Savvas Fellas: The Founder Who Got Tired of Gambling's Bullshit. So He Built Something Better.

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I don't want to tell you that you can't do the job that I don't even know what the job is. I don't really know what a proper CMO looks and sounds like or COO or CFO, but I'll run you through this program. They'll benchmark you against what they know with this big data set and then they'll be able to tell me if hey person A can do this job over here at the C level. And I did that and it turned out pretty much no one could cuz I'll go through it as well. I'll also step aside. Obviously the mistakes are always happening. Predominantly they're

around people who are just not a right fit. We should be reviewing, rewarding, hiring and firing too. firing in a compassionate way. This government does not have an idea of how business works. This government is reckless and putting real people in danger. How can you be okay with £500,000 going into the black market knowing that people are going to be put in front of risk? Have a very clear mission and a clear vision and values that underpin your behaviors and your collective personality. The first principles in which you make your day-to-day decisions should be your value framework. That's the secret source if anyone really wants

it. >> It's like the man to the moon kind of thing, right? with the guy sweeping. He asks the cleaner, "What's your job? What do you do here?" And he says, "My job is to make a man go to the moon." It's that, right? Like because he works for NASA, that's the thing they're doing. >> We sell entertainment. And that doesn't necessarily mean it has to be a slot machine or a live dealer. It's pushing us to innovate. I mean, you should see something in the next couple of weeks on Mr. Q, both on the traditional side and on the non-traditional side. Can we shift

the paradigm of what real money entertainment is? >> 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, high stakes decisions, and 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, Sumsup, 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 Salas who's the founder and CEO of Mr. Q, a bootstrap founder business that is a real challenger brand. I actually met Salas for the first time at the Power 50. Really cool. Saw him on stage and he walks the walk and talks the talk. I think really the brand is really a reflection of what you are Salas. someone who loves debate, not afraid to call out the [ __ ] and the challenges the norm to fix what you see as wrong. So, I'm

really excited to talk to you today. Thanks for joining. >> Thanks for having me. >> Hey, I wanted to start all the way back maybe not at the Ministry of Sound, but uh >> you really have done your research. >> Of course. Um now, I' I'd like I'd love to start where this whole idea with Mr. Q started because I think many people start businesses out of frustration. Can you talk us through that? Can you start there? where this idea came up, what your frustration was and what you're trying to solve. >> I mean, you're you're completely right. There was a frustration and I guess

a naivity. I was early 20s, completely naive, but very kind of tunnel vision and determined and I like to think of myself as having grit and that's something you can't teach. I don't have a good educational background. I grew up on council state in Birmingham. But the problem was uh so I was in a marketing agency in London. I'd graduated uni. come down and I'd set up an affiliate site to practice some of the things I was learning. SEO, PPC, display, cookies, retargeting. I I ended up somehow doing a bingo comparison site. Then that evolved into becoming a white label operator as well. So I

could be both sides of the fence of advertiser and publisher. I was advertiser on my publisher side. So whilst I wasn't getting this kind of CPA, I was getting the data. I was practicing being a grown-up operator and the software suppliers were taking care of all the boring stuff. I did that again and again, but the frustration started to brew. I couldn't get anything over the line. It was the days of flash, real-time data, you know, staging environments, better back offices, speedier back offices, better reporting, making it more dynamic because they had lots of constraints. These software providers, you have to work the way that

they want you to work. this CRM tool or this back office or this particular rapport and eventually I was like, do you know what? [ __ ] this. I'm just going to How hard can it be? I'm going to build it and I will then only have to answer to myself and if I've got anyone to blame, I I only have to look in the mirror and I can either fix it or choose to do nothing about it. Bam. That's how I looked at it and then I started to build it. We had the advertiser publisher building in the background using the revenues from this, hence

the bootstrap thing. and then slowly building it. Managed to get Mr. Q live in August 2018 and then slowly just got rid of all that other stuff. That was the means. This was the end. And the kind of rest is history. But you're right that a lot of the personality of a founder is in the business. But yeah, it's been an interesting journey, >> mate. I see it in so many things, right? Like even even with what you just said about not getting features through because you were you've said before it was on merits. You had good arguments. You just weren't doing the revenue that

for them to listen to you, right? >> Yeah. The meritocracy wasn't there. >> Exactly. Yeah. So, I think a lot of this translates back into how you run Mr. Q, right? The brand is run on fairness and transparency, no [ __ ] all of that. Yes. Your personality coming through in the brand. But famous last words, right? Like how how hard can it be? And do you know what? It's an energy that doesn't leave you either. I've sat with that a little bit because so this building that we're in is Queen's House. It used to be owned by Crown Prosecution Service. I needed a place

to put my team. We were on a business park in the back end of St. Orburn's and I wanted to rehouse them. Bit more central, bit more vibe, bit more energy, reflected the personality and the culture of the business, not a business park in the back end of nowhere. Uh I ended up winning it. got kind of carried away and swept away in the process. And then when the dust settled, I was like, "What am I going to do with 20,000 square feet of a building beyond housing Mr. Q, I didn't need 20,000. I barely needed five. I still barely need five." And then I

was like, "Okay, I'll just renovate it and do a co-working space. How hard can it be?" No research, just an idea. But then tunnel vision kicks in and you just go go go. And then on the other side of it, you're like, okay, it was hard, but it was fun. And this is the problem with the original point that we were talking about with the shiny new objects. Shiny new objects are fun. As entrepreneurs, we want to fix it. We want to prove that we can buck the trend. Some of us can and some of us can't. And it's not all wins. There's some failures

in there. But I've realized that I need to be more conscious of that. How hard can it be? And sometimes you say, you know what, I'm okay on this one. >> Maybe some. Isn't that what makes you a founder and an entrepreneur? I think founders and entrepreneurs overindex on their likelihood of backing themselves believing in the things that general public wouldn't believe in, right? Like they're going against a trend. Yeah. You got to be careful though with this because you don't want to be deluded to think that all your ideas work because your gut tells you and that you've got some secret source internally because

you're not going to get them all right. But I think we are wired that way. What I've also realized is that we're first principal thinkers. And so take the example of Queen's House. It's a building. St. Orbins is 19 minutes train from King's Cross. There's a lot of commuters here. It's pretty affluent, pretty middle class. That was my research, my first principles. I was like, surely if I build it, like it will happen. And you know, sure enough, it did. Same with Mr. Q. Like surely this experience is terrible. The players need more. They don't want to be overwhelmed by bonuses with like stupid wagering

requirements before it becomes real. It's all just a big veil, a thin veil. People want to have an honest relationship. This is serious stuff. They're choosing real money entertainment and we're responsible to give them that entertainment and keep the balance so that it doesn't go into art. I I think first principle what I've realized is that we're not all first principal thinkers. I've come across people who are a case of this worked over here, therefore it will work here. Well, you didn't break the problem down. You didn't challenge it. You didn't ask why. You didn't break it down to the bare bones and then build

it back up. That's not the type of person that would work well here. One of the values is challenge everything. So, in interviews, I do all final stage interviews, although recently I've let go of some of them. at this particular moment in time with the tax and everything else. The value of challenge everything and the value of get [ __ ] done, they overlap a little bit. If you're getting [ __ ] done, you're probably challenging something and trying to find unconventional routes to fix a problem. And get [ __ ] done is the energy that you kind of apply. So there is a bit

of a vin overlap. But in interviews, I will quickly ask a person, tell me the last time you got [ __ ] done or tell me the last time you challenged something and found an unconventional route. It's amazing some of the responses that you get. But we interview based on all of those values so that we ensure everyone who comes in comes in with the same thinking, the same behaviors because otherwise you're just you're going to be stuck in the middle as a brand, right? And that's not good. So maybe something for the listeners as well, those two questions. Think about that for a second. Um, how

many people have you got now? So >> I think we're about 202. It does vary because obviously you've got like Well, I'm thinking about my Slack channel with 202 specific. I I ran into Johan Dalstrom. He's just started working for you guys. So, I coached some of the guys at gambling.com. So, I sat on the celebrity table with the witch bingo awards and then I saw Yan there. I'm like, "Ah, cool." Yeah, they had a marketing gathering over here, but everyone's gone now. It was good to see a lot of people. Marketing is massive at the moment. the team size is is is grown a

lot. So our CMO all of 25 basically had reorged the whole marketing function and we did a great job to build out this team. Obviously there's a few bumps in the road but uh it's strong and there's a lot more to do. There's a lot more opportunity. We're not firing on all cylinders from a marketing perspective by a stretch. >> Well, I love that that you've got such a strong multidisciplinary background in all these areas. On the one hand, that's a curse. on the other hand is also >> jack of all trades, master of not. >> You know, there's a real risk of micromanagement. I

love what you said about that it's taken you so long to recruit a really good team of sea levels around you. I think looking back that was probably, you know, people talk about secret source, but is there really a secret source? I'm not convinced. And if there is a secret source, I don't think it's an objective secret source. I think it's way more abstract of have a very clear mission and uh a clear vision and values that underpin your behaviors and your collective personality and the first principles in which you make your day-to-day decisions should be your value framework. That's the secret source if anyone

really wants it. What are your values? What is your mission? trying to get a load of people to, if you use a different kind of analogy of building a boat, you know that you got people designing it, people cutting the wood, people fixing the wood and everything that would go along with that. And rather than finding people who are disciplined in those domains, I think your job as a leader, at least my perspective is inspire them to journey into the wide open ocean and then that's what you get. And then you rather than the micromanager of like you need to cut this wood, you need

to design that, you need to build that. No, just make them yearn for the open waters and then so that's your kind of mission statement and then everything else will flow a lot easier. >> Does this make the boat go faster? Right? It's like the man to the moon kind of thing, right? With the guy sweeping, the cleaner going, if somebody asks the cleaner, what's your job? What do you do here? And he says, "My job is to make a man go to the moon." And it's that, right? Like, but it's literally that. It's because he works for NASA, that's the thing they're doing. I

mean, that is a great analogy. Even the cleaners subscribe to the mission of putting a man on the moon. Like, when people join the or they should really be joining not because, hey, I really like finance and accounting. No, I really like the mission statement of making every play unforgettable and to burn the rule book when it gets in the way, which is exactly our mission statement. >> Yeah, exactly. And then and then the other thing I love about you is so many founders, including myself, struggle with shiny object stuff. It translates everything you do from being UK only to how you run the team, what

you focus, the focus is the focus and that's what we're going to if you want to have a debate about changing from that focus, let's have the debate. But you it's got to have bloody good arguments to distract from that focus because I think that's the thing that most people inherently kind of is also part of the secret source I suppose and is therefore also the biggest trap is that distraction and not going with that focus for long enough you know to truly believe in something. I I was talking to um to Paul, you know, the founder CEO of Games and they've got this multiplayer

thing they've been working on for four years, still haven't delivered and still is just an idea. So much money down the drain. And we were talking about that man to the moon thing. And he said, "Okay, that's great analogy. My worry is what's happens after we're on the moon, after we've launched that thing. Now what I do?" >> Yeah. Well, you got to get there first. But I think the focus thing is a weird one because I think we spoke about this last time. the amount of people who hey when are we doing sports book and when are we doing different markets you're like well

hang open to all of those all good ideas but tell me why tell me why rather than why are we not doing tell me why we should do it that's where you have a good team around you because you should be able to free to challenge but that focus thing is important because a lot of these things like sports book like different markets they're one-way door decisions uh and once you make them there is a fire exit in there once you're in the for but they're quite hard to find and I'm really kind of alive to that fact but I also have a really good

leadership team who you know there's been a couple of instances in the last 12 18 months opportunities and I think as entrepreneurs bootstrap founders you like shiny things you want to fix things it's just in our nature it's how we wired so when it comes up like oh yeah I I could take that and I could do this and I could do that but then you're going to lose focus at what cost otherwise uh would you be doing this. So my CFO has been like indulge me a little bit but then at the right time he was like what why would we doing this? What

are we doing here? This is just focus. Like we can't lose that focus. It's once it's gone it's gone. So I think that's really important. It's hard. It's very hard to maintain that focus but I think we've done well with it. Are you so wired? You think so? Are you uh are you kind of do you have a strong focus or are you more some people are think about ADHD or OCD or you know whatever wherever we're all somewhere on the spectrum are you super focus focus type I'm a bit of both but it depends on the circumstance the people around me have got better

focus than me I get distracted easily I mean I've got ADHD I don't take anything for it because I think it's also that's a secret source yeah but when push comes to shove and my back's up against the wall, that's when I do my best work. I'm not prepared for this, but I know it's a subject matter I know really well and so I'm pretty comfortable and confident with it. But I wouldn't say I'm super focused. I wish I was actually. I've met people who are and I've got them in my team. A CFO is really good at knowing where to focus his energy, but

he's also comfortable with saying, "I'm going to do this because whatever first principle thinking he's applied to it because it impacts this, this, and this, and the values there." He's thinking in the future, he's got good time span. And knowing that right next to this thing, there's a fire. I can even feel the heat of that fire, and it's getting bigger and bigger. But I know that I can't drop my focus here to do that. if anything, if I fix this, I potentially tame some of the fire over here. And he is exceptional at it. Whereas I'm like, oh, let me take a look actually

or like, you know, chasing I don't think we realize that we're kind of addicted to dopamine a bit for sure. >> Especially when you're kind of elevating as a leader. And I think leadership is a skill. So I think most people can learn it with the right mindset. >> You really have to stop chasing the dopamine here. Oh, like I'll put that little fire out. that would give me a nice kind of instant gratification versus this thing which could take days, weeks, months. The leadership team took two years to build. It got there eventually, but it was a hard It's probably the hardest part of

what I've done in the past eight years was putting that team together. >> Why was that so hard though? Is it just because the right people, values, and mission or was it more like a time thing that's >> It's a bit of both. So um finding the right person in the right sea is really hard especially when you have a really strong valueled organization. So they have to subscribe to these six principles and as said they are the first principles in which we should be making all of our day-to-day decisions. So you've got we own it, we challenge everything, we win as one, we care

by design, we play smart long games and we get [ __ ] done. So interviewing people and making sure that they have to some degree some of that is already hard. Now trying to find sea levels, experienced seasoned execs who who just get it and can deliver and can grow and are hungry and are relentless relentless executives who also know how to get delegate and the difference between management and leadership. That's even so now it's even harder and what makes it even harder the difficulty just keep going up and up and up from a CMO was out of industry uh a COO also out of

industry both of them have got fintech experience trying to convince people to join this industry when the stigmas around it are already you know what they are we all know it is quite hard so you really have to sell it we're different we do things differently here are some examples of how that's translated and then getting them to subscribe to that. It's leadership. It's about selling that vision. This goes back to the building the boat. Like make people want to yearn for the open ocean and they'll build the boat to do it. Your job as a leader is to make them really crave the open

waters. Uh that's even harder. You kind of don't want people who are readily available. If I told you that you were going to renovate your house tomorrow and you found a building contractor and he was available tomorrow, you probably question that. Why are you available tomorrow? If you're as good as you say you are and you can do what needs to be done, why are you available tomorrow? You kind of want a few nos. To the point about focus, one of Steve Jobs famous quotes was like, I'm almost as proud as the things that we didn't do as the things that we did do. So

that's the first one. And on this one, when Steve Jobs hired the CEO of Burberry globally and Steve Jobs approached her and he wanted her to head up all of Apple's retail globally, technically a step down and also completely different industries, but he obviously had his reasoning, but he'd approached her once and she was flattered and it's well documented. And she said no to her about three times, but then time passes, you build the rapport, you sell it in again, maybe something changes at Burberry, and then all of a sudden, if you get your timing right, come over. And then she went over and she

smashed it. >> I've seen it with Julian as well, right? Like Julian was didn't have a sea level ro before you put him in that seat. So, and that's difficult as well. Like one of the biggest challenges is like, you know, as a founder, they just get themselves involved maybe in areas where they shouldn't. Maybe it's so big you don't really need to be signing off for UI change. You can be part of that process and help give perspectives and shape ideas, but you don't need to be we're genius with a thousand helpers, you know, CEO versus just building a great company with great people. It's

the difference between good to great. Jim Collins talks about this in his book Good to Great, where he analyzed good companies. There was a methodology to which companies he looked at. I can't remember what they were. And then what's the difference between those ones and the great and so he went and interviewed all of these old execs from the great cohort and the good cohort. One of the things from the good cohort was as soon as that CEO founder had left. A lot of these companies failed is one of the things that highlighted the fact that they were only good, they weren't great. Whereas a

great company will transcend the founder, the owner like Nike. Although even then it's choppy when Phil Knight left. Yeah, the genius with a thousand helpers are the good companies. But you take them out and the thing should still perform as good if not better. And I think the hard part is like I said to you earlier, you know, with someone someone like your experience that is really wide experience, not having your fingers too much in every pipe. So I run a mastermind, right? And we have expert speakers in our masterminds regularly and Daniel Grazer was one of them and he was talking about this founder

mode versus CEO mode. >> That's the Brian Chesky thing. >> I thought that it's such a great point of okay, you don't have to follow these specific rules of how you feel an organization needs to be run, right? You can do the skip levels and you should be involved in it because it is your vision. >> Yeah. The founder man's interesting. The whole Brian Chesky thing was like he was always taught and believed and Silicon Valley was kind of like a big fan of this is like okay you've got product market fit you've got all that stuff now build a team and just let them

do it and what he found is that for founders it was different and when you kind of zoom in in certain areas there are things that you see there are things that you feel that could and should be better and so you also should be able to say I don't like that I think that could be better we need to change this is so indoctrinated with just put a good seauite together and the rest is history. There's a a large part of that is true. A large part of that is not true. It's not as black and white as that. I wish it was by

the way. Um so tell me about the growth stages, different pain points, different challenges. Talk us through the phases of the business and the biggest challenges and decisions you had to make, the ones that you got wrong, the ones you got right. >> There's a lot in that. The first part is the start which is whatever it just do whatever it takes whether you need to answer customer support queries which we did I did. Uh I remember early on when we turned it on we were in a room we had a driving license from a player and there must have been 11 people in that

room some of them who are still here by the way and remember it and we're like and we'd had training before that. What do we do? Is it fraud? How do we know if it's real? How do we know if it's fake? How do we approve it? Where do we store it? Who's got access to it? Do we delete it? Like there's just questions and questions and questions. And so you're trying to constantly answer all of that whilst growing. And then that, you know, I think of different phases by headcount. So you do that for a very long time and then you get to maybe

50 or 70 people. And that was a big step change. So at this point, you've got people who stayed on the journey because you sold a good vision. You made them yearn for the open waters and they built a boat. But now you need to operationalize this boat and that was a completely different challenge. So the real work started when we turned it on very different building. I thought that was hard but turning it on was much harder. But then around 50 70 people looking back I thought it was just all technology and I wanted to be I and I used to say it then

which is quite weird because the framing of live and die by product speaks to product and product people and product owners and product managers. I didn't know that. I just thought that was about building. And so it became about engineers and find really good engineers who know how to build front end, back end. You've got QA and everything else that goes in between those two disciplines. And then it got to a point where nothing was changing. I'm like, we're making good revenue. We're growing. We're hiring seemingly good people who really know their craft, but every time I log into the product, it looks the same. What's

going on? It took me so long to realize that overnight the problem had shifted from being a technology problem to being a productled problem. With engineering being a subset of product and I just didn't know that I just thought more engineers more engineers but engineers need a product owner product manager. I'm not so big on project management. We don't have it. I'd realized that quite late. Then I put this structure of product people in. You make some mistakes. have made a lot of mistakes in terms of hires, not not getting the right person in the right seat for the right reasons. That was the biggest

one that came out when you asked that question. The mistakes are always happening. Predominantly, they're around people. Whether they're people who are just not a right fit, doesn't make them good or bad, they're just not right. Or whether you potentially bring people in that are going against the values. For me, the values are the most important thing in the business. we should be reviewing, rewarding, hiring and firing too. Firing in a compassionate way. So that was the big one. And then after that the next biggest one was the seauite and getting that right because you had people who are on a journey with you. Then

it gets really big and then you kind of make them into heads and then I was like okay now we need a seuite and I really need to verticalize all the problems so that they start up here. We decide on what we're going to do. We carve it out. But we give it to all these teams and then it gets distributed nicely, gets executed, gets delivered. On paper, all of this is bloody easy. By the way, you know, all the business books will kind of like the bigger it gets, the complexity kicks in. You're dealing with a lot of humans and emotion and their needs

and trying to meet their needs as well as them trying to meet the needs of the business. Just like any relationship, it's about meeting the needs of another. I tried to turn that heads off layer into a seauite. And I went and did an executive competency test because I was like, I don't want to tell you that you can't do the job that I don't even know what the job is. I don't really know what a proper CMO looks and sounds like or COO or CFO or CPO. But I'll run you through this program and that will tell me because they've got a load of

Pback data. They'll benchmark you against what they know with this big data set. and then they'll be able to tell me if hey person A can do this job over here at the C level not the heads off level and I did that and it turned out pretty much no one could and they did also say listen if it comes out that I also don't benchmark with this cuz I'll go through it as well I'll also step aside fortunately turns out I've got the raw ingredients I think I've got the raw ingredients of challenging and good communication and good vision Um, and then I had

to obviously deal with that because again you're dealing with people who've been on a journey with you, but it doesn't necessarily mean that what got you here will get you there. And everyone had to realize that together. Um, not everyone stuck around as you can imagine, but a a large number of people did. Some people just acknowledged that it was their time and then that gave me the freedom to go put AC suite. So I started with a CFO and then I went to CMO. So I wanted to go straight to the revenue machine. What is the next role that I need at sea level

now that I've dealt with that big issue over here? CFO, then CMO, then COO, then CPO. And it worked well. It worked really well. But it was I just felt like it took longer than it needed to take. >> It's what happens when there's, you know, emotions involved. I was actually just talking about this book here with someone on a call before this a hard thing about hard things from Horowitz one of my favorite books and he one of the passages in there is about exactly that where he also as a founder le business got all this group of people around him that he's now

leading the business with and he's saying like okay I don't have this experience of leading an organization this size and if none of us have it that's a real problem like one person we can stomach and then I'll get experienced leadership around me so I have to fire of >> well I didn't I didn't have to do that I but I get that sentiment and there's a little bit of that people who I consider as friends uh and they moved on because I was making these decisions and that's fine as well you know it's a two-way street remember that like you know the needs thing

you're there to meet the needs of the business and the business is also there to meet your needs and if it doesn't work then you have to part ways but I remember one of the people from that heads of layer who was like I mean one of the biggest mistakes that I made is that I had two people competing for one of these seats and it's only just come back to me but I'd given it to someone and that caused a lot of problems for me with the other person because I hadn't handled it very well. This was probably the first big CEO type decision

or conflict I had to deal with and I reverted on the decision because I heard better arguments and rationale and I needed to balance it out a little bit. I had to go to this person and say, "Remember thing that we talked about? I don't think it's the right thing for the business. I need to pull back." That created problems for me. I could have handled it better. But one of the people during that time, they were like, "Just tell me what I need to do and I'll do it. Tell me what that role is and I will do it." I was like, "I can't

tell you what I don't know." Which is to your point, we're all making it up as we go along. >> But well done, Sas. Because one of the big mistakes so many of us make is that we create this management debt, right? that we create this, you know what I mean? The debts that we have to pay back in the future of these decisions that we make and the cost of that is exponential over time, right? So, the sooner you revert it, yeah, it's painful. Remember it distinctly. And I remember getting them into the room with the the entire heads off layout and I didn't

tell anyone what I was doing, why I was doing it. They were like questioning, you know, what is this? because I'd kind of semi-rolled out this decision, the first part that I got wrong, and then I'm in a like, guys, I [ __ ] up. I [ __ ] up and I need to acknowledge it. And here I am, all my cards on the table. But the best thing for the business right now is to revert back, take a breath, figure it out. That's what we did. They took it well. Many of the people in that room are still here. >> Yeah. Because that's what

people buy, right? They buy you, they buy the vision, they buy the mission, they buy the culture. That underlies it, right? Like question everything. There you go. >> Yeah. first principles again. >> Okay. So, we talked about your singular focus, right? As a brand, you're focused just on the UK. Everybody knows they've made this amazing decision of going from 21% to 40% just to help. >> Thanks, Rachel. >> Yeah, doing great. And you're sticking with the UK, right? You have again, it's management debt, focusing elsewhere, opening new markets, going into sports, whatever it is. I want to go back first to when that decision actually

landed. I know everybody was like, "Ah, this can't be true. It's not going to happen." Tell me about your story, your side of things on how it was for you and how how the conversation inside the business went. We'd heard as I'm sure everyone else had uh rumors and murmurss around 25, 30s, maybe even 35. We had done some planning around different scenarios. So, we did scenario planning. I think we did up to maybe 32ish. What would it look like for the business? And if it was this, what would we have to do? I was convinced it was going to be 25. I'd heard rumors

it was 25 from credible sources. And so the initial reaction was shock. How could they be so stupid? How could they not listen to what was being said? To some degree, I don't blame them because what was being said was coming from people who historically had formed part of the problem. I get it. But it's objectively obvious what would happen. The black market was going to have a field day because we couldn't offer the same promotions. We couldn't offer the same RTPs. You know, everything just got more expensive. And so, initially, it was pure shot. And so, we sat there licking our wounds for a

bit, digesting it, brainstorming, talking, mourning, and then eventually we're like, "All right, what's the plan?" So very very quickly we were on all hand calls saying listen this has happened this is what it means we've ran the numbers against the 40 and there's a mitigation plan to be done which some of them would diminish the players experience the main one being RTPs you know for every pound that's wagered you know 4 P or goes to the house and 96 goes back to the player that's how it works we were going to have to reduce that and historically I'd monitored everyone else who was reducing RTPs

before the tax and I knew that that was always going to be a big asopass leave to say no hold out if we have to reduce it we will but only by necessity and that was one of the immediate things that we did but that ruins a player's experience now for every pound that they wager they're potentially only getting 94 p back and the house has to take six because they've got to cover this revenue tax which had just had a 90% increase on revenue and I don't think that's widely understood either It's not on bottom line, it's on revenue. And now Mr. Streeting is

now talking about a 40% CGT. This government does not have an idea of how business works. They don't have a commercial nails. They've never been in business and they just sit there writing these things down thinking that oh yeah, everything will be fine in the end. Black market is running rampant at the moment. And so I think one of the good things that it did do actually was it created a common enemy. It wasn't about being better than our peers in the regulated space. It was now about we've got to make sure that that doesn't compromise players because this is real people and it's going

to create real problems for them. So we have to give really good reasons as to why to stay at a mystic quue. Uh, and that will be through the story that you tell, the the kind of challenging narrative, the honesty, the transparency because they don't want all the [ __ ] They're not idiots. They can see promotional offers. We've had to have the CMA tell us how to write our promotion offers because that's how we've been we've been stupid. When you look at these old historical offers, which we've never done, like what are you trying to do? Like, this is ridiculous. These are real people. They're

not idiots. And so, we got on a call. We told the business it was all good. Uh, and it was all good, but it was going to be challenging. There were going to be winners, there was going to be losers, and we would be one of the winners because of our risk profile, because of the bootstrap mentality of how we operated. It allowed us to just take bigger risks. We sell entertainment. Like, let's be honest, we just sell entertainment. Obviously, AI has helped us a lot as well. Um, and everyone rallied around that. It was really positive. And the sentiment was like, yeah, yeah, we've

got this, we can do this. You rely on your values, your mission, your vision, and then you just go go and you focus on what you can control, not on tax, which you've got no control over. But I still think this government is reckless and putting real people in real danger. I mean, they accounted for 500 grand going into the black market. Even that alone is bad. How can you be okay with £500,000 going into the black market knowing that people are going to be put in front of risk? Say for gambling, AML, these sites just don't give a [ __ ] >> Profile of

person that goes into there, right? Like that's the other thing. It's not the average person. It's the non-gamtop type of stuff. >> Yeah. And even with the non-gamtop, I've heard some people say, "Well, it's not that bad for the regulated industry because they're just going after the 400 GameStop a day player base." I'm like, if you think these guys are just targeting 400 players a day across however many bloody sites there are, you're mental and you're badly informed. And our job is to kind of like balance out that narrative because unfortunately a lot of people believe that. And then Rachel saying, "Oh, we're just asking

the gambling industry to pay a little bit more. 90% is not a little bit more." So already you're being dishonest or you're just completely naive to what you've just rolled out. But it's going to be on their hands. >> One of the things that you said to Pierre, which I really loved, which you stole from HP, I think you said, is uh that in in like really poor circumstances, good businesses survive. Great businesses are defined by these challenges, right? And and I think first of all, I love that. Secondly, I think the thing that you guys stand for is really that is the casino as

a product. uh as I had a lack of innovation. You're doubling down on brand as a whole, right? Something that the industry doesn't do enough either. It's all syas, your vision and why you're backing yourself, why nobody else is doing it. I can't be too specific obviously, but there are things happening now that will push the boundaries of what real money entertainment could be, especially in the UK. I want to shift the paradigm of what real money entertainment could mean and question everything. But it's really forced us into that position. We would have done it anyway. By the way, this wasn't born out of the

tax, but it's fueled and intensified our drive to get these things out the door. And again, fortunately with AI, you can build pretty quickly now. Like vibe coding is no joke. You can build almost anything. But I wanted everyone to rally around that concept of real money entertainment. It's quite hard to talk about it without talking specifics, but I I guess the thing that I would say is we sell entertainment and that doesn't necessarily mean it has to be a slot machine or a live dealer. There are other forms of online entertainment that we could still offer alongside our current offering. So, it's pushing us

to innovate. I mean, you should see something in the next couple of weeks on Mr. Q uh and then later this year, both on the traditional side and on the non-traditional side. Fundamentally, that's the headline is like, can we shift the paradigm of what real money entertainment is? >> I love it. I mean, you've publicly already spoken about peer-to-peer, social, kind of the same thing as poker during the pandemic, you know, like that. That's the thing, right? >> Synchronous entertainment is that thing, right? What do we do in COVID? We had synchronous entertainment. We couldn't be with each other. And so, we wanted something to

bring us together and have fun. Making cocktails was one of them. Playing poker online was a great thing. Can we carry that over into this world? You've seen it with couch and poly market and prediction markets in general at the power 50. Everyone was talking about this stuff. But what they what they were failing to do was to look at the meta of what why it's popular because it's the intersection of these two seemingly different product offerings. One of them is like almost financial investment and the other one is gambling. What happens? What does that look like when you bring them together? They've got Poland

Market and Koshi. Okay. But that doesn't necessarily mean that's the only thing. Can we bring the intersection of these two ideas together to form other types of entertainment that does the same thing where it feels like you're in a bit more control? We've seen the same thing with quickies, uh, with Aviator. I feel like I'm in control. But can we do it synchronously? Can we have shared entertainment as an experience where me and you, let's say I'm Mr. Q, can we play against each other? Can we play with each other? And what does that look like? Can we create shared experiences? One of my thinking

in terms of first principles is like you have this concept of loss aversion where if you lose X, you need to win twice. And I think we've all experienced this and can relate to this. It's not good enough that you just win your X back. If I lose a tenner and I win a tenner the next day, I still don't feel justified. I still don't feel like an equilibrium has been restored. I need to win another tenner just to feel a balance. What happens when you put two people together and you create the shared entertainment with two people, not just this isolated experience? Does this

2x does it reduce? Is it 1.5? Is it 1.2? And so then it becomes about the experience and not about the winning or the losing baked into our vision statement of to entertain the world, win or lose. And so everything we do needs to feed off of that. loss aversion was also based on somebody stealing a $100 from you versus getting a $100. I think stealing is maybe a strong concept if you compare it to you know like like your principle about okay if you buy a pizza for 15 quid whatever it is you don't feel like you've lost it right but when you play

a slot you might feel that I don't know >> what's also nice about that is we don't say I lost 10 quid on a pizza last night but think about a pizza it's cut into different slices for different people it's a shared experience like I shared a pizza I didn't lose money on a pizza I shared a pizza it was good >> and you could superersize It's a little upsell for you. >> Yeah, stuff crusted as well. >> I'm just going to ask you one last question. If you could go back to that second kind of milestone that you were talking about when you had

to when you started hiring sea level, you were talking about how you could how you maybe should have done that quicker or maybe it took so long. If you could go back to that person, what would you tell him what you should do differently? Originally when we were talking, we were talking about I was I mentioned my CFO and how disciplined he is at just focus focus on the thing that's important and even though there's this fire brewing right next to you, you can feel the heat of the flames. Focus focus focus execute. I I mentioned I'm not very good at that. And I mean

maybe a little bit better these days, but I would have said listen this is the only thing you've got to do. Just focus on that. everything else will have to wait and if it's going to burn just let it burn. It's not as existential or important is not getting that right but I would start a few interviews and I would tackle some in the business problems as opposed to on the business problems and so I would have dropped everything else and built that team quicker. >> What would it have changed you think if you would have done that? >> It would have given us more

time to insulate the business against market conditions. So we were lucky in terms of our timing, but if I would have been any slower on building out that team, we wouldn't have had the growth, the spike of growth that we had in 25 and then we wouldn't have been able to ride out that tax change because we would have been even though it's on paper it's a great business. It's big. It's like tens of million in revenue. we wouldn't have been able to run if you were a 60 even 70 mil generating business just in the UK and that tax got announced or before the

tax you would have been like this is a great business but at that point at the tax like no no it might not be able to ride this out and so we insulated that business so if I'd have been any slower I would have been collateral damage and so had I been earlier I would have insulated it more and could have probably gone harder during 25 but could have would have should Great talking to you. Thank you so much for joining on the podcast. >> Thank you, Lear. >> Thank you for listening to the i Gaming Leader podcast. If you're a VP, a director, founder

or an executive, and I gaming making the biggest decisions alone, that's exactly what I've built I Gaming Leader 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 igamingleer.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 at sumsup.com/gambling. See you next week.

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