Speaker
Iulian Dafinoiu
Appearances over time
1 episodes
Episodes
1
Podcasts
Quotes & moments
MrQ has accumulated over one million registered players since launching in 2018, though active concurrent users number in the tens of thousands.
MrQ hosts 700 games from over 40 third-party providers, constantly curating the library to ensure quality across all devices.
MrQ was founded in September 2015 but did not launch to the public until 2018, spending the intervening years bootstrapping and doing other projects to fund development.
MrQ consistently opts for the highest return-to-player percentage available for every game, even when providers offer a range, e.g. 90–96%, MrQ always picks 96%.
Despite serving over a million users, MrQ's entire backend engineering team consists of only 8 to 10 developers, with a game studio of just 3.
MrQ integrates with over 40 third-party game providers to meet player demand for familiar titles, a lesson learned after launching with too small a catalog.
MrQ adopted MongoDB shortly after the 3.0 release, initially evaluating Postgres before switching for its scaling capabilities and schema flexibility.
MrQ migrated from self-managed MongoDB to MongoDB Atlas around 2019, shortly after their public launch, and Iulian described Atlas as 'out of this world' compared to the competition.
MrQ was entirely bootstrapped with no external funding, requiring the founders to complete interim projects between 2015 and 2018 to fund development.
An RTP of 98% does not mean a player wins 98% of the time — it means that across millions of spins in aggregate, 98% of wagered money is returned to players.
In MrQ's earliest phase, Iulian was the sole developer, handling everything from backend development to DevOps entirely by himself.
From 1 March 2023, MrQ launched a national TV ad campaign doubling down on its honest motto that gambling involves both wins and losses.
MrQ's 2023 goal includes launching 'MrQ Plus', an international expansion, requiring acquisition of new gaming licences for each new market.
MrQ was never conceived as an online casino. From day one, the founders' ambition was to build a data-driven technology company that operated in the gambling space — born out of frustration with clunky white-label platforms that couldn't surface real-time player data.
MrQ took three years from founding to launch — entirely self-funded. The team did interim projects between 2015 and 2018 just to pay the bills while building the core platform, a deliberate choice that kept them free from investor pressure.
MrQ serves over a million registered players with a backend engineering team of just 8 to 10 people. The entire company's engineering org — including a 3-person game studio, 4 frontend devs, 1 DevOps engineer, and 2 QAs — deliberately stayed lean to preserve culture.
A 98% RTP doesn't mean you'll win 98% of the time. It means that across millions of spins, 98% of all money wagered is returned to players in aggregate. MrQ always selects the highest available RTP tier from providers and is actively running a campaign to help players understand the real meaning.
MrQ took six years to meaningfully grow its engineering team — not because it couldn't hire, but because it deliberately chose culture preservation over headcount. Iulian's view: once you go big fast, culture is gone and you can't get it back.
In the UK online gambling market, every new game, every game engine update, and every wallet-adjacent feature must go through a regulatory compliance process. Annual audits cover games, security, and compliance — making rapid innovation structurally difficult.
From 1 March 2023, MrQ went on national television with a message no other casino dares to say: you will lose. The 'you win some and you lose some' campaign is a deliberate rejection of the industry norm of promising jackpots and life-changing wins.
Analysis
What they talk about
- Business 59%
- Technology 25%
- Education 8%
- Government 8%
