INTERVIEW
Lucas Weintraub. This first meeting, fittingly, took place; in a bar where he and Tomaso got talking about the idea, the concept and the potential. He’s also a gamer, he joined the company straight away and was 100% in. Shortly after that when we were finishing up a business plan, we had a fourth founder come in. He’s ex-KPMG, a bit more of a grey-haired consultant! Over the years we’ve been working with him, and of course the more experienced people on the team. We’re now about 15 strong but it could be up to 40-50 by the end of the year. We are in a phase of hyper-growth right now so it’s exciting times! ESJ: When creating Platform what was the inspiration behind it, and were there other businesses that you look to for inspiration? TP: The inspiration came from the lack of inspiration. We were looking around, seeing what was available and moving from Switzerland to London, I think we were expecting a lot of really cool gaming concepts around. We’ve been around and we haven’t been really impressed with what exists! We’ve been trying to take more inspiration from non-gaming venues and operations to try and create something fresh with the gaming concept. ESJ: You’re still in your first year of operation, how has it been and what have you learned about the process so far? TP: We had to learn basically everything. We, the founders, didn’t have any hospitality experience so we had to get some key hires in to start to understand how such an operation works. We actually were working on the project for two years but we’ve only been open for about 10 months now. It took a good amount of time to do some market research, plus the whole fundraising 30
period and looking for a venue was pretty challenging. So far it’s working really well. I think the first few months were a bit shaky, but over the past five, six months, we’ve seen some growth and some really good revenue numbers so we are looking at expansion now! ESJ: Is expansion and more venues a goal in your plans for 2020, or do you expect that to come later? TP: Currently we’re looking at least two more openings in 2020, hopefully the first one by the end of Q2 and the second one during Q3/4. We’re working on different types of projects. The first is the most casual version of what we want to build, but we have different types of venue profiles that we’re looking at. Another one is a lot more focused on esports. ESJ: With all this expansion, what do you think it is about Platform that makes it unique compared to the competition out there? TP: I think the main difference is that we’re appealing to the 90% lesscore gamers rather than the 10% core gamers. We’re trying to fight the stereotype of what people think about a gaming venue. Right now, they think about these neon dark places underground where people play.
So we’re going the other way and actually our current customers don’t even consider themselves ‘gamers’, they might like to play FIFA sometimes or used to play more some time ago but they haven’t lost their interest in gaming. They just feel the current venues around are not suitable for their needs. ESJ: In terms of USP, and brand identity, there’s clearly a focus on the location, and everything down to the nice beer choices and good pizza adds to the character. When you look to open new Platforms, are you planning for each to follow this model closely, or are you looking to experiment more with different variants? TP: We’re gonna keep the same core ethos which is about fighting the stereotype and getting the broader public in. Right now what we have in the current side of the decision we made, it can be through interior design, it can be about the colours we choose, the way we talk to our customers, and the way we serve our customers. We spend an awful lot of time teaching the staff how to interact, and understand what level of gamer our customers are. This is to make sure we’re not overwhelming them, but at the same time not undermining their knowledge of games. So this is the kind of fine balance that needs to be reached.