Karolina Pelc was raised in post-communist Warsaw, and her professional journey started as a casino dealer on a cruise ship.
At 18, she moved to London with very little money, but an unusual amount of curiosity and competitive drive. Pelc’s unconventional career path would see her break traditional rules, including quitting university and good jobs along the way.
After some two decades of toil, Pelc founded the gaming software company BeyondPlay and then sold it to FanDuel and Flutter Entertainment within less than three years. BeyondPlay’s software solutions enabled multiple players to compete in the same casino game with a pooled stake.
Pelc’s first book, Her Play: Make Your Own Luck, chronicles the decisions and disappointments that helped shape her career. The book drops today in the UK, and pre-orders for the U.S. edition are now open prior to its June 28 release.
Pelc shared her story in an exclusive, wide-ranging interview with CasinoBeats.
Learning the Value of Risk-Taking
CasinoBeats: You often describe yourself as a risk-taker, but what is the biggest risk you’ve taken that nobody knows about because it didn’t work out?
Pelc: One of the biggest risks I took never made it into a press release because, exactly as you said, it didn’t lead anywhere. Early in my career, I repeatedly left perfectly good jobs, and sometimes even addresses, before I had a clear plan for what came next. It certainly wasn’t pretty at times. We could talk about a few jobs I took and quickly realised weren’t for me, or even my first failed startup idea. But looking back, those weren’t the biggest risks. Neither was founding a company or raising capital.
The biggest risks were the moments when I walked away from certainty without knowing whether another opportunity existed. People often associate risk with entrepreneurship, but many of the hardest risks happen long before you become a founder. They happen when you have very little credibility, very little savings, and no evidence yet that things will work out. Taking risks after you’ve built confidence is one thing. Taking them while you’re still building it is something else entirely.
CB: How much of the entrepreneur you became was shaped by growing up in post-communist Poland, and how much was a reaction against it?
Pelc: Probably both. I grew up between two very different examples. My father valued security. My mother was constantly finding ways to create opportunities and earn extra income through side businesses. Looking back, I probably inherited something from both of them. Poland at the time wasn’t exactly encouraging young people to take entrepreneurial risks. The advice was simple: study hard, get a respectable job, and don’t do anything too reckless.
Given the uncertainty many people had lived through, that mindset made perfect sense. Part of me was shaped by that environment. Another part spent years pushing against it. Moving countries, changing industries, and eventually starting a company all came from a belief that growth rarely happens inside the safest option.
CB: You spent years watching people make decisions under pressure as a casino dealer. What did gambling teach you about human behavior that business school never could?
Pelc: That people rarely make decisions based on logic alone. As a dealer, I watched thousands of people react to winning, losing, uncertainty, fear, and overconfidence in real time. The patterns were remarkably consistent. Most people chase losses longer than they should. Many become overconfident after a short period of success.
Very few walk away when the odds have turned against them. The same behaviours show up in business. Founders hold onto failing ideas because they’ve already invested so much time and energy. Investors mistake a favourable market for personal genius. Understanding psychology has been far more useful throughout my career than understanding spreadsheets.
CB: When you arrived in London with £300, was there a moment when you seriously questioned whether leaving Poland had been a mistake?
Pelc: Not immediately. I was young enough to see the move as an adventure rather than a carefully calculated life decision. The doubts came later, particularly when I realised how little anybody cared about what I had achieved before arriving. In Poland, I had a support network, familiarity, and a clear identity. In London, I was just another immigrant trying to find my place.
I never seriously considered going back, but some days were certainly harder than others. There were nights when I had nowhere to stay and nights when I got punched in the face by a random stranger on a London night bus. Even then, I knew I was learning at a speed that would have been impossible had I stayed where everything was familiar.
Curiosity Keeps Her Moving Forward
CB: You’ve worked in gambling, gaming, startups, venture capital, and now publishing. Looking back, what common thread connects every major career move you’ve made?
Pelc: Probably curiosity. Looking back, I’ve never been particularly loyal to industries. I’ve been loyal to problems that interested me. Casinos led me into online gaming because technology was transforming the industry. A move from marketing into product followed, as I became increasingly fascinated by player behaviour, engagement, and the psychology behind decision-making. BeyondPlay grew out of an obsession with multiplayer experiences and player engagement. The book came from wanting to make sense of the journey afterwards.
CB: BeyondPlay was acquired in less than three years. What was the emotional comedown after achieving a goal that many founders spend a decade chasing?
Pelc: What surprised me was how quickly life moved on. Founders spend years imagining the moment. Then the deal closes, there are contracts to sign, integrations to manage, and a whole new set of responsibilities waiting for you on Monday morning. I was incredibly proud of what we achieved, but I realised quite quickly that the part I loved most wasn’t the transaction. It was building the company in the first place.
It was a lesson of its own that letting go of the driver’s seat is harder than most imagine. We talk about exits as the ultimate destination, but we rarely talk about the sudden loss of steering. To be completely honest, it wasn’t a transition I genuinely embraced. Instead of learning to sit comfortably in the passenger side, I found myself looking for another car to drive, which became the book, or more suitably: the book business play. I needed that new engine to rev, because the quiet of the backseat just didn’t suit me.
CB: Many founders talk about resilience. Can you describe a specific day during the BeyondPlay journey when you thought, “This might be the end?”
Pelc: There wasn’t one dramatic moment. There were dozens. Fundraising is often presented as a sequence of successful announcements, but behind the scenes, it can be relentless. Investor conversations stall. Timelines slip. Cash suddenly becomes a much bigger concern than strategy. There were concerns about whether parts of the product were even possible to build, moments when I wasn’t sure we’d secure the regulatory approvals we needed, and periods of team tension that affected me far more than I let on at the time.
Nobody posts about those days on LinkedIn. Most founders know exactly what I’m talking about. You still have investors to update, customers to serve, and a team looking to you for answers, even when you’re privately wondering whether the whole thing is about to unravel.
CB: You’ve argued that women need sponsors, not just mentors. Who was the person who took the biggest chance on you, and how did it change your trajectory?
Pelc: The honest answer is that there wasn’t just one. One thing writing Her Play reinforced for me is how many people had a hand in my journey. We tend to tell founder stories as though they are individual achievements. Mine certainly wasn’t. The book is full of people who opened doors, offered opportunities, challenged my thinking, or backed me before I had fully earned the right to sit at the table.
Many of them will be instantly recognisable to people in the gaming industry. I could tell you exactly who had the biggest impact, but that would probably spoil a few chapters. What I’ve learned is that careers are rarely transformed by advice alone. They’re transformed when somebody is willing to put their reputation behind you. That’s the difference between a mentor and a sponsor. Looking back, many of the pivotal moments in my career started because somebody opened a door just enough for me to step through it.
Make Your Own Luck
CB: The title of your book is Her Play: Make Your Own Luck. How much of success is actually luck, and how much is creating the conditions for luck to find you?
Pelc: Luck matters far more than most successful people are willing to admit. Where you’re born, who you meet, timing, and countless external factors all play a role. The mistake is believing that luck is completely random. I don’t think luck is random.
The more people you meet, the more places you go, the more things you try, and the more visible you make yourself, the more “lucky” you seem to become. You can’t manufacture luck on demand, but you can make it much easier for luck to find you.
CB: If you could sit down with the 20-year-old casino dealer version of yourself, what would surprise her most about the life you’ve built today?
Pelc: Honestly, not much. Apart from the exit itself—or perhaps more accurately, the speed of it. Even today, that part occasionally catches me off guard. My 20-year-old self may have been less experienced, more naive, and certainly less polished, but she was never short of ambition or courage.
Moving countries, changing industries, starting businesses, and writing books are all things she would have found exciting rather than intimidating. What would probably surprise her most is not where I ended up, but how quickly some of it happened. I think if I sat down and told her the story of the next 20 years, she wouldn’t ask, “Really?” She’d probably smile and say, “That sounds fun. Let’s do it.”
CB: You’ve built a company, exited successfully, become an investor, and written a book. What ambition do you still have that feels slightly unrealistic—even to you?
Pelc: I’d love to see Her Play become something much bigger than a book. The vision has never really been about publishing. It’s about building a platform around the ideas in the book—through speaking, education, media, and whatever other opportunities emerge along the way. Not because I want to be famous, but because I’ve seen how powerful stories can be.
They can change how people think about risk, reinvention, and what they’re capable of doing with their own lives. It’s ambitious. It may even be unrealistic. Then again, most of the things I’ve done that were worth doing started out looking exactly like that.
