April 24, 2025 update: Should betting company employees gamble?

Remember in February this year, during an online exchange with executives from a well-known company in the Philippines, one of them asked, "How can we protect our competitiveness if our work results are copied by competitors?"

My answer: Have a product innovation team composed of players.

The principle is not complicated, but many companies fail to achieve it. Last summer, I visited a friend in the Philippines during the UEFA European Championship. We went to his company to watch the game together. His office was packed with executives, all discussing betting strategies while watching the game. During the break, someone rushed in excitedly saying that the bet they placed had just paid off. At that moment, I realized, true to being a sports giant, everyone was a real player, understanding the game, the bets, and most importantly, the users.

If you are not a user, you can never truly understand the users. Without understanding the user's psychology, how can you create products that are touching, stunning, and exceed expectations?

Understanding the business is something that everyone involved in innovation, operations, or service must do personally. And the quickest way is to participate in the betting yourself—note, I said "participate." Only by experiencing the gains and losses yourself can you understand the greed, hesitation, breakdown, and thrill, and grasp the essence of the "gambler's mindset." You will know why a player is attracted, explodes, or leaves.

Of course, the premise is that you must have self-control. Participating in gambling is for research, not to solve life's problems. You can gamble a little, but not too much, always reminding yourself: the purpose is to understand the business, not to become addicted. Mentally, if you expect to lose the money you bet, it's easier to maintain psychological balance.

Another way to understand the business is through extensive user interviews, pain point collection, and persona creation. But honestly, in the current state of the industry, few companies can achieve this.

I have a friend who, fifteen years ago, to keep a hard-earned job, worked 18 hours a day and spent years playing all the gambling games, investing all his savings into gambling, just to avoid being eliminated by the industry and to gain competitive strength in the workplace. Eventually, the company he worked for and the company he later started also achieved great success, reaching financial freedom.

Thus, a company whose employees gamble will definitely lead in innovation, operations, and service. Conversely, if your company only wants to share in the third tier and is not very interested in understanding the business, you can still get a little soup.

But not much.

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