Poker pro and mixed martial arts fighter Terrence Chan was with Ultimate Poker from the beginning, heading up the customer service department. But after 16 months with the United State’s first-ever legal poker site, Chan chose to leave the company last June.
At the time, he offerered little reason for his departure. But in the aftermath of UP closing their New Jersey and Nevada operations, we can assume that it had to do with the direction of the site. Now that UP is officially done for, Chan released a video stating what factors he thinks doomed the company – while “not trying to stomp on the grave.” This being said, let’s look at some of Chan’s most-notable thoughts.
The software and technology lagged behind the industry
The first major problem that Chan pointed out was the software, which was a complaint among many players. After citing that the large roster of pros and YouTube videos was the only place UP had a competitive advantage, Chan said, “The technology was so far behind.” The poker pro also explained how there was more emphasis on meeting deadlines, rather than spending time on quality control and fixing software bugs.
Too much money was going into salaries at the top
“For a startup, I was probably paid too much,” Chan admitted, while adding, “I was nowhere near the salaries of the people who were above me. And I really kind of feel like, for startups, people with high executive positions should probably be paid by performance.” When the salaries were accidentally made public, Chan recalled behind “disenchanted” by how much some of the UP execs made.
A lot of good ideas were shot down
Another big problem that the MMA fighter saw included an old-school, brick-and-mortar casino approach to doing business at UP. Chan said that there were “a lot of ideas getting shot down” regarding everything from marketing to online poker promotions. He explained how Station Casinos had plenty of influence over how everything was done, and their top brass largely failed to adapt to the internet business model. Chan went through a scenario where UP employees would spend lengthy amounts of time trying to catch the execs up on simple internet terms and concepts.
Ultimate Poker didn’t keep good employees
“We failed to hang on to a lot of good people, and we failed to reward a lot of good people,” Chan recalled. He went on to say that there were “a lot of false promises” regarding performance reviews and salary increases. Chan cites quality employees who came in at low salaries because they wanted to be part of something big, only to never see pay increases that matched their skills. He ended this point by saying that UP “failed to invest in people.”
The company culture changed for the worse
One more thing that Chan hit upon was how the UP culture went from one of trying to improve the product to “I don’t want to get yelled at.” He also believes the poker site really could have been great, even with liquidity shortcomings and regulatory red tape. However, the corporate culture made it so that different departments often looked out for themselves, rather than bonding together and working towards the same goal.
As mentioned before, many believe that Ultimate Poker’s poor software was the biggest reason for their failure. But it’s interesting to see some of the additional problems that Chan points out, which also led to the demise of America’s first regulated poker site.