Founder Unfiltered: Itai Hadas CEO and Co-founder of VELI Group

Building technology that its own brands depend on sits at the heart of VELI’s approach to iGaming. Combining B2C operations with B2B technology, the group has built its business around controlling the value chain, staying close to players and adapting to the realities of individual markets.

In this edition of Founders Unfiltered, Itai Hadas explores the thinking behind that model and the personal lessons learned along the way. From difficult people decisions and the pressures of expansion to the distinction between speed and progress, this conversation offers a candid perspective on building a business. It also examines where AI can deliver meaningful operational value, why innovation needs to prove itself in practice and why a founder’s own evolution is essential to the company’s growth.

1. What was the original idea behind your company, and what convinced you to take the leap and build it?

The original idea was not to create another iGaming supplier making promises from the sidelines. We wanted to build an operating group where we tested the technology in our own businesses and controlled the full value chain. When your own brands depend on the platform, payments, sportsbook, game aggregation, player engagement and content, you have to solve real problems. That gave us the confidence to combine B2C operations with B2B technology and put our own results behind what we built. We saw a particularly strong opportunity in markets where localisation, payments and operational knowledge matter just as much as the software.

2. What has been the hardest part of building the business that nobody warned you about?

The hardest part has been learning that speed and progress are not the same thing. Early in my career, I thought progress meant constant momentum, with more launches, more initiatives and faster decisions. That works until the business becomes complex. Then speed without direction creates noise, duplicated work and short-term choices. Nobody warns you that leadership is less about keeping everything moving and more about deciding where the organisation should put its energy. That means listening to the people closest to the work, deciding what not to build and having the patience to build things that last. Speed is important, but direction matters more. When the strategy is clear and the right people are in place, the results follow.

3. What has been your biggest mistake as a founder, and what did it teach you?

One of my biggest mistakes was postponing difficult people decisions. Founders naturally want to give situations more time, especially when the people involved have contributed to the company's journey. But leaving the wrong person in the wrong role affects the wider team and can also stop that person from succeeding somewhere better suited to them. I learned that leadership is not only about giving people opportunities. It is also about recognising when the role, the timing or the organisation has changed. Honest feedback and timely decisions show respect for both the individual and the team. Sometimes the fairest decision is also the hardest one.

4. Was there ever a point when you seriously questioned whether the business would succeed? What happened?

There have been several moments, particularly around difficult launches and periods of rapid expansion, when the gap between our ambition and our execution felt uncomfortably wide. In those moments, the answer was not a dramatic pivot. We went back to the fundamentals. We listened to the people closest to the player, separated temporary setbacks from structural problems, and focused the team on the few things that mattered most. Those periods tested our confidence, but they also strengthened the business because they forced us to become more disciplined and more honest about what was working.

5. What is the biggest lesson you have learned about leadership and building the right team?

The biggest lesson is that capability is only part of the equation. You need people who are comfortable with uncertainty, who challenge one another constructively and who can still commit once a decision is made. In a group that spans products, brands and markets, no single leadership style works everywhere. My role is to set a clear direction, define the standards we will not compromise on and give strong leaders the trust to own the rest. The right team will not agree all the time, but it shares the same definition of success and can have difficult conversations without losing momentum.

6. What has been your biggest challenge when it comes to growing and scaling the business?

Our biggest scaling challenge has been balancing global leverage with genuine local relevance. A platform can be shared, but player behaviour, payments, retail habits, regulation and product expectations vary enormously from one market to another.

Our answer has been to control 100% of the value chain instead of relying on a collection of disconnected suppliers. During 2026, VELI built a new gaming system that goes well beyond a platform. It brings PAM, casino and sportsbook aggregation, automated segmentation, player engagement, payments, risk and fraud management, and gamification into one ecosystem. We also operate our own sportsbook, game aggregation, payment gateway and two game studios. Some specialist suppliers may offer a longer list of features, but how many of those features are actually used, and how many create real value? There is also a clear tradeoff when an operator has to manage a collection of separate systems. Our strategy is to bring the entire operating model into one sophisticated, automated and AI-powered ecosystem, while still giving each market the freedom to be genuinely local.

7. What do you think the iGaming industry gets wrong about entrepreneurship and innovation?

The industry sometimes confuses innovation with novelty. A new feature, a fashionable label or a polished demo is not innovation unless it improves the player experience or the operator's economics in the real world. AI is a good example. Using AI to help developers write code is useful, but that is only the first layer. At VELI, we are also bringing AI into the way the business operates. It helps us identify opportunities, manage player journeys and support decisions across the organisation. Because our products, workflows and data sit in one ecosystem, AI can work across the business instead of being trapped inside disconnected tools. The next generation of operators will rely heavily on AI, not only for automation but also for decision-making. That is why we are developing software that works with an AI-driven operating model, while people remain responsible for judgement, creativity and commercial priorities.

8. Which current iGaming trend do you believe is genuinely transformative, and which is being overhyped?

The genuinely transformative trend is AI becoming part of the operating system of an iGaming business. Better segmentation, personalised content, smarter engagement and earlier identification of harmful behaviour are important, but the bigger change is AI helping teams decide what to do next. What is overhyped is AI as a label. Adding a generic assistant or renaming basic automation does not make an operator AI-native. The advantage will belong to businesses with integrated products, clean data, clear decision rights and strong governance. We are also watching the evolution of crash games very closely. Their share of total bets continues to grow because the format is immediate, social and easy to understand. At VeliPlay, we do not want to add another interchangeable title to a catalogue of roughly 40,000 games. We want to create crash experiences with their own mechanics and character, games that stand out from the noise and give operators a real reason to feature them.

9. What has founding a company cost you personally beyond money?

Founding a company has cost me the comfort of certainty and the luxury of staying the same person. There is rarely a moment when you have all the information, and waiting until you feel completely confident usually means waiting too long. You make decisions knowing that people, capital and time depend on them, then adjust quickly when reality proves you wrong. Every stage of growth also forces you to unlearn something, whether it is how you make decisions, where you spend your time, what you control or what you trust others to own. The habits that help you build the first version of a business can easily limit the next one. Over time, you become more comfortable with uncertainty, but you never become casual about it. I have learned that the founder has to evolve before the company can.

10. If you could go back to day one, what would you tell yourself, and what would you do differently?

I would tell myself that focus compounds faster than activity.

I would spend more time at the beginning defining the few things we wanted to be exceptional at, building the leadership team and agreeing on simple operating principles. I would also learn sooner to separate reversible decisions from irreversible ones. Founders waste a lot of energy treating every choice as permanent. What I would not change is the decision to stay close to operations, control the value chain and build technology that we are prepared to use ourselves. Today, that also means designing VELI’s products for a future where human teams and AI systems work together to operate the business. That approach has shaped VELI and remains one of our strongest advantages.