Khaled Helioui
I joined Bigpoint as Chief Games Officer in 2012, taking over a 450 strong department of a fast growing and profitable gaming leader whose titles were played by hundreds of millions of gamers. In a few months I had to step up as CEO to prevent what looked like the end of the group which wasn’t prepared to face the quick rise of social games and mobile games. With the support of devoted and driven colleagues we restarted from scratch, setting up a new vision, bringing in new leadership and building a new board with world class operators and product leaders. We rebuilt the trust of our teams and players, eventually releasing award winning titles across multiple platforms. We faced death more times than I can count but the passion to keep pushing the boundaries of gaming and the impact we had on our gamers kept us all going. I only realised then what it meant to fight and give everything for something bigger than oneself.
The importance of governance and how structural it is to the success of a mission. It won’t matter meaningfully to your operations and growth until it becomes the sole deterministic factor of the future of the company and then it’s too late to fix if you haven’t made it a priority before.
What drives me most is backing people who refuse to bend their will or sacrifice their drive to see their vision through against all odds. Fighting for something bigger than oneself to correct an aspect of society that is fundamentally broken and prevents people from living a more meaningful life - lending my experience and reach to help founders, rarely fitting the mould, making their vision come true is what keeps me going.
