Quote · The iGaming Leader
The Founder Who Got Tired of Gambling's Bullshit. So He Built Something Better.
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The Competency Test That Rewrote the Leadership Structure
At 27:00 · chapter starts 23:00
The hardest part of MrQ's growth — harder than building the product, harder than the pivot from tech to product-led thinking, harder than the tax shock — was the people decisions. Savvas traces the arc: the startup phase of doing everything yourself, then reaching 50-70 people and having to operationalise, then realising the problem had shifted from technology to product leadership. Mistakes were made in hiring; the biggest ones were always about fit, not competence. Then came the moment of reckoning: Savvas wanted to build a proper C-suite, but didn't want to promote heads-of based on loyalty alone. So he put the entire layer — and himself — through an executive competency benchmarking programme, with the explicit promise that if the data said he also shouldn't be CEO, he'd step aside. The result was stark: almost nobody in the existing team benchmarked at C-level. Savvas had to face that reality with people who had been on the journey with him for years. Not everyone stayed, but many did — partly because of how the conversation was handled: honestly, openly, with the acknowledgment that what got the business here would not get it to the next stage.
Instead of promoting his heads-of layer to C-suite roles based on loyalty, Savvas ran everyone — including himself — through an executive competency benchmarking programme. The result: almost nobody passed. What followed was one of the most painful but defining moments in MrQ's history.
Savvas promoted someone prematurely, reversed the decision, then called the entire heads-of layer into a room and admitted his mistake openly. No spin, no explanation — just cards on the table. The result: most of those people are still at MrQ today.
