Bartosz Skwarczek is the Founder and CEO of the G2A Capital Group.
An entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience, coach, mentor, and public speaker. The founder and President of the Supervisory Board G2A Capital Group, to which belongs G2A.COM – the largest and most dynamically developing global marketplace for digital entertainment, where users can buy vouchers for digital products such as games, gift cards, subscriptions, or software. The marketplace already has had over 25 million users from 180 countries around the world.
A winner of the Forbes magazine’s BrandMe CEO award, the Digital Shaper Award and the Gold Medal of Polish Academy of Success. He’s also a co-founder and member of business organizations such as the International Leaders Forum, Google Next Gen CEO Club and Facebook Client Advisory Board and the Polish Council of Global Businessmen.
Graduate of the AGH University (University of Science) of Krakow and the SGH Warsaw School of Economics, as well as Executive Education programs on Harvard (Finance), MIT (IT, Blockchain, Platformization, Productivity), and Oxford (Fintech).
Barosz Skwarczek is also a co-founder and member of many business organizations such as the International Leaders Forum, Google Next Gen CEO Club, Facebook Client Advisory Board, and the Polish Council of Global Businessmen. Speaker for business events such as Merchants Payment Ecosystem Conference in Berlin, MIT in Boston, or Gamescom in Cologne. He is also socially active – he initiated the creation of the działajmyrazem.pl platform for organizing aid during Covid and on-the-spot help for Ukraine refugees, which was joined by several dozen companies. Privately, a tennis lover – as he says about himself, in his spare time he can be found at the nearest court.
[Q U I C K N O T E S]
- Position: Founder & CEO
- Industry: Gaming, Online Marketplace
- Location: Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Globe
- Website: G2A
- Personal Website: Bartosz
- LinkedIn: Bartosz Skwarczek
- Instagram: N/A
- Twitter/X: Bartosz Skwarczek
- FaceBook: Bartosz Skwarczek
Bartosz, can you start off by telling us about yourself and why you chose entrepreneurship?
I think motivation is my stronghold. When you are born in Poland and you fly to New York, Shanghai, or New Delhi, you always hear this question. “Hey, where are you from?” And then you are set from the answer. “I’m from Poland”. And then you hear the second question always literally “from Holland”? It’s actually relatively funny because I live in the Netherlands. To our point, that was always very motivating for me – people were not expecting someone running such a business coming from a country like Poland. This motivation and being an entrepreneur was my dream or aim from the beginning, from high school. Later on, when I was a coach and mentor, I wanted to inspire people to inspire others, and I wanted to prove that you can start from scratch, from a not wealthy family, from regular school, from a post-communist country, with zero money and just being extremely motivated, determined, open-minded, and hungry for growth, for life, for education. I wanted to prove that the limit, and that you can inspire people that they can build a fully global business.
In 2010 I founded G2A.COM in a small office with a handful of people with big dreams and even bigger ambitions. We wanted to become the best source for gamers and geeks to get their games from, first as an online store, and then a marketplace. Now, 13 years later, G2A.COM is a globally recognized brand with offices all over the world, headquarters in Amsterdam and Hong Kong, and available for users in pretty much every country, offering all-digital items and over 200 regional payment methods. This is due to a tremendous amount of work put out by people from all specialties, with everyone in the company contributing to our success.
Can you tell us what drives you to be successful as an entrepreneur?
Ever since I started as an entrepreneur, I have had a drive to achieve more and more. You can say that I was hungry for success and for reaching further milestones. When you hear from people around that what you do and achieve is very inspiring for them, and they source from you to change their lives, that is something that keeps pushing me. Last but not least, I love to see our people, G2Anians as we call ourselves, growing with the company, doing fantastic projects and successes. It makes me proud of them.
Tell us about your vision of your company in the next 2-3 years.
Right now, we as G2A.COM are in the middle of implementing an enhanced vision of the company, of opening the Gate 2 Adventure in digital entertainment to not only hardcore gamers – our main audience – but also to a new group that has grown much since the lockdowns: casual gamers. We aim to democratize digital entertainment, make it available for everyone, no matter their age, sex or gender, cultural background, wealth etc., and to be the first choice for anyone seeking fun in the digital world. This approach has already started to bear fruit – we have grown over 25% year-to-year since 2022 and according to the forecasts we have made internally it will not change to the contrary – we are looking to grow even more and even faster. We have it all written down in a long-term plan, which will guide us for the next five years: which markets we plan to enter, how are we going to enter into strategic partnerships with known gaming and non-gaming brands, educating about digital entertainment, being a guide and companion to new and returning gamers. My personal goal here is to make sure that the people who work at G2A.COM, my G2Anians all around the world are proud and happy to be working here.
What’s the one or two accomplishments that you’re proud of?
There were several such milestones, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly which ones are the most important for me. They are spread over most of our history, and each marked another step towards being the biggest all-digital marketplace in the world. For example, getting invited as a keynote speaker to MPE 2019 – the European #1 merchant payments conference to talk how good G2A is in security, becoming a business partner of Microsoft and reaching the 100th million sold item on the marketplace in late 2021. In 2023 there were a few of accomplishments I am particularly proud of, which are becoming the world’s largest marketplace for digital entertainment with more than 25 million users and more than 75,000 digital items to choose from, launching our first edition of the diversity campaign (diversity is one of our core principles, and the positive reception we saw during the campaign: over 200 million impressions, a third of US viewers watching the entire 4-minute long video we prepared, and an increase of 77% in brand searches after the campaign), breaking the record of new users from the US in August, and becoming the Main Partner of the Drift Masters European Championship competition, which managed to gather a record-breaking 55k audience during its finals in Warsaw, Poland, which makes it the biggest non-gaming event we have partnered with to date, and we plan to continue this partnership.
What advice do you have for other up-and-coming entrepreneurs?
Being an entrepreneur requires a few very important traits. One is full responsibility. Since there is no boss above you, everything is on you. As an entrepreneur you need to be responsible for everything that is happening in your business. You need to like this feeling of being responsible and it may weigh a lot.
The second thing is my crazy work ethic. I’ve been an entrepreneur for 20 years and most of that time my working week has been around 100 hours. Before COVID, I was doing 200 flights per year. After COVID, when we moved to more digital online meetings, it’s 10 to 14 hours of meetings or teleconferences daily. And you need to be physically and mentally ready for that level of intensity for years.
And you need to love it. Otherwise, you will be suffering. Being an entrepreneur is an amazing thing. It gives you freedom. It gives you vision. You can go wherever you want. But also it requires a few things from you. I think another one is resilience to stress, especially on the decision-making side, you have to make decisions. Under pressure of time, under pressure of people, under pressure of resources, with not enough data. Most often, you don’t have access to all data you would need to make a difficult decision and you have to be ready to take risks, sometimes playing all in. And the last, but not least, I would say: have a vision. You need to be brave, to have a clear, very clear image of where you are going and why you are going there. If you have a strong answer to ‘why’, then you can move forward and forward.
Are you active on social media professionally? If so, what platforms work best for engaging your followers?
Nowadays, social media is a must-have. However, it is worth getting to know them well and adapting them to your person, job, and personality to be credible and feel comfortable in these communication channels. In business, LinkedIn is a natural choice, as it allows you to exchange interesting content and establish valuable contacts. I also have an account on X, formerly Twitter, which has been changing a lot recently, and on Meta, i.e., Facebook. Each of these channels has a slightly different specificity and each gives me slightly different opportunities and benefits – reaching different groups of people with different expectations (short and discussion-oriented on X, longer, but more casual on Meta, and very formal, professional and business oriented on LinkedIn), and accessing new and differentiated sources of knowledge and content. LinkedIn is also a really good and useful tool for building employer branding and gives recruitment opportunities when looking for experts for your company.
Who was your biggest influencer?
My first important influencer was my mom Małgorzata. She took a great care to raise me to be an honest and quality person. Thanks to her, when I start doing something I do it to the best of my ability and bring it to the end. Otherwise, I do not do it at all.
Then there was my father Zbigniew who showed me the spirit of entrepreneurship. He also taught me that it is worth liking and trusting people, even though you can be disappointed sometimes. Being open and trusting brings more positive emotions than disappointments.
My first mentor was Tomasz Witkowski. I was a student then, and I wanted to live on my own, so I had to earn a living. I worked in insurance, walking door-to-door with my blue briefcase. Tomasz taught me about sales and showed me the meaning of value in what you do. Last, but not least is Tony Robbins. I first learned about him in 1998 and since then he has been present in my life. This adventure began with his first book: “Unlimited Power”, through all the ones he wrote, through most of the available video materials, and through four trainings that I had the opportunity to participate in. He revealed to me the entire field of the psychology of achievement, how to deal with difficult moments, how to motivate yourself, and why it is worth setting big goals for yourself.
What is the most challenging part of your work as a CEO?
The most challenging part of my job as the CEO is time and time management. It’s a never-ending list of tasks. Every day I get up and know that I have more to do than I can do. The list never ends, I never feel like I’ve done everything. There is always more you can do, even if you work 16 hours a day. Even though you delegate tasks, even though you don’t micromanage, there’s no end to this list. You constantly see that you can do more for your people, customers, company.
What do you have your sights set on next?
I am dedicated to developing G2A.COM and growing it into a globally recognized brand and the leader of the all-digital marketplaces industry it deserves to be. My goal here is to reach 100 million clients all over the world, which right now we have fulfilled in 25% and don’t stop. Personally, I am a proponent of personal development, which means constantly working on improving my pool of knowledge and getting out of my comfort zones to meet new challenges and learn new things. I am also very interested in the topic of longevity, which will hopefully give me enough time to lead G2A.COM to where I have always seen it – the top global position. Eventually both lead to what I do very often, sharing knowledge and inspiration with others.
What is a day in your life like?
It depends on whether I’m traveling or not. There were years when I made 200 flights a year to various places around the world. Traveling affects the rhythm of the day because, firstly, you are in a constant rush – to another plane, another meeting, and secondly, you must deal with jet lag, especially when travelling between Hong Kong and Europe. Covid changed the situation a bit, but flights were replaced by a huge number of video conferences, one after the other. I start the day with meditation and physical exercise. Then there is breakfast with the family, a very important point of my day. Whenever I travel, I miss having breakfast together. Then the video conferences and meetings begin, lasting – depending on the day – from 6 to 12 hours. During breaks, I find time for second training and conceptual work, thinking about strategies and ways to approach ideas. Then I have private time, although more often than not, it has to give way to late meetings and trips. In the evening, sometimes I manage to read a book, and sometimes I just go to sleep. Sleep time is extremely important, I even have it scheduled on my calendar. I have learned that neglecting sleep can really be detrimental to your productivity. Several things help me maintain high energy levels – sleep, good nutrition, no alcohol, exercise, and a high level of motivation. I manage to find this last thing in the belief that what you are doing is a dream come true and that you are not doing it for yourself, but for others.
Do you have any hobbies?
I have many hobbies. Some are partly related to my work. In this category, of course, there are books, podcasts and programs that allow me to gain knowledge, stay up to date and constantly develop. The second, very important sphere is physical activity. I believe that sport and business have a lot in common – they require commitment, passion and sacrifice, giving in return emotions and satisfaction. Of many sports, tennis is closest to me. Finally, the third element is mind training, hence meditation, which is my hobby and has become an integral part of every day.
What makes you smile?
People make me smile the most – meeting them and sharing with them, and it’s not about seeing as many people as possible, but simply about sharing feelings, emotions, and knowledge, giving your time to others is the most valuable thing you can propose. I also smile at the thought of overcoming a path, even a difficult and difficult one, but one that leads in the right direction, to a good goal. Finally, animals that always make me smile.
What are you never without?
I travel a lot and I try to always be in a good mood, first of all. I always have a handy luggage scale, a book and a second phone just in case.
What is your favorite vacation spot?
I have to admit that Spain is one of my special places in the world – I visited this amazing country many times, Andalucia is my beloved place: Malaga, Marbella (I even have my tennis coach there!), Estepona or small Istan. I really love the Spanish climate.
Other work, published articles, interviews or accomplishments:
- Using AI In Cybersecurity: Exploring The Advantages And Risks, Forbes.com
- How Championing Your Sector Can Benefit Your Business Outside The Bottom Line, Forbes.com
- Why A Zero-Tolerance Approach Is The Best Way To Combat E-Commerce Fraud, Forbes.com
- Interview with Marca.com – in Spanish
- Interview with PlaySense – in Dutch
- Interview with Fandom Wire
~ Bartosz
