Bootstrapping to 30 Million Users: Lessons from the Founder of G2A

If there is any CEO or the founder which is saying, hey, this company was created because of me, in my opinion, he or she is wrong. It is always a teamwork, team effort.

Welcome to the High Voltage Business Builders Podcast, a show where we interview high voltage entrepreneurs growing and scaling through e-commerce, real estate, and other wealth without Wall Street ventures, showing you the path to making your first or next million.

All right, folks, welcome back.

I have an experienced guest here today, someone with 20 years experience in coaching and mentoring and public speaking. He's the founder G2A.com. It's the largest, most dynamic developed global marketplace with vouchers for digital products, games, gifts, cards, subscriptions. Very cool website. Almost 30 million users in 180 countries. If you haven't heard about it, you've probably been missing out. And now that you've heard about it, you're going to want to go check it out. So I've got the gentleman.

You have to say that again. Sorry.

Which part?

Not products. Digital items. If you have products, sorry, it's a mistake. There is a difference.

You need to change your LinkedIn because I'm literally reading from your LinkedIn.

Yes.

If you could say exactly the same, it was beautiful. Okay. Just—

well, he says right there, vouchers for digital products such as games, gifts, cards, subscriptions, or software.

Now, this— Kuba, is that okay?

I'm just reading from your LinkedIn profile. So one of you's got to fix the LinkedIn profile.

Okay. Okay. Jacob?

Digital items. Okay, I'll say digital items.

And Kuba, please fix the LinkedIn.

It says digital products, I swear.

All right, I believe in you.

Yeah, well, we're gonna add this all into the podcast, so this is just part of this conversation. This is real time conversation. Everybody expects to get like all this pre-scripted nonsense, and I'd rather just have some fun. So guys, it's digital items, like specifically not physical products. To clarify, which is components of something we do. But I thought it was mostly interesting the way you guys have done the cards, subscriptions, the vouchers, games, et cetera. Um, so I want to unpack all that today, including, you know, the way you do business in the digital world. So that's, I think, is the most interesting for, you know, me. And hopefully somebody listening to this is also still paying attention and wants to play, you know, play along with us. But you have a huge background. You've got, um, studies from Harvard, you know, the Warsaw School of Economics. Do you use economics in your business at all?

Every day.

Every day you use Econo 1 plus 1.

3. It must be not less than 3.

Not less than 3. 1 plus 1 is 2. It is not 5. You've gone on to do all kinds of things in your life, building several companies, involved in Save the Children program. We can unpack some of that, including you loving animals and a fan of tennis.

Oh, a huge one. I'm training several times per week.

Are you? Are you training for something big or just for fun or just sport or?

It's a little bit more than fun.

A little bit more than fun. Okay. What are you after?

Please. This is my, my, my private dream for the last 3 years. Okay. Okay.

Going for Wimbledon, going for the US Open, going for something big?

For Wimbledon, US Open as a spectator. Yes.

As a spectator. Maybe a coach.

Maybe a coach.

Yeah, I'm going for the NBA too, as soon as I can get to Chicago and watch the Bulls. Yeah, I understand all that. So, so unpack this for me. You're an entrepreneurial person, clearly entrepreneurial. That's a fun word. And you've obviously been involved in a lot of things and obviously you're passionate about tennis. What, what is it, you know, what is it about the business of digital items that you're doing that's made you passionate about G2A.com?

G2A started Almost 15 years ago, very, in a very humble way. And that was just 2 of us, me, my business partner. And it all started like many businesses. And by the way, you never know.

Yeah.

I got an email by internet, just, hello, Mr. Bartosz, my name is David, can you be my mentor? And that was the beginning of G2A almost 15 years ago. And then there was 2 of us, 4 employees. online store, one room, 13 square meters on the 4th floor, no elevator because that was the cheapest room that we could hire or rent in the small town called Rzeszów in Poland, very far from New York or Shanghai. But that was the beginning and over the time later on 2014, we pivoted to the marketplace. to scale up faster. And long story short, I can dive deeper if you like to this G2A story, which I think is—

Yeah, keep going.

I'm listening.

It's fascinating because the very beginning was tough. And if anybody wanted to be an entrepreneur, want to know whether it, is it tough to do a business, to be entrepreneur, to build a startup, And then the farther you go, the easier or maybe the more difficult it is.

Yeah.

And I can tell you that you really want, you really have to want to do this.

Otherwise, it's too difficult. You have to really want to do business. Yeah. Yes. Everybody wants the big money that comes from the business and nobody wants to work the business. Right.

I mean, the big money side effect.

Big money side effect. Yes.

If your target is big money, not a good address. You better become a YouTuber or maybe a content creator or maybe there are every— I don't know any job, any position that has no challenges. Everybody has them.

Yeah.

Going back to G2A, we had many challenges and at the very beginning when we were online store, we wanted to have direct relationships with the publishers. We were very successful when it comes to selling games. And I was knocking the door, flying around the world, all the largest publishers, you name them, EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Blizzard, et cetera. And I was almost begging, hey, we are the largest seller of World of Warcraft. Please, let's have an official contract for Europe or...

Sure.

some countries that we can provide them and they never wanted. So what we did, we invaded, we invented and pivoted to the marketplace model.

Sure, absolutely.

And then I asked one question to my people, to G2anians as we like to call it, and it was what it takes to build the largest marketplace in the world of gaming. And some people were laughing like, Forget about it. It's impossible. You are from Poland, the end of the world. No financial investors, no money, huge competitive market, et cetera.

Nothing good ever comes from Poland. What could possibly happen, right?

And, and I said, wait a minute, let's see. So we mapped the most important factors like prices, range of products, security, user experience, support, payments. And I said, just, okay, we have to be on the top of the game in those 6 verticals. And that was the beginning of the story.

Cool. But they didn't want to do a deal with you. How should, how like, was it just one person? Because this is happening sometimes in these businesses. There's these huge conglomerates, 80,000 people, and you get in and there's like maybe 3 people and like you have to dig through the whole quagmire of this organization to find like the one person. They can make a decision, right? And then you get down to them and they're like, nah, well, we don't see the value in that.

I believe in teamwork. I am a huge ambassador of that. And if there is any CEO or the founder which is saying, hey, this company was created because of me, in my opinion, he or she is wrong. It is always a teamwork, team effort, and people who are now in the organization, but also who have been there for several years and also who used to be there in the past.

Yeah.

Because it is always a journey and if the company is big, especially when it is a leader of the market like G2A, then there was a lot of effort of so many human beings behind it.

So, Yeah.

in my humble opinion, it is always A group of people. It is always—

It should be. I've ran into the same problem when we first got going in e-commerce and the physical product world, you know, 12 years ago when we were out looking to get those first products online and we were testing things. We came across a product that we thought was gonna sell really well. It was a, a health wellness powder in a, in a container. And we're like, where can we source this thing from? Turns out the like top seller was barely selling correctly on Amazon. So long story short, we went out and did this negotiation. We said, hey, we can sell the snot out of this product. And please, you know, give us more. We just took 100 of your units and sold the crap outta it. And we like, we want 1,000 units. Can we wholesale from you? We're willing to just, you know, take your brand and name and run with it. 'Cause we were doing really well with it. And of course the VP of marketing was like, nope. And I said, you don't want me to sell more? I'm outselling your product on the platform. You don't want me to sell more of your product? No. Give me a wholesale contract. No.

Yeah.

I'm like, wow, that was narrow-minded. That was very shortsighted. We were selling more of their own product. Yeah, you understand that. That's frustrating. Challenges in business, right? It's just problem solving, isn't it? You're always in the process of problem solving.

The funny thing is that no matter what is the name of your position, you are always a problem solver because day in, day out, from very early morning to the late night, you are solving the problems. And when you are CEO, which I've been for, I was for 15, 14, 15 years and before in my previous company for 7 or 8, the most difficult problems are entering your desk, actually are landing at your desk because somebody else—

Can't solve them.

Cannot solve them or they need a confirmation or there is needed There is a need for somebody to take risk. And today I have amazing team. So many things people do on their own. And that was, that has been years to develop the culture.

Yeah.

And following Peter Drucker's famous statement that culture eats strategy for breakfast, it is actually very true.

It is, isn't it? Because you got to get to a position where you, you start as, and sometimes you do, and sometimes you raise a lot of capital and you start with a whole lot of people, which also has its problems.

Yeah.

And then there's raising people up, raising yourself up as say a solopreneur, entrepreneur, business owner, business investor, and you gotta pull the right people along with you as you go and then figure out how to get yourself out of becoming the number one person responsible for all aspects of it. How did you learn that process? Were you schooled on it? Were you mentored by it? Were you simply just a product of trial and error and tenacity and perseverance and, you know, never taking no for an answer? Like what was your process to get through that?

Everything you mentioned from the very beginning, from actually even before my university, the first university, I was huge. I was very much hungry for growth, for knowledge, for everything. I was blessed to go at the second year of my university to the insurance, life insurance business. Very tough business. But at the same time, there was an educational process when every weekend you could participate for 2 days in the seminars. So you could learn about sales, about communication, about everything.

Yeah.

So the next 3 years I was during the week study a day, at the evening working for the insurance company and during the weekends I was just learning and learning and learning.

Yeah.

And during the night reading. So my development process was tough. I must admit that it wasn't easy because simultaneously I was doing several things, working, teaching as a coach, selling, And also consume as much as I could. And that stayed with me for the next 20 years.

Yeah.

So as only I could afford to some kind of training, I was going there.

So, but where did that tenacity come from? Was that a learned conditional behavior? Are your parents entrepreneurs? Did you just have like, where did that burning desire to go and do and, you know, push yourself forward?

My father was an entrepreneur. My father was entrepreneur, so I was, I was, I could observe ups and downs of the entrepreneurial life. And then I had a mentor and then several mentors that shared with me this true spirit of always be hungry and learn more and more and more. And the funniest thing is that today, after reading over 1,000 books and Oxford, MIT, Harvard, I still have this feeling that the more I know, the more is to learn. And I feel a kind of humbleness that there is so much more that I don't know.

I understand that. Yeah. The con— it's a never-ending consuming of information and data, and especially in the areas in which you focus or practitioner. I don't particularly read books or search for things that I'm, you know, just for fun. I actually am looking for purpose. I'm driven to find this next thing, or how do I apply AI, you know, to my business of e-com? I'm always in like, you know, how, how do I make things easier and faster and simpler and solve problems quicker? I'm always in that space.

But the big challenge today is that there is so many sources that you can use.

So many sources.

Yeah.

Then you have to disseminate who's truth from fiction, who's actually doing and who knows what the heck they're talking about.

YouTube, 3 million podcasts, millions of books, AI that can provide you all the data and information you would like to know, hundreds of courses, and so on and so forth. And then you have just 24 hours per day and night to learn.

And—

Well, you just sleep less. That's the answer.

Sure. It doesn't work. I tried.

Oh, it doesn't work. Less sleep doesn't work.

I thought it can be okay, but actually for some time, in my case, that was 17 years, it worked.

I didn't sleep for 17 years.

Oh, I was sleeping not too much.

Yeah.

Right.

Not good.

But there is, it is not the best idea. And I mean, Of course, it's hard to say that when you've been doing that for 17 years, but today I am very careful about my sleep. I even have a slot in the calendar, how much hours I should have.

Oh, you're tracking it down to how many hours exactly?

Of course.

It's important for your health and wellness and mental structure to do that. And you can't win the Company of the Year Award, which you just did. Congratulations as the gold winner, right? In the retail for 2024 Global Business Awards. Congratulations. That's a big win.

Thank you. Yes. And actually today, not only with this ring, but with so many things I'm, I'm tracking and getting data and analyzing what I do. And it is a part of a discipline, another magic word when you want to be a successful entrepreneur.

Oh yeah.

Discipline.

So where are you, you know, with this accolade? Congratulations, of course. And where you're going, what do you see for 2025? Like what's on your horizon? Are you building to an exit? Are you gonna keep working for the next year? What are you headed for?

We call it small and big M&A strategy. So G2A is big enough today, finally after so many years and successful company for also many years and being very profitable, et cetera, and growing with the double-digit growth. So we combine the strategy that we are looking, searching through 1,000 companies we would like to buy, M&A, And grow faster, basically.

Oh, going into acquisitions mode.

Yes.

So acquisitions, all these— What kind of particular companies are you targeting? Like, you'd like retail? Are you looking for more digital products? Are you looking for—

We like to think about ourselves as all digital, and what we are building basically is global digital powerhouse. So any digital items, products, companies are there. We are very interested to talk because we believe there is a very unique opportunity to create a digital global powerhouse, especially in this modern world where digital environment, digital trends are stronger and stronger.

Well, they move so fast now with virality and just, you gotta get ahead of it in some cases.

Very much.

To beat your competitors who could get on a TikTok video and go viral, right? It's just a crazy, it's a crazy environment to watch. What is, what's the buy box you're looking for in terms of a business case? Somebody's listening to this who might think they, you know, hey, I've got an asset. What about me?

If you are bigger than $3 million in revenues and there is no top line that is big, enough for us because we have one of the leading private equity companies behind us right now that is searching with us for the proper companies. So the smaller acquisitions we can do with our money and the larger acquisitions we can provide the capital from one of, let's say, top 5 private equity companies in the world. So that's the range. And actually we don't have a sweet spot. We just look for the synergies between the companies and for the value creation plan that we can combine and put together.

So it's more, I guess I'm gonna say in my own language, more distribution is kind of what you're looking for. More—

Marketplace business model, or we call it 1P or 3P. If you have a store, online store, important with only digital items.

Yeah. Cool.

We are looking only in this digital landscape. So no physical items like chair or microphones or something else, but digital, like vouchers, like gift cards, like software, like educational content, like AI content, like games, anything else that is in the digital form, we are very much interested.

Okay. And like in terms of, you mentioned, would you say coaching or did you say like educational and educational in what particular area? Just outta curiosity.

Example, when you dive at G2A, you can find 75,000 different items, different titles, etc.

Yeah.

And some of them is educational content, like, hey, why gaming is good for people. And you can educate, we even created a special program explaining why gaming is good for people because there are some misunderstandings that sometimes people think that, ah, gaming is not good for my child, forgetting that one of the most extraordinary things that gaming is bringing is tactical thinking, strategical thinking, socializing with other people through the chat and all the new ways of communication. So many amazing things.

Yeah.

And by the way, how I see G2A is a huge contributor in general to the gaming. Because we spend millions, millions of dollars encouraging people to combine their experience, not only physical, but also digital. G2A stands for Gate to Adventure. So what we do is we open the gate to digital adventure.

This is what we do. I love it.

Yeah.

And now I gotta ask you, were you a gamer?

Yes.

Are a gamer? Okay.

I wasn't a hardcore gamer, so I wasn't—

Not a hardcore gamer?

Like 15 hours per day. But of course I have my favorite titles.

Yeah? Are you, have you been following Elon at all and his like reign across the—

No, I have my own.

Yeah.

I have my own and, and they are like Gran Turismo, Doom, Mortal Kombat, you know, this type of—

Gran Turismo is calling my language, man. We used to play that on the original PlayStation back in the day. I loved that, man.

It's gotten so much more advanced now.

Yeah, absolutely.

Every time there is a new release, new edition, I have to play. I have to, I have to try.

Gotta check it out. Original Call of Duty fan. Love that one. Oh yes. Played way too many hours. In fact, I started a, a company called Killer Game Servers that was a Kodak-based chat program before they had multiplayer chat in the games. And we had like 20 servers running where people were on. We had thousands of, of users on there playing multiplayer.

Have you ever tried Unreal Tournament?

I have tried Unreal Tournament and Counter-Strike. Those were the other most favorite. Oh yes. Well, man, I spent way too much of my life on those games. So I do it before Twitch and YouTube and all that stuff. I could have maybe become a professional gamer. I played way too much. Not good anymore. I was okay back in the day. I got, I, that's actually how I made my clients. I went guerrilla marketing. I actually went in and played the games. And then as I would win the tournament, I would just tell everybody what I was doing at Killer Game Servers. And then I got people to sign up every time I'd go on and play. So I just did guerrilla marketing. It was a lot of fun. Nice.

Yeah.

I like it. I like it.

Yeah. Well, and I do appreciate it. You know, there's like, there is the argument between the, the kind of game or the kind of environment the games could create if not checked or monitored or controlled correctly, I think by the parent or guardians to make sure the kids are, you know, using them in such a way where it's not manipulating or, you know, you know, overseeing their life completely. But as a tool or tactic for strategy, for quick thinking, for critical decision-making, for just pure competition in the face of bullies or people or just others that are better than you and realizing you can keep going with it. It's a mindset thing. It's like a mental exercise. And of course, the hand-eye coordination and stuff isn't bad either when you learn how to do it correctly. I watch my girls play and we allow them to play certain times and certain games, and I don't let them play the war games because they don't really want to play those anyways.

There are always two sides of the coin. One coin is too much is always too much. So if your child is playing 15 hours per day, you should say something is wrong here. Yeah. But on the other side, it can be a fantastic family time together.

Yeah. It absolutely can be. We've done it. Mario Kart competitions.

Sitting together at console and, and playing some, you know, games together.

So yeah, we've done it. It's a good time. Like games. Absolutely. Any kind of games, digital or otherwise, but we've enjoyed the digital ones ourselves. We're all Nintendo fans. True. Sure. Love the old school Nintendo Wiis. Those are so much fun. Get on the Mario Kart.

You know, with G2A, what is beautiful that we are agnostic when it comes to the titles.

You have to say that, you liar. We have them all, right?

We have them all. So any title you can think of, welcome to G2A.

So you have to— we've been on quite a journey to get to this. Yeah, dude.

Better console is better because, because we think in general gaming is good.

Yeah. Well, I mean, again, there's, I think there's lots of positives. There just has to be personal, you know, control. And I think that's where some of this is missed out. I lost a little control in it myself, so I'm just speaking from my own experience where I'm like, okay, you can't be doing this for so much time. You gotta kind of pull out. But for me it was also the business, not just the game. So I was all about like, if I could win and beat that, then I could get people to sign up and make money on my business.

Yeah.

So I had a, a different affect, but I appreciate it and love, I have a love for it for sure.

But you ended very well, Neil. Very well.

Well, I figured out the digital side was one thing. I figured out the physical product side, that was another. And, uh, yeah, I really enjoyed the physical product side myself, but, you know, of course we live in the digital world. Is AI playing a role in anything you're doing at G2A right now?

Oh yes, of course. AI is, we just recently mapped all the AI inside the organization and it turned out that Actually, every department right now is using AI somehow in some different tools. But for 2025, we are going to speed up with this.

Interesting. What particular area of focus?

Using AI tools and making the company very native because there is no one particular tool which is the best. Yeah. Somebody says that ChatGPT, somebody else, no, no, Copilot, somebody else, something else. But at the end of the day, you have to be native to understand the phenomenon of AI and the tempo of changes because it's just the beginning.

Yeah.

And I think everybody which is very much into this technology feels that, that, okay, this is just the beginning and it's gonna be faster, much faster than right now. So you have to be up to this technology.

I've seen in the advertising space using the images, graphics, now prompted videos. I think there's a couple commercials coming out, pure AI this year in the holiday season. I think Coca-Cola was one of them to show that they're going to be doing a lot of AI completing.

A very interesting thing about cybersecurity.

Okay.

Just recently I was in the panel about among cybersecurity experts and we were discussing the influence of the AI. So we at G2A, We see that on both sides. So one side is that cybercriminals are using AI to do their criminal job.

Yes, they are.

Which is unfortunate, but it is there and it is on the growth. On the other side, the good guys, we, the companies that are working on technology, on using this against those cybercriminals. we also have much and much more and more tools and content that we can use to fight this. So, you know, there was a reason why G2A received a couple of, 3 years ago, the very prestigious CNP Award in the United States for being one of the best companies in the world in cybersecurity. So to give an example, before us, this award was given to Microsoft and Barclays Bank and this kind of— amazing companies. And we spend a lot of time, effort, millions of dollars to make our systems more and more, you know, resilient to protect the clients.

Yeah.

And that is actually one of the reasons that I believe that marketplace business model is more efficient than individual platform because when you are individual, seller, uh, it is very difficult for you, especially at the beginning. And—

Yeah.

This conversation is about startups and growing companies. So at the beginning, you don't have millions of dollars to protect your company against thieves and against cyber criminals. And it is good to join a bigger company like G2A Marketplace or any other marketplaces that specialize in this. to basically use the protection umbrella that bigger players can provide. And I think this is a fantastic thing right now that we can find. Well said.

It's one of the reasons why we leverage Amazon first when we go to market with our products. We kind of come in under their umbrella and use their systems and policies and infrastructure and test the market and validate and incubate before we go off on additional channels or our own channels. That's just a way to kind of go to market quickly and get the war chest building up before you start going to market. So I appreciate that. And I agree 100%. I think it's well said. Is there any questions I didn't ask you yet on the podcast that you wanted to cover? Something you want to say we didn't get to?

Oh, just like 500 or 100.

Only 100? Let's go.

That could never end. That could never end. No, I think, I think it's good for the first time.

Well, then we'll have to have you back, right? And next time we come back, guys, we're going to be playing some kind of game in real time. Maybe we'll go old school and get a Counter-Strike game going or something while you guys didn't, we'll We'll pull a Twitch up or something.

Cool. Huge pleasure.

I like it, dude. I appreciate you coming on, sharing some stuff with us today. Anything, you know, you want to leave us with? Any good word, any good tips, any other thing that you think somebody might need to hear while they're listening this morning?

The one tip for entrepreneurs, if you really believe it, do it. If you believe that you can be an entrepreneur, do it. And you will be delighted because of 2 things. One is the freedom. of going your path. And the second thing is that the higher you are, the more beautiful landscape you can see. Fingers crossed for you.

Love it. Love it. Guys, go check out g2a.com. Look at the marketplace if you're interested in products and digital, you know, of course, digital items of any size, shape, color. They're huge. Go check them out. See what they're doing. If you're a publisher or want to get started, go check that out as well for the education side, as well as just learning about the games and everything else that's on it. And of course, go connect with Bartosz on all the links and stuff down below at LinkedIn and everywhere else. As always, like, share, comment, and engage. Help us beat big tech at everything we're doing because we're here to build businesses. And if you're in your first million or your next million, I hope you got something out of today's episode. I appreciate it very much. Thank you so much for coming on, Bartosz. Appreciate you, brother.

Big pleasure. Big pleasure. Thank you very much, Neil.

Ask you this. If you're serious about building an e-commerce business starting on Amazon FBA, what if myself and my team worked with you one-on-one to execute the steps outlined in the podcast while helping you to discover what the heck to sell, how to make sure it's profitable, and how to successfully launch a brand. Plus, how to do it under a consulting plus performance-driven model where I put a $10,000 skin-in-the-game guarantee for those that show up and are serious about building a real business done with us. If yes, text keyword profit to +1-417-413-4209. That's 1-417-413-4209. And I will personally respond with a few simple questions. If you're not in the US or Canada, please visit voltage dm dot com. That's voltage dm dot com. Click get started and book a no-pressure discovery call with me or a member of my team to learn more about the Business Builders one-on-one coaching and mentoring for CEOs, entrepreneurs, and those looking to build an empire or retire using the power of e-commerce. Once again, thank you for listening, and be sure to tune in next week for a brand new episode of the High Voltage Business Builders Podcast.