Secrets of 20 Years in iGaming, With Karolina Pelc

[00:00]  1. Intro: from casino floor to founder and author

Guest:  I’m going to be very vulnerable here, because I don’t talk about it openly for many reasons, but my personal failure is that I never saw the multiplayer product live. The idea of work-life balance always assumes that work is hard and life is easy, and that’s not always the case.

Host:  Welcome to Bet It Drives, the show that takes you up and over the iGaming world. From dealing cards to dealing with casinos, Karolina Pelc has come a long way in iGaming. With Her Play she helps new founders grow, and now she’s sharing her lessons in a brand new book. Karolina, tell us about yourself.

Guest:  Where do I start? I’ve been in the industry for over 20 years, which surprises a lot of people. I started at 19 in a land-based casino, so I’ve been through the trenches at the very bottom. I was a casino dealer for a good five years, my father is a casino manager and inspector, and I worked in Poland, London and on cruise ships. When I came back, online gaming was starting to boom, and I thought, why throw away the years in land-based if I can transfer the skills into online? The only problem was no one wanted to give me a job, because nobody thought the same. More recently I’m probably best known for my time as casino director at LeoVegas, and then BeyondPlay, the startup I built, a very small company but with strong brand awareness, helped by getting bought by this other little company called FanDuel. Outside that, I’m an advisor, startup mentor and keynote speaker, with a book out very recently.

[02:55]  2. A schedule of 60 flights a year

Host:  You mentioned you have more flights a year than most people can imagine.

Guest:  Last year I got to 58 flights, and this year I’m around 60 already, though that’s inclusive of long-haul connections because it’s cooler to have a big number. I don’t really have a business need to be at all those events now, but I’m building my career as a speaker, and I like to meet the startups, founders and VCs who are my clients, network, and learn from other people.

[04:06]  3. Women in gaming: actions over labels

Host:  You’re now at the top of the industry, protecting startups and supporting women in business. Is that part of your role?

Guest:  I try to stay clear of being the female-empowerment speaker or diversity ambassador, because it comes through my actions more than my words, and I don’t like being boxed into a “feminist” label, because that’s not what it is. But I feel deeply about promoting other women in gaming. I invest in female-founded startups, I have three in my portfolio, all young women I have the privilege of mentoring, and I learn as much from them as they do from me. That was also the goal behind the book: it appeals to both men and women, but I knew the empowerment part would resonate with a lot of aspiring female entrepreneurs, and the feedback so far has been exactly on point.

[05:31]  4. Representation: choose the product stage

Host:  So you prefer to lead by your own example, not just talks.

Guest:  Absolutely. If you invite me to a conference and offer me a panel about AI or product versus a main-stage female-leadership or diversity panel, I’ll choose the product, because I want to be the representation rather than just talk about it. Hands-on, practical things.

[06:02]  5. Feel the Beat: anthem and casino floor soundtrack

Host:  What’s your power anthem?

Guest:  That’s easy. For the past two years it’s been my walk-out song to my keynotes; I listen to it anytime I need to energise: “She Drives Me Crazy” by Fine Young Cannibals.

Host:  And the casino floor vibe you remember?

Guest:  That’s hard, because when you work in a casino you can’t hear any music, all you hear is the jingles from the slot machines. So the soundtrack of my casino days is the sound of the video pokers ringing and the jackpots exploding.

[07:20]  6. Her Play: the system behind the success

Host:  Tell us about your current business and the book.

Guest:  This industry needs systems, not just talks, and the book is a system. It was my answer to the question everyone asked when I sold the business: how did you achieve success in such a short time? I always knew it wasn’t the three years, it was the 20 years of grind behind it, but I didn’t know how to structure that answer. Revisiting my journey, I understood it’s about mindset more than practical advice. BeyondPlay was very much built on what I learned in land-based and cruise-ship casinos, a product that brought people together to interact in a social environment, treating gaming as entertainment rather than a chase of losses and wins. Now I mostly advise early-stage founders. I don’t yet have the confidence to position myself as a mentor for startups at scale, because I never reached that point with BeyondPlay, but people forget I worked in corporate for years at LeoVegas and William Hill, part of many M&A transactions. Early-stage advice is universal, because it’s about mindset: reframing the fear of failure, reframing rejection, not getting discouraged too early, and understanding how much work goes into this.

[11:50]  7. Startup reality: capital, compliance, leadership pressure

Host:  Talking about the hard moments. When we spoke with Eman, he shared how COVID could destroy everything, but a little step gave him a boost. Anything like that for you?

Guest:  I remember all of them, I just wrote a book about the ups and downs and was very transparent. The startup was a rollercoaster going mostly downwards; every time you thought you were at the lowest, it kicked you harder. I had the company for three years, but enough happened in it to talk about for the next ten. COVID actually wasn’t a hard moment for me, because I raised money: we had a shared online experience, so COVID was an amplifier that made people realise it could work. The real difficulty was raising capital while focusing on regulated markets only, which meant a very narrow pool of investors, and even interested ones lost interest once they saw how much KYC and compliance there’d be. People pulled out at the very last stage, we’d risk not getting a license over documentation. I cried more in those three years than in my whole lifetime. I’d never managed such a big team directly, and being a leader in such a fast-paced, up-and-down environment is very hard. If you thought you were a great leader before, you know nothing as a startup CEO; you learn from the beginning. Delegating isn’t easy for control freaks and perfectionists like me, although it’s crucial.

[14:33]  8. “I was a very good firefighter” (not repeatable)

Host:  Your recipe seems to have worked, your team stayed and you ended up in a good position.

Guest:  It’s less of a recipe; I was just a very good firefighter. It would be arrogant to say I have a recipe I could apply to another business and it would work equally well, which is exactly why you’re not seeing me do another startup just yet. I learned how to extinguish fires fast and prioritise the big ones over the ones that won’t burn as quickly.

[15:13]  9. Why sell early: capital limits, exhaustion, timing

Host:  Was the FanDuel deal a success? Some might say you sold too early, after just three years.

Guest:  Absolutely a success. I could have waited, and I know I’d have made the company a success, so if there’s ever a rumour that I sold because I stopped believing in it, that’s absolutely not true, I believed in it with my whole heart. But I wasn’t sure the focus on regulated markets and the investor challenges wouldn’t stop us mid-track in the next year or two, because I was already seeing how few people we had access to and how annoyed they were getting with the level of checks. I worried I’d struggle to find capital for a big round. Secondly, I was 40, a couple of weeks before my 40th birthday. I have many other ideas, I was exhausted, and I was losing hope of ever seeing my son during daytime hours again. So I took it as a sign. These opportunities come and go; if I didn’t take it then, it might not come for another five or six years. The team would be secure for a while, the jackpots technology would launch, and there were enough great terms that no one was being harmed. I’d never have agreed to a sale that wasn’t on my terms, which is why the due diligence was so hard, I was running business as usual the whole time.

[18:06]  10. Post-acquisition: control, loyalty, protecting the team

Host:  You stayed with FanDuel as a VP, then exited.

Guest:  About two years, a year and a half officially in a VP role. I didn’t have to stay, but I felt an obligation to my team, who believed in me, and the longer I stayed the longer I could protect them, which I was right about. I also wanted to see the technology go live and deliver on the promise. But I’m 100% an in-person, in-control person, and that control naturally slipped away as the tech was integrated into a big organisation, which has to have the final call on product strategy. That wasn’t enough for me, so I slowly withdrew, assisting mostly on keeping the team together, and eventually we had honest conversations where I said I didn’t see a fulfilling role for myself going forward.

[19:42]  11. Her Play, the framework

Host:  The book is called Her Play.

Guest:  It’s an evolution of the name: my first company was Shared Play, then we sold that name and became BeyondPlay, and Her Play felt like the natural next step. It’s also a framework: HER PLAY stands for the seven elements I see as key to my success. H for hustle, E for execution, R for risk, P for passion, L for luck, A for adaptability, and Y for you as your greatest asset. So it’s a dual meaning. It’s available to pre-order on Amazon and other retailers now, but it comes out properly in May. I’m currently gifting the book in its current form, 650 pages, for feedback, but a proper publisher takes time.

[23:22]  12. The book as content production: “it poured out of me”

Host:  Where does the writing talent come from?

Guest:  I’ve always been a writer, I wrote diaries and blogs, studied journalism and read a lot as a child, so it was always in me. But writing isn’t a profit-making career, so I treated it as a hobby. Writing a book is content production, an enormous investment of time, and forget self-publishing, you read the book 20 more times to proofread, copy-edit and check the layout. Once you feel that call to write, if you’re a real writer, the book pours out of you. I set out to write 60,000 words with a weekly plan, and at 4am I’d have 60,000 words in the first two weeks. My book coach resigned, saying he couldn’t keep up and I clearly didn’t need him. It ended up at 140,000 words; Michelle Obama’s book is 120,000.

[25:17]  13. Workaholism and perfectionism: accepted, not “managed”

Host:  You’re honestly a bit of a workaholic. How do you manage it?

Guest:  I don’t manage it, because right now the workaholism and perfectionism drive me to success and don’t bring much harm. I’ve accepted that work-life balance isn’t a daily thing, and I’m good at making up the time for my son and family in different ways. At some point I’ll need a proper break, but not yet, I don’t feel the calling. I don’t like the phrase “work-life balance”; it assumes work is hard and life is easy, and that’s not always true. I realised early in the startup that if you want work-life balance you can’t be an entrepreneur. I’ve learned to accept that loving work and thriving under pressure is my superpower, not my weakness. That said, I’m human, I procrastinate too, I stare at Instagram memes for too long, but my favourite way to procrastinate now is playing with AI tools, researching AI avatar and video-creation software, when I want a break from copy-editing or the little admin tasks. After running an organisation of 50 with a head of finance and accountants, I’m suddenly a one-man band tracking my own expenses again, which is humbling and refreshing.

[28:23]  14. Network or Not Work

Host:  Will you open an investor call with a motivational video?

Guest:  Network. It’s a way of storytelling, so done well it works.

Host:  Investing in a founder you personally don’t like, but with a killer product?

Guest:  100% not work, never. I invest in people. They need to like me and I need to like them for it to work.

Host:  Launching a product in a market where regulation isn’t clear yet?

Guest:  Network, still viable, launching before others do.

[29:26]  15. Stereotypes about women in iGaming

Host:  Which prejudice or stereotype about women in this industry do you hate the most?

Guest:  That every woman who stands behind gender diversity is a hardcore feminist who hates men. And the perception that all the women at the top are very masculine, with a 100% masculine leadership style. I get why, when you grow up observing men around you. But good leadership is a mixture of feminine and masculine energy, and you can absorb feminine power from a man as much as masculine. Calling these women at the top a “bad boss [expletive]” and so on, apologies for the language, I don’t like, because there are plenty of very successful, committed women who are soft and led by intuition. That stereotype makes women question whether they’re too hard or too bold.

Host:  We’re still far from a 50/50 balance.

Guest:  We are, especially in tech product and developers. And sometimes I feel we’re not fully ready for a 50/50 ratio. From my own experience, I really wanted a high ratio of women in my company and put huge effort in, giving recruiters quotas and being a role model. We succeeded, but we learned fast that we weren’t prepared for any kind of minority, not just gender but different orientations, nationalities, races and religions, because we were a small company with no HR or diversity manager. So we should all strive for equality and champion minorities, but you have to put the tools in place to actually support them. Sometimes hold your horses and check you have the right structure behind you.

[33:14]  16. Confession Lane, and wrap-up

Host:  What’s the one failure that keeps you up at night, that you’d never share, but maybe will now?

Guest:  I’ll be very vulnerable. My personal failure is that I never saw the multiplayer product go live, because I left the company that bought us before it launched, and now it’s out of my hands. It was my absolute dream to see the fruits of my and my team’s work on the biggest operator in the world. That keeps me up at night, it’s a deep regret. I’ve made my peace with it, but it does sometimes wake me. Most of the team has moved on now, some are still working within jackpots, but priorities changed after I left. I’m happy to say they were highly in demand, very selectively chosen people, and they’ve all pretty much secured new opportunities.

Host:  Thank you for being with us. We hope you enjoy SiGMA here in Rome, and we wish you all the best in your new endeavours.

Guest:  Thank you for having me, I really enjoyed the ride. It’s a great concept, and I like the original line of questioning, I’m in a lot of podcasts and always worried about repetition, so well done, and thanks for not having me repeat myself.

Host:  She’s played her cards, cashed out big, and still finds new games to build. Not every gamble needs chips. Sometimes it’s just betting on yourself, and Karolina showed us exactly how that pays off.