Entrepreneurs in Residence

About 9 years ago, I was engaged with a online gambling startup in the US.  

They built 100% compliant, white-labelled casino sites and had many of the popular casinos of the time as their customers. Their content focus was on typical Jackpots and Bingo type of games, which were all built internally.

Within a year, Texas Hold Em (e.g. here), a form of Poker, started becoming the rage, globally.  It spawned television programs, portals, parties and real-world tournaments. 

Without any poker game of their own, and the large effort required to build one, a smart business head of the company decided to purchase an existing poker software system, and integrate the product into their backends.

This was a strategic stroke of genius for the company, as the startup went on to power perhaps the largest properties for poker, and established itself as a pioneer in the space. 

I also believe its’ later acquisition was because of this new Poker product that they integrated so well into their platform.

What Lies Beneath

The company had a team of very talented game designers, artists, programmers and product managers.  Having purchased the 3rd party poker engine, this team’s task was to “run the product”.  

Being their partner in the development process, I heard regular complaints from many in the dev teams about how the company had spent good money on a “lousy product”, the system they inherited was “designed terribly”, and a technology platform more aligned to their existing product would have been better.

These are common refrains you will hear from any person inheriting a 3rd party product. Like artists, programmers believe their work is the best.

So, how did my client manage to pull this off ?  How did they get a team to work on a “lump” of code to become the business that got them sold ?  

Entrepreneurs in Residence

The business head had seen an opportunity in the business landscape and made a calculated decision to enter into the Poker space, come what may.  The decision to purchase the 3rd party software was largely his.

Despite the temptation and cajoling from many quarters to build their own version of the product, he convinced the technical lead to dug his feet in and focus on integrating the product in a seamless and painless process as possible.   

The tech lead realized what any tech start-up is going to face – you’re going to have to deal with so many other company’s products ;  sometimes you need to take decisions that are contrary to your ideals as the perfect product, code or art.

Perhaps more importantly, the business head managed to motivate others in his team to rise above being developers and managers, and instead began to think like entrepreneurs :- “I have these resources, I know my goal ; what’s the best way for me to get from here to there?”  

It was a risk, of course – what if they failed and just could not get things to work together?  

But they tackled the risks head on, by isolating the components, working on priority areas, motivating their teams, presenting reports to top-level management on progress, and measuring the result of their changes.

They were, in a true sense, entrepreneurs in residence.  

An entrepreneur is not about the image most of us have in mind : someone who has quit his job, is pursuing revenues or customers, around an idea they believe passionately about :

Instead, an entrepreneur is the manager, or developer, or artist, who is able to think of problems as resources and goals, and attack them with zeal.

(And, oh yes, the business head is now CEO of his own vibrant online business!)