Peer Effect
Best way to scale? Your peers have the answers.
This is the podcast for scaleup founders looking for insightful, actionable wisdom from some of the best operators around. Each week we’ll explore one secret that other founders and experts are using right now and how to implement it.
It’s practical wisdom to build the company AND life you want. Hosted by renowned founder coach and advisor James Johnson.
You’ve survived to £1m, now let’s scale to £10m+.
Peer Effect
Building a Global Gaming Giant through Belief and Trust, with Bartosz Skwarczek
How does a startup become the world’s largest online marketplace for gaming without any funding?
In this insightful episode, I'm joined by Bartosz Skwarczek, the mastermind behind G2A.com, as he shares his remarkable journey from a modest beginning in Poland to leading the world's largest online marketplace for gaming.
Together, we explore:
- How collaboratively defining company values from the outset can foster a cohesive and motivated team environment.
- The strategic decisions that led to prioritising long-term quality over short-term gains.
- How maintaining an entrepreneurial spirit and belief in the face of adversity drives continuous innovation and growth.
Don’t miss this episode if you're ready to be inspired to tackle new challenges and lead with conviction. For more practical insights, follow Bartosz Skwarczek on LinkedIn!
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Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com
How did a startup transform into the world's largest online marketplace for gaming without any external funding, and how has belief, rather than ego, been its secret fuel? From humble beginnings to boasting over 30 million users across 180 countries, g2a's journey is nothing short of remarkable. Today, founder and president Bartosz Skwarczyk joined us to share his story and lessons learned about strategy, culture and, above all, having an unwavering belief in one's vision. I think his take on the important difference between belief and ego is really powerful. If you're tuning in for the first time, I'm James Johnson and I coach Series A Plus founders to take back control so they can take their business further and live a great life.
Speaker 2:I am the founder and the president of G2Acom, which is the largest global marketplace for digital entertainment 30 million users, 180 countries, 75,000 different offerings so you can think about G2 like ebay for digital games of course this is where we started and also different in-game items, gift card subscriptions, software, e-learning anything which is digital. And lastly, two important things about us is security cyber security we are the leading platform in the world when it comes to cyber security. American cnp award very prestigious for the cyber security practices along us, microsoft or berkeley bank got it first. Data as well. And and the second, I think, crucial thing about G2A is values. So trust, communication, team spirit, value delivery, growth. We call it G2A DNA, so values are very important over the last 15 years for us.
Speaker 1:Lovely and just to set the scene for other founders listening. So what sort of stage? I agree, this feels like your cross-locked place, like roughly sort of team size etc. As people can get a sense of your stage of the journey.
Speaker 2:Team size is around 400 people. Geographically, we are fully global, so probably there is none country where we don't operate when it comes to our users. Very interesting, I think, from the structure perspective, because we have never joined forces with any VC or private equity, so the business is fully private. From the scale perspective, we sold over 100 million items, so I think it's okay starting on the journey.
Speaker 2:Basically, it's kind of small business, yes, it of a hobby you know, we we struggle with how to name the company which is not already a startup, because we grew out of being a startup, but we have the startup like values, like team spirit, like the culture that we love. At the same time, we already use the practices, the tools that huge corporates are using and we don't feel like a corporate. We don't want to be perceived as a corporate. And finally, after so many years, we found ScaleUp, a big company which is still growing fast. It's very dynamic but already organized, and I think this is G2A. So we still feel it's the beginning of the journey, having almost 15 years of the experience and almost half thousand of people. This is us G2 Anions.
Speaker 1:Well, I think you're going to have some very interesting things to share, then. With all this experience, what's the one thing that you would share with other later stage founders that really makes the difference for you?
Speaker 2:The one thing is to believe.
Speaker 2:I know it's not very technological, even though we are very tech-oriented business. I think at the end of the day, it all comes from how much you believe, because, statistically, entrepreneur starting the journey, 99% statistic is saying you will fail. So you have to have this crazy belief in yourself, in your idea, in your people to do that. And from this believing mind is coming all the rest. I mean, if you believe you will find the motivation, if you believe you are always happy to do this extra mile. If you believe, then you want to invest and reinvest.
Speaker 2:If you believe you want to continue your business even without any external investors, external funding, even though several times you have to deal with thousands of problems and even though every morning you know that something is going to happen this day, you just don't know what. You know that something is gonna happen this day, you just don't know what. And this crazy belief, this crazy belief that you want to deliver something exceptional to the world, to the people, in my opinion is super necessary to be successful was there a particular time or moment that sort of this realization came from, this need for belief for myself long before G2A, because in the high school I already knew that I want to run my own business.
Speaker 2:So I was blessed with my parents and my father was entrepreneur and he was my first role model, with his ups and downs. He was amazing when it comes to believing people, so he was a people person and he was very open. He was very transparent, he was very, he was loving people and his business. At that time in Poland this is where I came from it was communism and post-communism country, so it was truly hardcore when it comes to being entrepreneur, and still he had this fire to do that and I could observe him and all the struggles, all the successes and ups and downs, as I said. So he was my first inspiration, and then my mom, who was very strict when it comes to when you do something, you do it very well or don't do it, and I know that some people are saying, ok, I will not do it, but for me it was always OK. You have to be very good at what you do. So that was my very, very beginnings when it comes to understanding what is entrepreneurship, and even in high school or earlier.
Speaker 2:Earlier I was earning my own money as a tennis trainer, as a tennis stringer, tennis racket stringer, and later on, during my university, even though I was studied daily, I was working almost 24-7, which I finished the main technology university in Poland, which I finished with the highest score in the Polish educational systems. And even though I finished as a top player, when I started the business it was a very different world. I mean, the real business is very different than any university is preparing you for. But I was a believer all the time, on every instance which I had, and even when I failed many times, a thousand times, I still was a believer that it is worth doing it and I knew what I wanted. And this high standard is giving you something more. It's giving you people who want to join your journey because of the high standard. You know there is this rule which everybody knows, that A player is looking for A players, b player is looking for C players. Yeah, when it comes to hiring.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So when you want to hire somebody, don't hire B players, because they will be a little bit afraid of hiring the next generation after them and they will be looking for somebody maybe a little bit weaker, so C player, and the business never runs really to the full speed. So what I was always looking for was A players and tricky thing when you are looking for people who are better than you, you have to be really good at something, because top players want to work only with, not even for, but with, top player. So you need to know what are you good at and you have to develop constantly, all the time, all the time, all the time. And that was my journey.
Speaker 2:My journey was hard way. I mean I know that maybe there are people who can do it faster than myself, who can do it smoother. I don't know. My way was very rough, was very tough and 100 hours work week, thousands of books that you have to read, several universities, learning, learning, learning, etc. Ups and downs, fails, blah, blah. To be where myself and G2A is today, being the largest marketplace in the world in digital entertainment, you have to have the courage to look in the mirror every day and look at the mirror and say, hey, is that the person that my employees, my partners, they want to see, with the values, with the code of conduct, with the effort you put into the business, with the energy you share with people, with the knowledge, whether you develop it or maybe you are too lazy already, whether you still have the fire, and you better be very honest with yourself, otherwise, sooner or later, it will be end.
Speaker 1:After this, I'm going to send you my no excuses e-book. It's just ABCs. It's a term that I use a lot as well, and I really think things I work on is the idea of like. I'm certainly like A's, want to work with A's, but that the most important part of that is it starts with you, like how to be.
Speaker 1:So I see two things with founders, one of which sometimes is they drop their standards. You say like they lose the hunger, they lose the belief, and I was like I've made it. I just it's like I've made it, I can stop. But the other thing that I've seen is that it becomes unsustainable. Sometimes they're being an unsustainable A in terms of their behaviours, their habits. The lifestyle they're leading causes them to slightly break and burn out, and actually that really inhibits your ability to be an A for other people, because you're struggling to even perform at your own levels. I think there's this dual thing of just one holding your own standards, but two, also looking after yourself so that you can maintain and be a sustainable A for your team.
Speaker 2:When the company is growing and you go from the startup to scale up, it's very difficult to do it with the the same team because, like you said, people are burning out but also they are losing, sometimes, this hunger, this appetite. I call it appetite. So when I, when I have hiring conversations, then I always ask about three things one is the appetite for growth for yourself, with the business, learning, etc. The second is the appetite for feedback, whether you can listen when somebody is saying that, hey, bartosz, maybe you should do something differently. And I give you a great example which I heard from one of top CEOs and I met thousands of them and that was one of the most successful. At the same time he told me hey, bartosz, you know, I think I am such a good CEO because people, maybe twice a year, they say something I do wrong.
Speaker 2:And I said hmm, you know, when my people don't tell me once a week that they do something wrong for me, it means that I don't create the safe environment for them to say that. I don't create the safe environment for them to say that because 100%, they see something that I could do differently. Maybe I do something wrong, maybe they have another opinion, etc. If they don't say that, it doesn't mean that I don't have it. It just means that the environment is not very friendly to be open and transparent. So for me, this appetite for feedback and this feedback and learning loop is crucial. And the third is trust. This is what we build G2A on and we've been building that for 15 years. The trust culture is super important. Building that for 15 years, the trust culture is super important and we we do everything we can to keep it to hold it to cultivate it.
Speaker 1:I really like this framing of appetite, appetite for feedback, and then this, this trust concept I think trust trust is one of the hardest things to build and the quickest things to break as well like you can. Yeah, we all know we've all seen so many sort of breaking trust. How do you feel you go about building that trusting culture where you, like you really provide that safety net for people to really high perform and go like give you that feedback and take those risks that you need to take, but the right risks. That feels like a real skill. So how do you actively build that?
Speaker 2:trust.
Speaker 2:It starts with leading by example. You have to build yourself and give the testimonial, give the example, give the track record that people can trust you. So that is the first factor. If you try to cheat them, if you try to somehow mislead them, you will never build the trust in your business, because it doesn't work this way, that, hey, do this way, but don't look at me. Yeah, it always works. Hey, look at me, what I do and check if that is coherent, coherent with what I say. Check if that is on the same page of the values that I declare. So that is the first thing.
Speaker 2:And the second one is you need to know what the values are like, the real values of the company, and sometimes people define them and sometimes they just take something from the internet because it's sexy and you know we will have it on the wall, who it doesn't work. So how we did it in G2A, we just sit together, set together and say all right, right, who we are, what are the 10 most important things for us? And we had a big workshop. That was 13, 14 years ago when we defined it, and then, on later stages, you are refining it. So you are refining it. You are looking, okay, does it work or not anymore? Is it good for us or not? Do we vote for that? Or maybe you want something else? And then you have the buy-in. If you do that by yourself, like coming to the company and, hey, I have a great DNA code for you. Here is 10 points. Here you are, this is yours. No, it doesn't work this way. It only works in my opinion. Of course, you can try this method, but if you don't calibrate that with your people, if they don't have their stake in it, if they don't say, hey, for me, it is important, diversity Only. When you take all that together and put on the same page, then you have this, this beginning of the trust environment, and then the next stage is following the path. So sometimes you have to do decisions which are economically not good, but they are good for values. I give you an example.
Speaker 2:G2a was the marketplace which allowed individual people to be the sellers. So you or myself, we could be the seller at G2A several years ago. But what we observed was oh, this is not good for the quality, because sometimes, individual sellers, they are just selling one item. They don't care for the support for the client, for the user, whatever, something for five euro. They forgot about it and we said, said, all right, even though we have 400 000 individual sellers, we are saying no more, you have to be a business seller.
Speaker 2:And then we implemented very extensive verification process today probably the most extensive process on the market when it comes to sellers. We check over 100 parameters when it comes to the seller, the website, the origin of the product, the prices, everything. And for several years that cost us a lot of money because we lost 400,000 individual sellers At the same time. Today we benefit from that because over those years we built a very good process and today we have great sellers which we are not only allowed to sell but we help them to sell. And that was good with the values we had, because one of the values was quality. So that was the decision. That is an example of how to cultivate those values and distrust.
Speaker 1:But it feels like then belief comes back into it again, like you believe in what in your vision. You took the right long term decision, even though it was painful in the short term. So it feels like this belief thing really does sit behind everything.
Speaker 2:When I flew to Silicon Valley and I talked to the investors just before COVID I mean two weeks before COVID I met all the biggest and greatest funds in the world, like 20, 30 of them Warburpingo, cvc, general Atlantic, sinven, you name it. Really fantastic, bain. And they asked me hey, what is the story, etc. And I said the story of G2A. And they asked me hey, who is the investor, who is the VC or private equity behind G2A? And I said there is no VC, there is no private equity, this is the private company. They said what? It's impossible, it is not possible to build the leader, global leader of the industry without, you know, financial support from the, from the fund. And I said you know, we started from Poland, even though we are today a very global business with the headquarters in Netherlands, in Hong Kong, etc. With employees from 40 countries. At that time I said we didn't have any investors, you know, so we did it our way, like without any. And they said, oh my God, it's impossible, like without any. And they said, oh my God, it's impossible. But that was crazy belief that you know, asking the question, being in post-communism country, without any financial support, very competitive industry, hey, what it takes to build the largest marketplace in the gaming industry? That was the question I asked to G2 Anions. It was a very bold question, but it came to the belief that we can do it. And then we structure how we can do it, like what are the most important parameters, what we do, what we should do for the next years, etc. But it all started with the good question. It all started with the good mental attitude and watch this, not only mine, but my people If there is a CEO who thinks that he is the biggest hero of the company is not true, okay, it's not true. There is no CEO who builds the company on his own. It's always a teamwork, it's always a team effort.
Speaker 2:You know, when we started the business, we started it in a very humble way Six, six people, one small room, 13, 1, 3 square meters, being store buying and selling computer games. Within three years, we became the largest seller of World of Warcraft, the most popular game in that time, and we were the largest seller, firstly in Poland, then in Europe, and I was knocking the doors of publishers saying, hey, we are a store, we would love to work with you directly, we would love to sign an agreement with you and I tried to do that for three years. Nobody wanted to talk to me, nobody, like literally. I visited every publisher, every developer at the largest conferences III, gamescom, even G star in Korea. It was so hermetic, it was like like no, no, thank you, goodbye, we don't have time for you.
Speaker 2:And then I understood that we have to do the pivot, like we have to change the business model from the store to the marketplace. And, of course, people were crucial when thinking about how to develop the business to the next level and next level. And even now, when I think about the strategy for the next year and next two, three years, I always consult, talk, discuss everything the strategy, the idea what to do, how to do, when to do, and this is always ours idea of G2A strategy, the idea what to do, how to do, when to do, and this is always ours idea of G2A. This is not only mine idea and this is the key factor when it comes to trust that people. They just know, they just feel that this is also their company and this is also what they want to do and what they believe.
Speaker 1:As we wrap up today's conversation with Bartos, it's clear that the path to becoming a global marketplace leader is as much about conviction as it is about innovation. Bartos' journey with G2A from a startup to a powerhouse with zero external funding underscores a pivotal lesson Having a deep-rooted belief in mission and keeping that fire alive. Thank you for joining me on today's episode. Don't forget to add Peer Effect to your favorites or watch list to avoid missing out on new episodes. See you next time.
