where my value is probably as a human. And in the early days it was me and Rich. So we could have done a lot of different things but we had to limit ourselves to what people would see as credible. Um so we limited ourselves to

the business design part which is working on the business rather than in it. And so we worked on the business for a lot of people. And it just so happened we knew a lot about the gaming market. So that's why we ended up in the gaming sector. We did other things then as well. NVC and some Universal, Adobe, BT, you know, lots of other big companies. We worked on parts of their business. But as the years went by, we decided to focus more and more on the gaming sector. We would build it slowly, invest in things over time, give ourselves the right amount of ownership

and control. Where did this whole idea of of a 10 well you you've spoken about it as a 10-year plan which turned out to be 12 years because of COVID but where did this whole longterm and sticking with your kind of sticking with your plan idea come from that's that's quite I feel that's quite unique. So I'd like to talk a little bit more about that. Many of the businesses I see of many of many executives very reactive right very I don't know like jump to any opportunity you seem yeah like you said you seem calm and you've got your plan and you're following that

through obviously with diversions here and there but how did you get to that point have you always been like that or is it something that happened where you thought ah this is actually the way to go >> my mind works in that way um so there literally I can't really explain it more than So this is how my mind worked when I set up Rocka. I look at my 50s and I look at how relevant I will be as a human in my 50s. I've got a couple of choices. Either I go back and build a career running a reasonable size company and then moving

to a non-exec roles and having a nice retirement at some point in my 50s or late 50s. Maybe there would be an exit there. Maybe not. It wouldn't it would somewhat be out of my control in that sense. That's one route I could do. But I wanted to have a more comfortable existence as I moved into my 50s. The other way is I could build value and I could look at how that could be created for myself, something I could control. And I wasn't being prescriptive about whether that was 50 or 52 or 55. But at some point, cuz I don't think you can be

totally prescriptive about those things to your point, you can't control everything. But the outcome, I'm objectives focused and that's always been the same. So even at school or at university, that would be a good example of I I knew what I wanted to do and therefore I was able to do enough to achieve what I was. And I think some of that is about running your own race. Like you and I know lots and lots of very rich people in the gaming sector, right? All the power to those people. They're not either you or I. They're in a different circumstance. They're either brighter or they're

more lucky or they've worked harder or they haven't worked hard. They have, you know, they haven't done these things. Like they've done certain things, they haven't done other things. I think it's important not to judge yourself by other people's um achievements. I think it's just important to set your own goals and judge yourself by your own achievements. That way you only can let yourself down or you can achieve and be proud of the things that you've done. And that for me is enough and it always has been. I I of course do I want, you know, some mansion up the road from where you're sat

now probably in the south of Spain overlooking the Mediterranean. For sure that would be lovely. But we probably know a couple of people we can go visit and I can go and have a beer. I'm not saying it's I'm not somewhat materialistic, but I am saying I'm comfortable in my own skin to run my own race. And that for me was all about that long-term decision-making. Am I can I try and do something here that I would be proud of that my family can be proud of that they can look back and say, you know what, he did what he said he was going to

do. And I say that to the team here all the time. You know, we talked about the other day we had a board meeting and we talked about, you know, the art of the possible in the future and the valuation of things in the market and this and that. And we talked about, you know, I've worked on things where, you know, SB Techch got bought by DraftKings, what, three course of a billion quid or something. NYX did, I mean, Matt Davyy did super things there. I'm really impressed by him. I watched that play out and I just thought, amazing work out for 800 million. You

know, we talked about this in a board meeting the other day and right now, no one in our organization is designing an 800 million pound business. Like, we're not. We could do if that's what everyone wants to do, but that's not where we're at at the moment. We're designing an X amount of valuation business and when we get there we'll decide what to do. We could either exit that or look to exit or we could go again because we feel like we could build an 800 million pound business but our objective is fixed and everyone is focused on the objective. We'll do that and that

is good. That's don't be apologetic for that. Be proud of achieving the thing you said you're going to achieve. Um, I once worked for a guy, no names mentioned, and we went to a board meeting in the States, and he said to everyone, we were about, I suppose we were turning over in those days, 10 or $10 million, $12 million, something in that order of magnitude, group of young lads, all um, motivated, all whatever. And we sat in the board meeting and he said to everyone, "Guys, we're going to be a $200 million company." I was like, "Cool." And I said, "How are we going

to do that?" And he said, "We're going to do this. We're going to change the things." I was like, "Where's the money coming from?" And he said, "What?" He said, "Like, everyone in this room will have a run for you at a $200 million company. We will we'll we will work weekends. We will do what's the new thing? 72-hour weeks, you know, uh we we'll be we will lie down in the road for you, but we need enough money to change it from a $12 million company into $200 million company." So, where's the money coming from? Because you can't just do that on luck and

hope, you know? and he said, "You don't need to worry about that. Just go back to the UK to the office I ran and just tell them I've said we're going to be a $200 million company." And flew back to the UK and we had a meeting with all the guys there and and what someone that worked with me at that point, Bright Chat, how are we going to do that? And I just said, "I don't know. The guy's just I'm not naming it. The guy just said we're going to do it." And do you know what? I made a decision as on the flight

home that I'm just going to move on from that business. It's done. Like it's it's nonsense. is like have realistic goals. Control the things you can control. Try and be proud of those things. If you luck upon something, follow the luck for sure. Like run with it, but otherwise execute on what you can. And that's where all of this strategy came from. All those learnings, it was just like, let's try and do something that's within my control. I feel like I'm good enough to do X. If I'm not, so be it. But that's where I've got to. Love it, Andy, because that's like I want

to highlight a few things there. The the the first one is race your own race. I I love what you're saying there because it's so true, especially in this um this age of social media, but also because of our industry, the way conferences are and seeing, you know, all the successes out there, it's very easy to compare yourself to everybody else's highlight reel. And that highlight reel is also not really real, you know. So it's very easy to then uh feel like you're failing or you got to or at least feeling that you've got to pivot all the time, right? And which is a massive

massive business mistake to continuously do that. On the other hand, like you said, you got to follow the luck. You got to follow the signal but not the noise. And I think that's something that most people confuse. So makes a lot of sense. How do you like talk through that kind of decision-m Andy, if you will. So if we talk about this 10-year plan for example that you had 10 years ago that's kind of extended now to 12 years because of co break. How does that work in your head? Do you reverse engineer that? You start at the end and then kind of work your

way back. >> Literally that the months before I started rocker I wrote down what a future would look like that I would be happy with financially. I future gazed into what that looks like from a human point of view like for my family and what success felt like to me in my own mind not anyone else's. what I felt success looked like and it wasn't unachievable and then I worked backwards and uh in some ways made things super hard for myself along the way but you know that's idiocy for you I you know I'm the controller of my own idiocy as well as my own

success so you know I think that's that's fine but yeah work backwards and then that that just gives you measurable things to to tick off and like the world doesn't work unfortunately to everyone's plan does it so co is one of those things but you know we've had other things where, you know, investors have let us down or people leave that you didn't think were going to leave or like a myriad of stuff that happens that changes the course. But am I moving myself every half a year probably is the me is the measure. Am I moving myself every 6 months towards a goal or

am I moving it away from a goal? That's the only answer that needs answering. >> Is that what you do, Andy? Is it like you sit down every half a year and you kind of check how you performing against that 10 year plan and your milestones within it? I don't I don't structure it in in that way because I'm because that would be again I'm just setting myself six months goals. I'm just looking at the future and saying okay am I trending towards that the signal not the noise is my trend good all this that's going on in between some money no money loads of

happy staff some happy the me happy me sad all the trends that go up and down you know um I'm I'm very actually you can speak to a lot of people maybe I'm not very sad as a human actually so I don't know that's not that's not one of my traits but over optimistic for sure like that's a that's a negative trait maybe I'm I'm over optimistic But I'm not a sadity. But all those things that happen month on month, you know, quarter on quarter, even year on year, am I trending towards the thing I'm after? >> So when you started this plan, this 10

year plan, lots of people call it mad. You of course didn't launch four businesses at the same time. That would have probably been quite mad. You staggered it. What's how do you decide that when you know this is it's time to spin up the next one or it's I've got to wait. What does that decision making look like for you? >> A good question. Let's start with why I did the plan in the first place maybe and that maybe answers I can go back to when I was 30 at light maker having conversations with PE people or fund people of some kind you know finance

people talking about rollups then and looking at whether we should go and buy agencies and roll them up and I've always been really interested so that was what 20 years ago now I've always been interested in that that theory of rollups and you know the arbitrage and the you know the way that the dynamics work in terms of business model and it is that that game of business that we talked about earlier that I'm interested in. That's the that's the most challenging, most exciting, most interesting part for me. So, I couldn't afford when I left MediaTek to go and buy four businesses. I just didn't

have the money there. I could have probably done that if I'd have gone the route you mentioned before, like go and raise the money and then buy the business. But that's not where I wanted to be. I did have enough money to start and everyone has you there said that don't start four businesses. who does that? And I said, I'm not going to start them all at the same time. That would be mental. But one of the pieces of like something that the thought of starting those four businesses was a little bit driven like that's a mad idea. But I read something in probably 2014

on a plane probably over to Madrid and back where Richard Branson sat on Neker Island was running 75 businesses. He was the princip principal of 75 businesses. I think I landed and said to Ro, "Have you seen that? 75 businesses. If he can do 75 from an island in the middle of nowhere, I might be able to do three or four from a house in Kent. That seems reasonable. I'm not as bright as Richard Branson, but you know, that's okay. By an order of magnitude of more than 10, I'd back myself." So, it's just a construct then. And then exactly the same as the life

plan. Work backwards from where you want to be and then do these things in order. So, we started Rocker First as a business design consultancy. It gave us enough money to pay the mortgages that we had, Rich and I. It gave us some interesting work and some valid work that we got excited about, which is important. And it gave us enough money and momentum to start to incubate other things. And actually, if we'd have started calling it then what it probably is now, which is some kind of venture builder. I mean, Rocky, you could argue is a really good venture builder or it's it's it's

a relatively successful venture builder. That's not what we called it at the time because I think it would have sounded arrogant and weird. That's what it actually was is it it did some consulting to support the venture building and then the consulting grew and it grew into something else and other things. But in answer to your question, we had a plan. I could show you what we drew in 2015 as a multi-group. It had rocker and it had some kind of customer support business and it had some kind of technology business and it had some kind of ventures business that we would fund ourselves. That's

literally what that plan had on it. And we started here and they were like, "Okay, well, we knew a bit about design. That was our background. Rich comes from a design background. I was from an agency background and we liked it. It's that and because we're digital people because we like the engineering as well as the design. We thought we could build some stuff as well and that's you know at Lightmaker that's we built digital things for big brands and obviously built that with the social gaming stuff at interaction and obviously ran the platforms at MediaTek. Um so it was a natural extension. We were

originally going we were going to do rocker and then originally we were going to start a business like pretty technical like a software business in the gaming space. The inflection point about where we started those businesses was when we found the right individual to run it. Yeah, I don't feel the need to run all of these things like at all. It's not I don't need to be the front person of these things. In fact, it's embarrassing in some cases to do that. But I'm clear on what the objective is and if I can empower other people to do that, if I can help that and

help them and us, that's a win-win. So we waited until we found the right people and we found someone to run a business and actually it turned out that turned into Skull Mountain which is what the one we launched next which was a product management consultancy because the person that ran it you know he's got a very specific set of skills that it turned into something that wasn't quite what we thought but that's we it was it was complimentary to what we were doing at Rocker. So we worked on a lot of product management stuff did a load of product management consulting for a news

corp and a whole bunch of gaming companies and whatever. And then we we found someone who I knew from my lightmaker days that was looking for a new world and actually they wanted a new life really. They wanted to to do something else from a human level. We really got on together and so we gave them the opportunity to come in and run and build an agency business which was a random color animal. By the way, all of these names are just folly, you know, they're they're total I often get asked that why have you called these businesses what you call them? Skull Mountain was

called Skull Mountain because I thought it was funny to see people's the postman's face like when they what are they expecting to turn up at Skull Mountain 6A 64A high street 7 Oaks like what is that you know like that that's just silly and then random color animal was because obviously there are a million agencies called yellow bear gray panda red ant just a hund of those so we just called it random color animal because you know it's just a silly agency name isn't it? uh pretty technical was called pretty technical because you know it's pretty technical right just somewhat technical so they're just folly

really but they do seem to stick and so yeah we launched random color random ball and then Andre who I'd worked with at MediaTek he'd broadly retired to the south of Spain he was living in Sto he he called and said what I was doing was pretty interesting what what's going on and I was like oh weirdly weird timing that after sort of four or five years sorry now probably after 3 years sorry we'd been meaning to start a technology business but hadn't actually got round to it because Skull Mountain had evolved into something else and random color animal was an agency but I really

want to do a technology business and he was like oh cool I'll do that with you I was like excellent let's do that then so we could afford to do that we had a very clear objective and and a set of objectives there so that's how that all kind of came about >> I think that's such a great approach what would have happened if you would have launched all four at the same time if you would have found like the right people to launch it with at the same time >> two things would have happened uh we'd have run out of cash and we'd have

done a [ __ ] Just too much. Yeah. Too much. Too hard. Yeah. I got to ask that question like how do you run multiple businesses? The truth is I'm not really running them. >> No. No. Exactly. That's why you've got to find the right people. >> Yeah. You got to find the right people. But doesn't Jack Dorsey, he runs Square and Twitter, doesn't he? I mean, you know, they're they're mega mega businesses and he's a bright lad. But, you know, there are people that are doing these things. Elon Musk is doing it, you know, at scale. But, you know, so these are bright people

way way way brighter than I ever will be. But it's the the concept is not unusual in that sense. I don't know how many businesses Playtech for example owned at one point. You know, Play Techch managed services, Play Tech platform. There was they weren't all run by Teddy or Moore, were they? At one point, the problem is sometimes I suppose is that at one point when you're running these four businesses simultaneously and you do have limited capital, at some point they'll all need resources or three or three out of the four or whatever that is. Like how do you decide that? What's your framework for

deciding where to deploy capital or attention when you know when everybody's screaming for investment or for your time or for resources in general? >> You tick off the ones that are most critical in order and that's it. >> But what does what does that mean Andy? Like most critical. Does that mean it's going to you know if is they're going to burn and die if I don't touch it or what what does critical mean? >> Yeah. Yeah. Plenty of times over the last 10 years we've been you know weeks away from disaster for sure unless you're hugely funded and you you know if you're doing

something on a budget stuff happens that costs money you know and you know that just that's just the way of the world and yeah so definitely been there like everyone that's I'm sure everyone that's run the business that's been on these podcasts has given you some and you've had it yourself right have given you some level of indication of the stress that's involved in running businesses. You just have to go through it, you know. Wasn't one of those things like embrace the suck like just embraced the and the fact that it's hard is inevitable. Like it's inevitable, you know. I don't know whether I've met

anyone that's just absolutely killed it. Just cruised through. I don't know if I met anyone like that. People might tell you, but it's not. It's never true. But that's the other thing as well, isn't it? And it's that sometimes like kind of this this idea of looking backwards and making decisions in like in retrospect you go okay maybe I've made the wrong one or the right one or whatever it is there is this survivors bias if you will right you look at people that successfully exited or successfully successfully pivoted their business or whatever that is and you see the 1% of people that have come

out of that successfully and you'd never hear the really the 99% that you know crashed and burned And that's something I I I really live by and I learned really early on is that your success as an individual is very very rarely based on your personal ability. Like it's contextual to the people and the situation around you and that is both positive and negative. I've seen plenty of people who are bright as [ __ ] fail. I have seen plenty of people that have dumb lucked their way into big money, tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds and it's all contextual. Like don't beat

yourself up about those things. I would say like it's so hard when you're in the maelstrom and as I said I've been I' you know I've dealt with businesses that have gone down and you you own that failure and you wear it and it it eats you up but also own the successes and feel good about it. I sometimes take a mental snapshot. I remember doing it on a train at ETV once. I take a mental polaroid, you know, literally before Instagram was a thing cuz I'm that old, you know, and you could just see your nice moments. Take a mental polaroid of those nice

times when it's going well and you feel good because often there's not as humans, we hold on to the negative, don't we? We we beat ourselves up over the things that went badly. And what could I have done wrong? Sure, you could have done some things right, but you can equally ask yourself, why am I not worth 100 million? because there are probably situations where you could have done other things that would have been worth you know x number of quid. So yeah and the people around you and the context around you is more critical than your personal ability. I think >> it's a timing

piece as well and we so on the mastermind we regularly have expert speakers and talking about Dan we had Dan Grater there maybe 3 weeks ago four weeks ago and we were talking about Maxim right and I was before he joined as an expert speaker I was telling our members how I was talking about this framework on how there is just so much downward potential for going against the crowd when you're by yourself right we as people we want to go with the crowd I think this is what killed most businesses where employees just go with the crowd because they think they're going to be

absolutely stoned when they go against the crowd and get it wrong because that is actually true, right? When you go against the crowd and you make a decision and it turns out to be because of dumb luck, it turns out to be the wrong decision or because the macro turns or whatever it is, it's the wrong decision. People are going to say, "Told you so. Knew it beforehand." And when you get it right, nobody actually goes, well, you know, no, I had it wrong and yeah, I was I was kind of, you know, people will also say, no, I knew he was going to make

it. So, I think that's such a again that survivors bias. I think it's really important thing to think about because the opposite is also true, right? We absolutely stone these people that go against the crowd and then fail and it's awful. Well, one needs to be honest enough with themselves to say if I've succeeded genuinely, it's not just because of me. I may have been part of that success and I may be the benefactor of that success, which is great. Five yourself, buy your farm, go and retire to the south of Spain, go and do whatever you want to do. Open a dog sanctuary. Like, whatever

is your thing, right? If you've achieved success, then that's great. Be the be the benefactor of it. But admit that probably it's not entirely you. And I think the where I've struggled with people that I've worked with for certainly with and for the only times that I struggle with other humans is when their ego is out of control and they consider themselves to be the arbiter of success unilaterally. I think that's bonkers. >> Yeah, exactly. This is definitely not leadership. Um let's talk a little bit about these lessons and maybe some of the challenges that you've gone through. So I saw this post that you

made 10th birthday post. You said I launched multiple companies, one failed, one exited, two more with over a 100 colleagues. It's obviously a posts from a while back. But the thing is everybody talks about wins, right? Everybody talks about successes like we were discussing about earlier. I would love to talk about lessons. So, what were some of the most expensive lessons maybe that you've learned from having to shut things down or where it's almost gone wrong or where you said, you know, I'm just weeks away from having to close? What did that look like? What are some of the some of the big things that

you've learned from those lessons? I mentioned earlier like I I'm an over overly positive like you know I I probably project too much positivity into the things that we're doing and actually it's really useful to have people that counter that position you know whether they're they're not that's not my natural stance and actually learning to listen to those people. Um let me put it more pointedly I think accountants could make or break businesses. I've been in situations where I've listened to accountants and they've made us shut something down. Their strong advice is that this is done from a spreadsheet point of view. If you if

you go in if you deal with PE guys or you deal with those kind of people that are running businesses from spreadsheets, they will cost they will try and cost cut their way to growth in a lot of you know and that's tricky, right? And when it looks like the shit's hit the fan and you're at the 99.99% of your your energy and your whatever, there's still 0.1% of opportunity. And and I I will still be punching. I'll still be, you know, going for it. I'll still be swinging for the boundaries as long as that's in there. And that learning about failings sits on both

sides of that coin. In some circumstances, I've shut things down because I've listened to people and I've not backed myself to find a result. And in other situations, I should have shut things down way earlier because I've spent hundreds of thousands, literally hundreds of thousands of pounds on doing something that has become unviable or just isn't viable in the first place. As I've got older, I've been better at that. And I I would still try and realize value from the failure, but I I've I've learned to listen to accountants in a way that I'm happy with. That sounds really bad. And I apologize to any

accountants out there. They're just it's a different mindset to mine. And that's all it is. That's just a different mindset. But how do you know, Andy? Like how do you know that? Like again, looking backwards is easy, right? You go this wrong decision. It's the right decision. Turned out well, didn't turn out well. How do you know in the moment when like the heat is up, there's only weeks of runway left, but you're at the 99.9%. I always think about this image where somebody's hacking their way through a tunnel, you know, and the treasure is on the other side, and there's so many people that

turn around and go back, give up, never knowing how close to the treasure they were hacking their way down, right? And so, how do you how do you know? Can you even know? And how do you decide now based on that experience that you've got, you know, when to end a marriage? Right? You either love that person or you don't. And I've never had to deal with this. I should say I'm very happily married, but I would imagine it's the same. I'd imagine it's the same process. Like when you know, I you know, and I' I've had friends that have done that. But he split

up from his wife and he told me, you know what, the thing that finally did it for me was that she left the bloody dishwasher on in the kitchen every time we sat down for dinner. That was it. That was it. That was enough to break it. And he just knew in that moment that that wasn't who he wanted to spend the rest of his life. And I think business is a bit like that. Like the truth is even I with my my view of the my rose tinted view of of almost everything is like when you know you know there's a gut feel. You

just know it's done. And there is no amount of swinging for the boundaries. There's no amount of [ __ ] There's no amount of budging the numbers. There's no amount of like you just know it's it's done. And the I think a good business person needs to get there before you have to get a divorce. You have to you have to be better at the signals there to call it. So, but I think that I would I would imagine it's the same as like calling time on a relationship. For me, the business is the same. I'm emotionally attached to it. I want it to succeed. I

don't want to be the bad guy. I don't want anyone to suffer. All of the same things that I would want if I ever finished a relationship, I would want it to just be amicable. And often it can't be. And if you were to draw those analogies even further, sometimes divorce lawyers are brought into it and it becomes a [ __ ] show of ownership. And that's the same as administration. You know, people get very emotional. There's a whole load of new people involved in your relationship that you didn't want them involved in. And I would imagine it's the same thing. But if you know, you

know, I would say. >> Yeah. And that's I suppose that's experience that's having got having to have gone through those situations, right? So you see the signals and you understand them and you can read them because the other part of it I suppose is that many people will confuse kind of the challenge and the difficulty like you were talking about before of running a business of owning a business which is full of challenges and doesn't get easy and the grass will always look greener on the other side and you know the I always think about the lady in the red dress you know in the

from the Matrix. It's a bit like that I often feel with with business. So, it's so easy to confuse the wanting to get away from the difficulties versus the signals or the signs that it's actually not working. Have you have you seen that? Have have do you see that now? Can can you see the difference between the two? And do you see that in others? Maybe the people that run the business. >> Yeah, I'm better at calling it like for sure. And like your gut feel becomes more educated. Do you see what I mean? Because of the complexity of business, the macro drivers, the people, ex

COVID, whatever, because of the macro inputs into business, it's almost impossible to predict, but your experience by doing it over and over and over and over and over again in different scenarios, you get to see those triggers. You know, I definitely on the downside, I have a saying always like when businesses go badly wrong, just when you think they can't get any worse, someone resigns. Like that's like literally you just you're at your wits end, the money's running out, you're driving yourself nuts, and then some of the most somewhat important to the business goes, I'm leaving. And they've probably doing it because they've seen the

signs that you haven't. And you're like, I thought this couldn't get any worse, but but my day has got more [ __ ] There was a meme that I saw the other day that your success is directly proportional to the number of times you've said, "Fuck it. I'll figure it out." >> Yes. Yes. >> I I thought that was so good. Yeah. >> I love it. Andy, you've put you've had to put business in administration like we were talking about just now. That is some of the absolute worst possible outcomes, right? Nobody wants to go through that on any of the sides that you're involved

in it. What were maybe some of the signs that you saw 6 12 months before that perhaps you missed or that you know when you look back now that perhaps you didn't. So, is there anything there that maybe people listening they can watch out for? >> Under capitalization is a big one. you know, what are the business I was involved with? We we' done a plan. We've said it needed 3.2 million. The investors put in 1.6 million or whatever. We executed on the 1.6 million. We got to the point we started running out of money. We started winning some clients. And they were like, why

don't you win more clients? We're like, we told you it was going to be 3.2 million. What part of that wasn't clear? If we don't have the 3.2 million, we're not going to have enough money. And then it's just cyclic decline in there. You know, like you're scrabbling. You're trying to take bad projects. You're trying to take bad clients. You're trying to to work these things out as you go. And it's hard. You know, you you that's not to say it would have worked, but certainly under capitalization would be a canary in the coal mine there for sure. And making sure, you know, we've got

some minority investors in pretty technical and one of their they're very smart, very very good finance guys. Um really really top their game, all of them. Um there's a little consortium there. and they're just really really good people outside the gaming industry. But, you know, they're just saying don't run out of cash, you know, that's just don't run out of cash. And that's just so simple, isn't it, you know, but if you can see that coming, if you see that world, then cut your cloth accordingly. But also back yourself to get more cash. Don't cut yourself to growth, you know. Don't cut cut your cost

to growth. That's hard. That's even harder. Um, and if you're set, you know, I I've done that. I acquiesced to the requirement to cut costs with the same expectation that we'll hit the same numbers on the business plan. It's a convenient memory loss. You said we'd hit X million and I said we'd hit X million if we invested Y million. That's what I said. You know, not if we hit X million if we've got Y divided by two. That's that's much harder thing to do. That's luck at that point more than judgments. >> Makes sense. Don't run out of cash. That's difficult. people. I mean, we've

all been there. We're weeks away from running out of cash. And so, what does that do? Like, why is that so important? How does that affect decision making when it's kind of end of the road versus it's well capitalized? I >> think um that you're not making panic decisions. Um Jessica, who I mentioned earlier at MediaTek, had a great saying, which is I use it all the time. It's expensive to be poor. Isn't that a great saying? It's expensive to be poor. And obviously the intimation is you get worse deals. You get worse rates. You know, someone can see the blood in the water if

they're investing. You know, it's just expensive to be poor. If you dress in cheap clothes and you want a good job, it's more difficult. You know, these just these silly things. And she used to say that it's expensive to be poor. And so she always used to make sure that business was capitalized to the correct level. What a great what a great little piece of learning that was for me. I think David McDow said it where for him with FSB it was just constantly finding that balance between not diluting too much but also resourcing it well enough and that balance he said it's like like

a magician's act you know and the one thing he said about it is I never got it quite right and maybe that's the truth. I think there's something to be said for cut once and cut hard. Like I mean be be decisive in both cutting and fundraising as much or more than you need if you're fundraising and dilute once at that point rather than death by a thousand cuts and just tripping because again if you find yourself in a suboptimal position which is a great consulting term by the way suboptimal just means [ __ ] doesn't it? If if if we're describing something as sub-optimal, it

just means I'm in a boardroom, not on this podcast. But, you know, if you're a sub-optimal position with your business and you're looking to raise capital and you know it it's expensive to be poor, you know, you're you're taking anyone's deal and it's you could be taking bits, little bits, little tranches. Then you've got a whole group of shareholders to please and everyone's, you know, demanding this and that. There's, you know, preeemption rights, there's board seats, there's blah blah blah blah blah. I would say if if I'm if I'm doing it then, you know, know what you need, take what you need, but just do

it in as m as fewer chunks as possible. That's obvious, I suppose, to anyone that's ever done it, but maybe not for people that haven't done it. >> One of the things I love about you, Andy, is that you're a massive fan of quiet, effective leaders, and I suppose there's actually two really extremes. There's the very loud ones, especially in gaming, right? There's the very loud ones, and there's the the very quiet ones. And I think gaming often because you hear the loud ones or you see the loud ones, it's often the thing that people believe you should do, right? The LinkedIn presence, the whatever

the big stands, the flashy stuff, right? You've deliberately chosen to stay behind the scene, you know, guys behind the guys. If you know, you know, kind of stuff that we were talking about for this podcast as well. How do you build your service, your network without all of that shouting and all of that noise that you see so many others do? >> There's definitely an argument to say again, I've made my life harder for myself by not following that sort of public self-promotion thing. You know, I could have got PR and could have done loads of speaker stuff. The main reason I didn't do that, two

reasons really, I suppose. One is that prefer to just let my actions speak and going back to running our own race. Weirdly, I only need them to speak to myself. Like, I want I want other It's nice when other people think you've done a good job. I don't, don't get me wrong, I'm not I'm not so self-absorbed that I don't care. I do care. Um, and that's nice if other people acknowledge that you've done a good job and, you know, whatever, but I think that's important to me is to know that I'm I'm delivering on what I say I'm going to do. The second reason

is that up until probably two years ago, I was working on projects personally that were in the industry for lots of big names and it's very difficult. I can't talk about those. I couldn't talk about them. You know, whether they're big acquisitions or whether they're strategic challenges that people had, lots of people that we both know, lots of companies that we both know, I just don't talk about them. Not because I'm being like overly humble. I just think I've got a contract and I'm not telling people's secrets, you know, I don't want to talk about them. It's not in my remitt. I'm employed to do

a job and I'll get on and do that and then I'll keep that quiet and I'll move on to the next job. There's there's some network learning that I have that's valuable and that's been useful, but like I haven't leveraged anyone's stuff for my own gain. I've just gone and done it. And so I didn't want to go out and say, you know what, I've absolutely smashed it with this private equity firm buying this business for hundreds of millions of pounds just under the due diligence on this business and I could tell you all about their tech and all about their people and I know

loads about that stuff and I've helped these people. I've saved that business from bankruptcy. I've helped these individuals personally on a you know I mean who cares, right? And it like I've done all of those things but I'm not telling you anybody that I've done them for. And so there we go. That's my cross to bear is I can talk about it in the abstract but not in the definite. You know, >> here's a thing that you'll like. I did a webinar yesterday with Andrew Bullis from Rogers, very nice guy, and he said the difference between true leaders and CEOs and the ones that are

not is that one gets really excited about, let's think about Christmas, gets really excited about unwrapping their own presents and celebrating their own presents and the other one gets really excited about everybody else unwrapping their presents and being surprised by them. And I think that's so true. You know, that's kind of what you're talking about here as well. It's yeah, taking your ego out of the equation. >> There's an element I would call out there as well with smart people that run businesses. I think it's also fair to say that that's not totally altruistic. I think there's there is a great joy in seeing other

people progress. A joy that I've grown into as I've got older. As a younger man, I was much more bullish, much more arrogant, much more confident, much more focused on my own success. As you move through life, and it is an age thing, more than an experience thing probably you you recalibrate slightly. This super satisfying. I know Ian spoke about that on his podcast about the guy that is now running something in the industry that he's really proud of. I know exactly who he's talking about and high fives to both Ian and him. like genuinely like they both killed it. Good job. There's definitely that. But

I would say that leaders are not totally altruistic in that way. Is it Rockefeller? I'm going to misquote someone here. Did Rockefeller say, "I prefer to make 1% off a 100 people than 100% of my own time." >> Oh, it might be. I'm not sure. >> Like, yeah, I think he is JD. Rockefeller. I think he said, "Yeah, I prefer to make $1 from 100 people and $100 of my own time." Something in that order of magnitude. But the sentiment is actually by doing a good job for the team, you could be more successful. the result is more successful for you. As I said earlier, I

don't believe that you're more successful. I believe the outcome can be more successful and that can benefit you. That's there's different things. They're to they're totally different things. Uh my last question, Andy, if you you've been in a business now for 28 years, built agencies, platforms, incubated businesses, executed exits, you've done all of it, right? If you go go back to talk to 25 30 year old Andy uh starting Sunream Sunstream what's the one piece of advice that you would give that would have helped you the most or would have saved you the highest amount of pain I always think about these things as the

leverage piece you know what's the leverage piece that you could have told yourself that would have escalated things for you in a different way >> two answers to that first answer and slightly more cherishly is get into gaming earlier someone who's the chairman of of a bunch of businesses and we both know this person said to me, you know, making money from gaming's been pretty easy, Andy, over the last 20 years. I was like, wow, it doesn't feel that easy, but I maybe I wasn't in slightly early enough. And so, yeah, get into gaming earlier as 25-year-old Andy, like do a, you know, null Hayden

and do a jackpot joy and do all of those things. I, weirdly, I I at our agency in those days, I had all of the skills like we had the people, we had the designers, we had the technologists. We could have done a game sis. We could have done that. just didn't wasn't in the industry, wasn't thinking about it. So that's probably the chish answer is get into gaming earlier. But I think as a younger as a younger man probably continue to back yourself. I there was a time where I didn't back myself and I was doing a good job but I was doing them

for other people and I was trying I was trying really hard but I was trying really hard for other people and I felt like sometimes not entirely because I said there's some I work for some fantastic people very bright very experienced super super generous like like brilliant people but there were certainly times in that that time where I thought I'm letting myself down. I'm not running my own race here. I'm running someone else's race and I'm helping them achieve their goals and I'm happy to do that, but that's not the race I I should be running. And I think as a younger man, I should

have stuck to my conviction and when I left Sunstream and we had all of that good and bad and okay and whatever and it was, you know, whatever it ended up being. I'm still friends with those people now, by the way. They're super nice, super nice guys, but like I should have just backed myself and gone again. >> I love it. Back yourself, run your own race. Those are the two big things that I take away from our conversation today. Andy, thank you very much for being so generous with your time. Your experience been fantastic having you on the podcast. >> My pleasure and all

the best to you as well. Leo, take it easy, buddy. >> Thank you for listening to the i Gaming Leader podcast. If you're a VP, a director, founder or an executive in I gaming, making the biggest decisions alone. That's exactly what I've built I gaming lead a mastermind for. small inner circles of vetted senior executives, weekly hot seats, and accountability from people who understand the effects of the decisions that you need to make. Find out more and apply at i gamingleer.com. And a final thanks to our sponsor, Sumsup, the full cycle verification platform for i gaming operators. Player onboarding, AML, fraudrevention, all in one place. More

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