A Day in the Life: Henry McLean, Co-Founder @ 4ThePlayer.com
A Day in the life: Henry McLean, Co-Founder / Commercial & Marketing Director 4ThePlayer.com
With over 16 years’ iGaming experience, Henry has worked in both startups and FTSE 250 giants such as Playtech. All this experience is now funnelled into his newest adventure at 4thePlayer.com. The concept behind 4ThePlayer is to disrupt the game supplier space with a boutique content house that focuses on entertainment, innovation and player needs, instead of a conveyor belt churn of content. 4ThePlayer’s games are available on the Yggdrasil Masters and Relax Silver Bullet platforms, and they are currently applying for US licenses in all the relevant states.
At 4ThePlayer, we were 100% remote even before the pandemic hit. We decided on this setup when the company was formed as we could pick the best global talent without location restraints. As a result, I work totally from my home office.
The day starts early, 6:30 AM, taking the dog for a walk across the local nature reserve; the sunrise across the lake is beautiful and a positive and way to start the day. There is nothing worse than starting the day in a panic or jumping straight to your desk!
Often during my walk, I will browse the industry news, one of the things I love about the iGaming industry is how fast-paced it is, endless M&A or new startups forming to tackle the latest industry challenge. One interesting example I saw recently was ‘Verified Streamer’ – very interesting! We work closely with a lot of streamers and know what a minefield this area can be.
Depending on the schedule for the day, I try to do a quick 20-minute meditation to clear my head and start the day with focus. Then at around 8:00 AM it’s into my office and start my working day!
First up is to check my inboxes – the first priority is always to customers, casinos, and players – quite a few players contact us and I make sure we always reply as quickly and helpfully as possible, even if it’s a negative email or post. One interesting example recently was chatting to a player about feature frequency and RTP of our upcoming game they had heard about.
Next, I check my many alerts: automation is my saviour as it allows me to work much smarter and monitor loads of different forums, review sites, webpages and casinos! My colleagues often joke about ‘Another Henry Tool’ as I have a script or tool for everything.
My day is dictated a lot by my diary, often my day can be back-to-back meetings. Especially if we have a new game coming out very soon as we do now with 10x Rewind.
As we’re still a startup my role is very varied – I have a hands-on approach and am not afraid to get my hands dirty. I could be working on anything from pitching to a top Tier 1 Casino group to chatting to a new UK streamer who is interested in our games to trying the math beta for our next game release.
Another key focus for me is data! That’s another great thing about the iGaming industry is the amount of data at your fingertips. Every day I deep dive into the daily reports to see what’s happened in our games. Has a player had a big win? Are there any new brands showing?
My favourite find is when I see a big winner on a low stake; as a slots player myself that’s always the dream, so I love to see our players experiencing it!
It’s not just our own data I look at but various iGaming data tools to see what competitors are doing. This can be very interesting as it allows us to spot trends or games that we will want to play in our weekly slots research session.
My working day normally ends around 6 pm, but as we’re in the process of getting a US license, the day occasionally carries on later while we talk to exciting new US casino groups or our US legal team.
My evening is often spent with the latest Netflix Series or Sky Drama, although this is normally dual-screened with a slot streamer on my phone, hopefully watching them enjoy our games. Either that or keeping an eye on a thread on a forum that is discussing our new release.
Every day is very different and that’s exactly how I like it. One of the best things about being a startup is that we steer the ship completely, so if something happens we can quickly react and respond.
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