It is not uncommon to hear that people often end up working in the iGaming industry by chance. For Karolina Pelc, now regarded as a prominent figure in the industry and recognised as a respected investor and founder, that journey started when she was a nineteen-year-old student looking for work. Pelc has detailed her journey in her debut book ‘Her Play – Make Your Own Luck’.
An unconventional career path
Speaking with SiGMA News, she recounts how everything started with her dealing cards in a Warsaw casino, commenting that her career “has been anything but conventional”.
She was nineteen at the time, and she remarks that getting into the gambling sector “wasn’t part of some grand master plan,” as she was a student looking for work, “and casinos happened to be one of the few places a young woman could earn decent money”.
What she did not realise at the time, she comments, was that the casino floor would become her first business school.
“You learn very quickly how to read people under pressure. You learn discipline, risk management, emotional control, and exactly how people behave when real money is on the line,” she says.
From there, Pelc details how she worked in London casinos, travelled the world, and then eventually transitioned into working in online gaming.
She says that she started off in junior roles and began working her way up through marketing, product, innovation, and strategy before ultimately reaching executive and board-level positions at companies such as LeoVegas, Betsson, and SG Digital. She also consulted for major brands, including William Hill, Bally’s, and Hard Rock Online.
In 2021, Pelc founded BeyondPlay. She says that over €7 million was raised in venture funding with the aim to “disrupt the industry with real-time multiplayer tech,” which was something that she had envisioned years earlier based on player behaviours she had noticed on casino floors.
Less than three years after the company’s creation, Pelc said that it was acquired by Flutter Entertainment through FanDuel.
Determining the right time for an acquisition
Pelc explains that she had engineered BeyondPlay with an exit strategy in mind from day one, though she commented that she had not expected an acquisition to come into play so rapidly.
That said, she remarked that “it was a no-brainer” when FanDuel came to the table, as she trusted the vision and saw a clear path for her team.
When it comes to what she found to be the hardest part of the acquisition process, she says that “protecting your team is incredibly heavy,” while legal battles, financial audits, and matters of due diligence “are just practical problems”.
“The people who join an agile, chaotic start-up did not sign up to be cogs in a massive corporate machine. Corporate structures introduce shifting goals and processes. My job was to shield them, ease that integration, and put out fires when key people hit frustration points faster than corporate HR could handle them,” she adds.
“The psychological shift is the real challenge,” Pelc says. “Nobody prepares you for the identity crisis of separating yourself from your company. For years, BeyondPlay wasn’t just my job; it was my entire identity and obsession. Stepping out of the driving seat left a void. That’s exactly where Her Play came into the picture; I desperately needed a new project where I could channel that exact same 150% intensity.”
Putting her experience into words
When asked what led her to make the decision to write Her Play as her memoir, Pelc responds that the idea came about shortly after the acquisition of BeyondPlay.
“People naturally wanted to hear about the startup journey, the fundraising, and the exit, but those chapters only make sense if you understand the backstory, the grit built during those years in casinos, on cruise ships, and through moments where I almost quit.”
Pelc has always been frustrated by how success stories are “sanitised into highlight reels,”, where “the psychological uncertainty gets completely edited out,” and so she decided to write the book that she felt she had “desperately needed to read” earlier in her life.
Introspection and ‘the correct path’
Pelc says that the process of writing the memoir itself was harder than building a company, and that writing a memoir requires being vulnerable with the entire world.
She explains that she had to revisit parts of her past that had not been thought about in decades, and that this process had her challenging her own deeply held beliefs. “It became as much an exercise in self-discovery as storytelling,” she said.
What Pelc wants readers to take away from learning about her path is the realisation that “there is no single, correct path to success”. She speaks of how many professionals feel as if they are “constantly lagging behind because they chose the ‘wrong’ degree, took a random job, or moved countries at the wrong time”.
However, she says that her story only looks coherent now because it is being viewed backwards. “While I was living it, it felt chaotic. Your unconventional experiences are not liabilities; they are your edge,” she added.
Pelc wants to challenge the “passive definition of luck”. She does not believe in luck “the way most people do,” adding that “opportunities don’t just happen to you; you create the environment for them to appear”.
Reactions from readers
SiGMA News asked Pelc what the reaction has been like from readers of her memoir, to which she says that the reactions have completely blown past her expectations.
“Initially, I worried that if readers didn’t find a hyper-specific tech start-up story, they’d be disappointed. Instead, people connected most intensely with the pre-start-up chapters… the casino floors, the cruise ships, and the raw themes of risk and identity.”
The book launch did not disappoint either, with Her Play climbing new releases charts, including hitting #2 in business memoirs on Amazon.
“As a deeply analytical, ROI-driven product person, operating in the publishing world is mildly frustrating because you essentially fly blind on real-time data for weeks, but the daily messages I receive from readers are my true ROI. The book has resonated far beyond the gaming industry,” she said.
Pelc’s Her Play
If you are in Malta, Pelc’s memoir is available at Agenda bookshops. She has also announced that there will be a book signing event in Malta on 7 July.
Additionally, there will be an industry launch reception at the Hippodrome Casino in London on 30 June. Those interested in further details can express their interest in an email to [email protected].
Pelc has previously spoken with SiGMA News about the inspiration behind the book, and, during the same interview, also discussed how the emergence of AI impacted the nature of startups.
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