Q&A: Strive for success
Recently appointed Andrew Holmes talks to EGR Tech about his new role as COO at Strive Gaming and why the technology provider has big ambitions to break ground in the North American market
Strive Gaming has recently launched in Arizona and Ontario, Canada. Debuting as the “first platform to be built specifically to meet the multistate requirements of North American operators”, Strive Gaming is setting its sights high, with aspirations to become the leading igaming provider in the market.
EGR Technology: You have recently joined Strive as COO from TwinSpires. Can you tell us more about your background and why you chose to make this move?
Andrew Holmes (AH): I have more than 20 years of experience in software and product management as well as a passion for horseracing and wagering in general. While working at TwinSpires (Churchill Downs), I was fortunate enough to learn about and experience many platform providers in the market and Strive stood out for many reasons, one being its flexible rules engine. When asked to join, it was an easy decision to make. Strive is a very exciting company which I’m thrilled to be part of.
EGR Technology: What milestones has Strive Gaming achieved so far?
AH: Strive is the cool kid when it comes to player account management (PAM) software. We’re moving fast and demonstrating to the industry what can be achieved when you shed the weight of tech debt. We have built a crisp and clean platform dedicated to the North American market from the ground up so it is performant at scale, while we focus on the product and making our partners successful.
EGR Technology: What is your mission for the company?
AH: Strive has a very clear mission; we want to be the number one igaming platform in the US and Canada through performance at scale and maintaining the best product possible. If you look at the volume of customers in the US and Canada across all the current platform providers, we are heading towards, if not already in, the top three in that market. Over the next few years, we will be adding more states, more partners and growing the already robust functionality of our offering. My role will be to drive this and assist the platform to be the best it possibly can.
EGR Technology: What challenges do you anticipate facing?
AH: The biggest challenge at the moment is having to say no to new deals as we scale out the team and focus on doing our best for our current partners. It’s always our aim to assist partners with maximising their position and provide services to solve their challenges so they can achieve their own ambitions.
EGR Technology: Strive operates solely in the North American market, recently debuting in Arizona with Golden Nugget Online Gaming, as well as the Canadian province of Ontario. Where do you hope to launch next?
AH: We have our sights set on adding several additional states by the end of the year including New Jersey. We naturally target states where our customers are and where large multistate operators would naturally want to be active.
EGR Technology: It’s a very crowded market. How does Strive differentiate its technical performance and solutions from its competitors?
AH: The days of an igaming platform being limited to typical betting verticals like sports and casino as well as the usual integrations to facilitate interaction with the customer are gone. One element of our secret sauce is being an expert in cross-sell between verticals and beyond standard verticals too. Our Strive Infinity Rules Engine permits the operator to provide contextualised real-time engagement with end users. It can be used for everything from smart retention incentivisation to responsible gaming.
Looking forward, we’re planning to drive our rules engine by AI to allow for the ultimate smart platform to create higher loan to value ratio (LTV) and operational efficiency. These are innovations not properly achieved by any other platform I’ve seen in my previous role as a B2C operator.
EGR Technology: How does Strive plan to juggle multistate regulatory requirements?
AH: The platform was created with multistate at its core, so we have this well covered. This is the beauty of having a platform built for this market and not having to adapt an older code base to do something it wasn’t made for. We quickly launched three customers across two states with more to come. Achieving speed to market in many instances is another element which differentiates us.
EGR Technology: Will one of your focuses be regulatory changes across the US and Canada? If so, what will this involve?
AH: We have a very robust regulatory and compliance team which we will continue to build out across our Vancouver and Malta offices. It’s one of our ambitions to be at the bleeding edge of these changes and the adaptability and flexibility of our platform will mean we can implement changes quickly.
EGR Technology: Is Strive experimenting with any new technologies or working on any innovative products?
AH: We will continue to build on our proprietary Infinity Rules Engine, working with AI and automation to make it even smarter. We also hope to soon have some exciting news on the data analytics side of the business. In my opinion, data is an overused term that has not been fully realised in our sector within a platform but we have a clear vision for the impact of that in the US and Canadian markets. Our focus is always on ensuring our partners get the most out of our platform. We all win when it’s smarter and easier.
EGR Technology: What are Strive’s main ambitions for the next 12-24 months?
AH: We will continue to add new partners and improve our platform. We are setting our sights firmly on becoming the number one provider in the North American market. Our product is focused on our value proposition of driving revenues for our partners through speed to market and operator efficiencies – in terms of how they use the platform and how they interact with their end users. There’s still a huge amount of work to do and change to happen in this market with regard to regulation updates, new states, new players, new cross-sell opportunities and capabilities and M&A. We want to be at the forefront of it all.
Andrew Holmes is chief operating officer for Strive Gaming in Vancouver. He has over 20 years of IT experience across a wide range of businesses from large scale public companies to small startups. Previous experience and cities include Churchill Downs (Louisville), DocuSign (San Francisco), Nitro PDF (Melbourne & San Francisco), National Australia Bank (Melbourne) and the Royal Bank of Scotland (London).