Cold Open And Introductions

Pierre Lindh 0:00

And a couple of hours after doors open, then someone slams up the door and runs up the staircase. Boom boom boom. Put down the cards. Release the chips. Who is the organizer here?

Joeri Billast 0:13

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMS Stories podcast. My name is Joeri Belast, I'm your podcast host, and today I'm joined by Pierre. Hey Pierre, how are you?

Pierre Lindh 0:24

Hey Joeri, I'm doing fantastic here. Thank you. I'm sitting in New York in the 25 degrees weather, the sun is shining, people are happy, so I can't complain.

Joeri Billast 0:32

It's more or less the same temperature as we have here in Sintra. Uh near Lisbon. I'm in Portugal. Of course, Pierre, a couple of weeks ago, we were at the same event in Malta. If you're now wondering who is Pierre, Pierre Lindh. He's the co-founder and the managing director of Next.io. Now, Pierre, I messaged you after the event, Nextfaletta. I sent you a message and I said what stood out the most for me was your opening keynote. Because most founders, when I go to conferences, they start about growth numbers, industry trends, sponsor updates, but you chose to start with personal stories instead. And you replied to me that the opening was actually the part you cared the most about. So why is that?

Pierre Lindh 1:18

To your point, Joeri. I think uh the opening of conferences usually are just kind of like chest pumping a little bit by the organizer and look how great we are, kind of thing. But I think it's a good opportunity to get the delegates to take a moment to take a deep breath and really consider why they're there because there are so many little unexpected conversations that you can end up in at these conferences where you are not really present. And I wanted to just remember and remind people in the audience to stay present with people because you never know what's going on in people's lives, and you never know when you're gonna have that conversation that will change someone else's life. So I wanted to just bring that to the surface during the opening.

Joeri Billast 2:01

Yep. I really appreciated that because often it's not like that. You also told me that there is a longer story behind next and behind the community, and so for people who only see the events that you have today, where does the story actually begin?

The Poker Club Raid Origin Story

Pierre Lindh 2:20

The story begins on the 24th of October 2006. I had started a pokerclub a few months before in Sweden. I had just graduated from the equivalent of high school there. Obviously, if you know the laws of Sweden, organising poker for money is questionable, let's say. And a couple of hours after doors open, then someone slams up the door and runs up the staircase. Boom boom boom! Put down the cards, release the chips. Who is the organizer here? And you know, me, just 18 years old. I had my birthday just 12 days before that. I just turned 18. I put up my hand and they said, Who else is the organizer? So, you know, 20 police officers stormed my poker club, and the next day I was on the front cover of all three national newspapers in Sweden, and that's how I started my career. And since then, poker events and community is what I've done my entire life. One thing led to the other. I ended up in Malta and I worked for Betson Group for a couple of years, organized their global events for the company before me and Martin, my business partner of the last 12 years. We decided to start our own business, which then eventually morphed into Nextotel. And 800 events later, we are here together today. That's the short story. Wow.

Joeri Billast 3:58

Yeah, great story to hear. Of course, lots of things happened in all those years. But you know, Next is often described as an event company. But when I hear you speak and you just mentioned it, many people experience it as a community. At what point did you realize that you were building something bigger than a conference?

Pierre Lindh 4:19

Well, I

Building Events With Community DNA

Pierre Lindh 4:20

think community building for me is something that I've done my entire life. So going back further back from that day in 2006, I used to be a semi-professional counter-strike player in the world of esports in Sweden, which was very popular at the time. And we had a community there called Fragbite. This was the biggest counter-strike community in Scandinavia. I was one of the moderators there, and we also kind of broke out into an IRC that was the popular chat program at that time, where we were building communities within the Counter-Strike world. And so, building, maintaining, being part of communities it's always been very close to my heart. There was never any moment where we said we're gonna build a community through Nextotheo, but this is just the style of how I like to build things in general. It is very community-centric, and that's just very close to who I am as a person. And I think as a founder, the business becomes a bit a reflection of you. And so, with Nextotheo, we've always been very mindful over that community part to make sure that people feel like you know the conferences and what we do as professionals. It's like yes, of course, we need to learn about iGaming and the latest trends and regulatory changes and so on and so forth. But as human beings, we have more interest than that, even if we all have the shared interest that we work in the eigenming industry. But we also think that people want to connect with each other. We also think that people want a place to belong in the industry. We spend so much time with our work and with our careers that it's I think people welcome the fact that we can be a little bit more personal as well in that space, and so that's always being at the backbone of what we try to create with Nextotheo, a little bit more human experience.

Joeri Billast 6:04

I love that. I was speaking on your event at the marketing stage about my book, The Future CMO, and community is one of the key pillars I talk about. You mentioned that you like to keep it a bit more personal. I was preparing for this podcast recording with you. I was looking at we are definitely connected to LinkedIn and connected with some of your team members on LinkedIn. And I think one of them described next as a full room or a room full of friends they hadn't met yet. So, how do you intentionally create that feeling at scale?

Designing For Every Personality Type

Pierre Lindh 6:36

I love that saying. It's a room full of friends that you haven't met yet. I'm gonna remember that tagline. That's fantastic. So here's the thing with conferences is we have this like archetype of what a conference is, or like an archetype of what the conference delegate is. So, usually how you see it is a very extroverted person walks the hallway, speaks to everyone, then after the conference, you go to one of the networking events, you have a couple of drinks, and you continue the networking there. Maybe it goes into the late night, and the next day you are a little bit more tired and you come back to the show. And that is the archetypical personality of a conference. Now, what we think is that in our case we have 6,000 delegates, and there's 6,000 different personality types. Some are extrovert, yes, but others are introverted, some are evening persons, yes, they want to go out, but others are morning people, some are younger, some are older, some are at the iGammy conference for the first time. You can create so many different personality types, and our job as organizers is to be able to cater to all personality types. So instead of just hosting the event for one type of personality, you need to create an experience where any delegate can create their own agenda on their own terms. And if people feel like they are in their own environment where they feel comfortable, they're probably gonna be more open to connect with other people, and this is at the core what I think is the difference between just being an event organizer and being a world-class event organizer because it means that you need to be able to put yourself in other people's shoes, people that have other interests and other personality types than you, and really put yourself in their mind and picture yourself walking through the event. If I've never been at an eigenming event before, how would I experience Next Valetta in this case? What would I do? I probably want to seek myself to networking opportunities where you get introduced to people, or round table sessions, maybe where I can sit down and just start conversations and you want to have help to start those conversations, for example. Or if I'm a morning person and I don't like to go out drinking, like okay, maybe we can organize a few different sporting events or mindfulness events in the morning, whether that being yoga or meditation or golf or paddle or whatever it may be, so that you can feel like you are on your own home turf and meet people who are like-minded to you, and that is at the core, I think, of why people feel more home and more kind of themselves when they come to our event because we are trying our best at least to uh create those experiences that cater to every single delegate.

Joeri Billast 9:32

Yeah. For me, it was my first time in Malta, and the fact that it was for me actually one week, a couple of days of events, different events, and indeed there were side events in the morning, in the evening, smaller events, and then the bigger events, and it helped to connect with everyone already, you know, because I'm a networker. But for some people, like you said, maybe it's doing some yoga or some running would help better. So I think that's a really good setup, actually.

Trust In The Age Of AI

Joeri Billast 10:00

Now, you've spent years of doing this event of bringing business leaders and leaders together. What have you learned in talking to those people about the future in a world and today there's AI everywhere? So, what is the future of trust? AI gaming is also a business where trust is very important. So, what are you thinking about, or what did you learn in this conversation about the future of trust in a worldly shaped by AI and by algorithms?

Pierre Lindh 10:29

Well, here's the thing, Jory. It is currently a massive investment push into the live event industry. And you ask yourself, why is that? Why is so much capital flowing into this industry right now? Well, in a world of AI, and you speak about trust, the only experience that you can truly trust in the world of AI are the in-person, real human-to-human experiences. And we think that going forward, even in our company, we are going through a massive AI transformation right now. Me personally, this is like my biggest obsession right now. I'm just super excited that I can create what's in my head that I can actually create it. So we're jumping head first into this space. But nonetheless, we also think that it creates an even bigger opportunity for the live events and for the in-person conversations because at the end of the day, the people that you prefer to do business with are the people that you trust and that you like. I would say a combination of those two. But the way to get to that point is first to get to know them, right? And it's well and good that of course you can meet via Teams and Zoom and you can have kind of introductory conversations with people, but it's in in-person where you build that trust and you build that likeness towards another person as well. And ultimately, those are the type of people and organizations that we want to do business with. So the future is definitely a mix of both. You need to lean into all the superpowers that AI is giving you currently, and how that is transforming businesses and org charts, and you know, it's transforming how we work and productivity. But ultimately, we are human beings and we want to do business with people that we like and that we trust, so that happens in person. So I think you'll see more and more kind of a division between the two where we'll be much more focused when we are working with AI and we'll get a lot more done. And at the same time, you'll see the event sector becoming much stronger as well, because with the use of AI, we can be much more purposeful with the event as well. We can become much better at kind of networking people and putting the right people together using AI, and so you'll see definitely an uptickable.

Joeri Billast 12:41

Absolutely. Meeting people in real life is really good. You make these connections also with people like you. You're out there, you tell your personal stories, and today you're here at my podcast. You are showing up as a really human being. It's not like there is some kind of post outside, like lots of people today, they put out content, and often it's AI-generated, and you get more and more noise. Now, you mentioned that you are traveling, you're in New York. You

Why Prediction Markets Feel Different

Joeri Billast 13:09

recently launched the next Predict around prediction markets. Tell us a bit more about that. And what signals made you believe that it's not just a trend, but potentially a new category?

Pierre Lindh 13:21

Yeah, so I am a big proponent of that things need to have purpose in order to succeed. And I think this is something we've struggled with as an industry in within the aging industry. If compare this to other fringe industries, let's take two industries like alkohol and tobacco. There is one of those industries that's been able to create a purpose and the other one hasn't, right? So if you think about the experience around alcohol, you know, really and truly, it's drinking poison. Like, that's what it is. It literally drinking poison. How is it possible that this is legal, right? The reason is that we all understand that going to the sports game, having a couple of drinks, it's a way to relax and it connects us with other people around us and it enhances the experience. And so we all accept and understand that this is something that brings us value in our life, right? As long as you don't uh drink excessively. Now, in the tobacco sector, that has not really been the case. There hasn't really been a clear purpose. Obviously, in that product, you are smoking poison rather than drinking poison, but really and truly, the products are pretty much the same in that regard, in that they are damaging your body. And because tobacco hasn't been able to clearly define its purpose in culture, in society, you'll see that industry being taxed away, and so each past year taxes are becoming stronger in that industry, and advertisement restrictions are becoming tighter. What's happening in the agony industry currently? We are seeing obviously more taxation, we are seeing heavier marketing restrictions because we haven't been able to voice a true purpose. And this for me is what is really interesting about the prediction market space because the prediction market's industry, and I think it's an industry rather than just a subproduct. It has a very clear purpose, and that very clear purpose is tied to a concept that is called the wisdom of the crowds, which basically goes back all the way to the 1940s or something like that, where you went to a market and one of the stands had a pig. Okay, how much does this pig weigh? You know, I guess you guess, other people guess, and whoever is the closest wins the prize. Very few people will be able to guess the right answer. But if you take all the answers together and you divide them, you get very close to the weight of the pig. And this is the wisdom of the crowds, right? So a group of people will all have their own perception and perspective over the question they are trying to solve, and the aggregate result is usually the closest to the actual answer. And that's very to the core of the premise of the pretty show markets industry, which is what's going to happen tomorrow, basically. You go to CNN, you go to Fox News to read what's going to happen, you go to polymarket to understand what's going to happen tomorrow, right? And the clear purpose, I go to polymarket 20 times a day currently, because I would watch a news story on CNN that's telling me that the Iranians are winning the war in the Middle East. Then I go to Fox News and they are telling me that no, the Americans are winning, and I haven't learned anything. So if I go to polarket, at least I can see what the kind of aggregates consensus is amongst the wider crowd, right? Rather than me being subdued by some news article that is trying to pull me one way or the other. This gives me a lot of value to be able to keep me grounded in what the actual truth is, rather than the propaganda that is coming out one way or the other. So I feel like the prediction markets industry has a very clear purpose, and that opens up, I think, just a wider market. And we already see that today with very respected investors and brands that are traditionally scared of gambling, or they do see it as a fringe industry, that are jumping onto the prediction markets industry. And this is what makes it super fun for us to organize as well, because we can go out to some of the biggest brands in the world, to some of the biggest business leaders in the world, and attract them into our conference, and that of course makes for a really interesting organizational journey, being passionate about events, this is what we like to do. And so I think this is at the core of the reason why we think that the prediction markets industry has a very bright future. Whereas, whilst the online gambling industry has a very mature market at this point, we feel like there's still a lot of work to be done on the justification front. And so we like the fact that we can kind of hedge our best by hosting events in both verticals, and that will become our next expansion, basically.

Authenticity As The Real Business Moat

Joeri Billast 18:11

Let me also ask something about my book, Futures CMO. It was actually Valentina Diaco, who with her I did a fireside chat. She read my book. A concept she really liked was the concept about the chief value officer that the next CMO, the future CMO. It should not be about clicks, about engagement, about views, but it's about value, about building trust, about showing what marketing really delivers to the boardroom. And so I'm curious from your perspective, do you see the same shift happening amongst founders, operators, leaders inside an X ecosystem, that the focus is going towards value, trust. You already mentioned community.

Pierre Lindh 18:53

Yeah, I think trust is a really big one, and trust is very associated with authenticity, I think, and also transparency in general. And these are buzzwords, right? But I think what it really means is that companies traditionally have been pretty guarded of what's going on within the company. They have been pretty guarded of letting their customers discuss at large because I think a lot of companies are just scared that they might get pushback or they might get critique or they make a mistake and you know it gets to the surface. I think a big part of becoming successful in the future is to really put yourself out there. We have a saying internally: I always sell this to my sales team. It's the best way to sell. And is it to be this Wolf of Wall Street, see selling, always be closing, find the right words in order for someone to say yes and then move on to the next person? If you are a good person and people trust you and people like you, like that's probably gonna be the best strategy. We always say to our sales team, you know, the best way to sell is to just be yourself, unless you are a serial killer, in which case, do not be yourself. But you know, if you are a good person with good values and you really care about your product and your company, let the world know about that, right? Being able to create those communities, put people together and create something bigger with purpose and so on. And I think uh ultimately when you are able to create that kind of community around your product, people understand that there's a risk attached to doing that. Like I said, if you are nefarious, that probably is gonna come to the surface much easier. So by being out there more and by opening up your books more, that probably means that you are genuine and that you're trying to do well, you know. So it is the harder path to take, it's filled with risk in its own ways. I think ultimately this is very close to the heart of the future of successful businesses, especially in the world of AI now, which is filled with impersonal experiences. To your point earlier, Joey, you can obviously create really well-written LinkedIn posts every single day that have some deeper, very smartly articulated point, but clearly is written by the AI. I think people really value authenticity in the sense that even spelling errors and imperfect grammar is actually something that people see as a trust signal in the future in the world of AI. That actually not writing perfectly and not be imperfect is just a sign that you are being yourself, and I think people ultimately people want to understand who they are speaking to and who they have in front of them, and not be imperfect, being authentic, that is a way for people to understand who you are, right? Rather than this like really hard shell of kind of perfect grammar and and the polished things. So that would be my my two cents on that.

Joeri Billast 21:45

Absolutely, and I can tell you also the story about when I started the podcast, like you started your next event from zero. I started a podcast from zero. And because I'm Belgian, I'm not a native English speaker, people could say, Oh, but you speak the Belgians would say you speak English. With a Belgian accent, but I went to Austin for consensus, and people recognize me from the podcast because of my accent. So you see, it's authentic. I just sound different, and it makes you stand out. Now, I have also my own small event here in Sintra that I've organized one time. It's a retreat, it's a mastermind, marketing mastermind retreats. And we are also talking about changes going on in the world. So imagine you are there, and they ask you five years in the future, you're there and you look back. What was actually the biggest change you would think about around building influence, building community, building business?

Pierre Lindh 22:39

If you

Influence And Community Five Years Out

Pierre Lindh 22:40

would look back in five years to what's happening right now, I think that the authenticity piece and human element is going to be more and more important. Like to the previous point as well, essentially. We are going to step into a world now where we will have heavy automation in a big part of our organizational daily flow. That goes everything from like in the sales experience to the kind of top-of-funnel activity that's happening to many of our processes internally will be automated to how we communicate as organizations will be automated to a large extent. I think it will be a big part of this kind of AI nativity, is for the AI to really understand your business, to be able to communicate in your tone. I think that will become a really important thing to be able to get it right. Ultimately, what all this will lead to is that authenticity piece and being able to put yourself out there as a human being and communicate like a person and give the company a human element in how you build the organization as a brand. That human element will become much more important. We see change already now internally. In our editorial team, for example, our journalists, right? Like that's a profession which is changing right now, and that authenticity piece is everything, right? So we want our journalists to be out building up their own brand, publishing stories, publishing comments on Twitter and LinkedIn and whatnot, because at the end of the day, people want to they want to know who they are reading the news from. They want the journalists to be passionate about what they're writing about, because if not, then they might as well read an AI article. And so we see that as a really big shift, and that will translate over to the rest of the company as well. That we will encourage everyone in our business to be more out there, to build their own brand, to speak, to write things, and really show that even though we are doing a lot of things with AI, even though you know there's a lot of things happening behind the doors, there is a team of human beings, and that will become a very, very, very important part of any company's marketing strategy is to show authenticity because we're at a point now where we can do perfect marketing campaigns, right? We can choose the perfect tagline, we can have the perfect text, the perfect video, the perfect script, and it's like at the flip of a finger. That means that marketing to some extent is commoditized, like that traditional type of marketing. It's so easy to create an Apple quality advertisement at this point that what's left is that we show the human side of our businesses. That's what's going to give us an edge. If we are a genuine company with genuine, good-hearted people, that becomes the moat to a big extent.

Joeri Billast 25:18

Oh Pierre, you don't realize it, but actually, I gave a TEDx talk some time ago. It was exactly about your point. You almost used some of the words I've been using there.

Pierre Lindh 25:26

Great mic, thank you like as I say.

Joeri Billast 25:28

Yeah.

Where To Connect And Closing CTA

Joeri Billast 25:29

So, Pierre, we are coming towards the end of the podcast episodes. If not, people that are now listening, marketers, people in iGaming, operators, you know. If they are interested to connect with you to know more about you, what you are building with next, where you would you like me to send them?

Pierre Lindh 25:47

My uh Instagram, Pierre Obvio, LinkedIn, Pierre Lindh, those are probably the main channels that I use. We have our WhatsApp community for the agam industry as well, the next.

Joeri Billast 26:03

Well, that's great to know, Pierre. As my listeners know, there are always show notes. So the link that you mentioned will be in there. If later on you have some things to share with my audience, you can send it to me. I will put it in the show notes. So, guys, thank you so much for listening. Pierre, it was really a pleasure to have you on the show.

Pierre Lindh 26:22

Thank you so much for your questions, really appreciate it.

Joeri Billast 26:25

Guys, what an amazing episode! So I'm sure that you have people around you who could also benefit from this episode. Can be your neighbor, it can be other people in the space, it can be entrepreneurs. So be sure to send this episode to them. If you're not yet following the show, this is a really good moment to hit the subscribe button. If you haven't given me a review yet, if you give me these 5 stars, this really goes a long way. And of course, would love to see you back next time. Take care. Support the conversations at the intersection of Web3 AI and the future of digital leadership.