Lazy Intelligence: A Smarter Way to Build B2B Products | David Harris and Vlad Bondarenko | ReferOn

Vlad: Everyone's on fraud management, but no one knows what it means. I think iGaming is a few years behind. Vlad: Most crypto casinos just need a basic working tool. Maybe I can build a product with Claude. David: You need to be able to coordinate. You still need to sit in this proper chair. Surya: This reminds me of Steve Jobs. He said people don't know what they need. We need to define it and give it to them, and then they realize they need this.

David: I never give him the solution. I just say, this is a problem. Vlad: And each time I hear from someone, "I'm 10 years in this industry", if you're always telling people how long you've been in the industry, it doesn't mean anything. Sponsor: Behind every license is a person betting on themselves. At My Gaming License, real people carry your application through. From jurisdiction to bank to launch, we do the work so you don't have to.

300+ clients, a perfect approval record. My Gaming License, your licensing partner. Surya: Hello and welcome back to another episode of iGaming Real Talk. Today I have here two gentlemen, Vlad as well as David from ReferOn. They just recently took on C-level positions. So I'm excited to have them here and also talk a little bit about affiliate platforms, what's going on, and where the industry is heading in this region. So Vlad as well as David, welcome to the show.

David: Thank you very much. Thank you. Surya: How's it going so far? How's your trip to Madrid? David: So far so good. We were just talking before it started. We got the train in, which was very nice. Yeah, Spain's great. Vlad: Agree. Fully agree. This is my first train trip after five years, so I was quite excited because it's really convenient. No need to wait for two hours, no need to wake up early and all that stuff. That's really nice. Surya: That's cool.

I think if I had the option to take the train, I would. But I'm flying from the other continent. So let's just kick off. We're talking about affiliate management platforms today. Of course our audience is very well aware, but maybe there are some who don't know what affiliate management platforms are supposed to do. So can we break it down to very simple terms? What is the purpose of an affiliate management platform? David: Sure.

An affiliate management platform is going to be your cornerstone for promoting your business or your brand. It is very possible that most platforms or brands can promote themselves, but an affiliate management platform extends the reach to affiliates, allowing them to have an interface where they can sign in, check their reports, check their stats, and be rewarded for their actions.

Cases like ReferOn are one of the many in the market which offer these functionalities with ease. Surya: Mhm. But the operators, the brands, they also have the option to build it themselves. David: They can, of course they can. But there's a lot of work that goes into this. We come from, each of us has close to a decade of experience in the iGaming industry. We created this almost from its very beginnings in the development cycle.

And we took our own kind of, shall we say, annoyances or legacies, understandings of the industry, to find solutions to these problems. Not just to keep repeating, hey, we want to make our own. But with differences, to say not only are the affiliate managers the users, but we're also thinking about the affiliates. Vlad: So talking about the industry, we're talking about what do people need? How is the industry changing, adapting?

Are we capable of being agile enough to adjust to that, keep on top of the backlog, and try not to stagnate in the ever-changing world? Vlad: Yeah, I agree. And just to add here, if we take generally affiliate marketing, it's not only about the fancy parties, making a lot of money, going to the conferences where you see constantly beautiful girls and all this stuff. It's also a lot of stress. It's building relationships. It's building trust. It's very stressful work.

And ReferOn is such a tool which helps to not waste money, time, and physical resources on some daily routine, and just to make relationships and affiliate marketing more smooth. That's what we're trying to do. Surya: Do you see, from all the experience you have in the industry, that operators and brands prefer to go with third-party tools rather than building it themselves? Does it depend on the level of the operations they have? What do we see from the industry in general?

David: So the industry is really splintered in that way. You're going to see a lot of incoming smaller startups, a larger rise in crypto casinos lately as well, which probably don't have the development capacity or the know-how. Maybe they're coming from Forex as well, coming into iGaming as a new thing. So for them, it's like, I'm just going to take a third-party tool because I know I need it. I'm not going to create my own.

You also have maybe larger, well-known platforms or people with connections in the industry that go, I know how to do it. It's fine. I just need X, Y, and Z. David: Now, for an operator or platform to build their own, that's fine. It does take time, but they need to understand it will fit their needs. But the industry is a massive network, and you have tools upon tools upon tools which all grab from the same thing.

So if you're creating another system that tries to fit into an already crowded web, it's very hard for everyone to have the same transparency. So we came in, fair enough, in a crowded marketplace, but through our transparency and relationship building, we've carved a sector into the industry. People say, I need a third-party tool.

Let's come to ReferOn and connect with you because I know it can work with X, Y, and Z. If you make another platform, everyone that connects to it needs to reset, which sometimes can be annoying. Vlad: And just to add here, the industry is still young. It's very dynamic, but it's still young, and there are no standards. The problem is that if someone tries to build something on their own, they will do it obviously, but it will just be tracking.

When we started, we didn't want to build just a tracking tool, that's quite easy, and a lot of legacy systems are just tracking tools. You can build a tracking tool, but you cannot build an infrastructure tool which is scalable enough to onboard brands and affiliate programs, and also to provide more efficient tools to estimate your traffic, provide proper reports, payments, and all this stuff. It's more than just a tracking solution.

Even if we call ourselves an affiliate tracking system, it's more than just tracking. Vlad: That's why, when we see the market generally, there are a lot of different tools, but I don't think there are such tools which can be described as proper infrastructure tools. Even ReferOn, we are trying to get there. Surya: Okay, so just for me to understand, how did it all start?

I get what you're saying, there are tools in the market, they are mainly tracking tools, but there's much more to that. You both were part of the founding team from the start of ReferOn. So what I'm curious to know is, how did the start happen? When did you decide there is a need for another platform?

Were you operators yourselves at some point and you were just pissed about the solutions in the market, like, this is not how it's supposed to be and I want to create my own, or did it come from somewhere else? Where did this start happen? Surya: Would you start, Dave, or I can speak like hours about this? [laughter] David: Let's try to keep it short. Basically, at the starting moment we were using external tools. We both had experience in external tools as well.

Surya: Top five, you would say the ones you were using? David: Yeah, one of those. I don't want to say too much on the names. The operator was growing a lot and we weren't really keeping up with what we needed. And an idea was kind of planted to use our experience and our knowledge. I'm not a product owner or anything like that, but we were given the opportunity to see what we could do.

We had to gather resources, and there was a longer development cycle than maybe we anticipated. But we got there eventually, and then we started rolling out brands and brands and brands, migrating and migrating. That kind of developed over time. The beginning period was crazy, if I had to use a word, because there were a lot of changes, a lot of people learning a software, stuff not ready. Surya: How long did it take to build?

Vlad: I would say the development cycle was a year and a half, just over. Surya: Oh wow. Vlad: If we take a proper MVP, 20%. We were not ready at 20%. But it took one to two years, one and a half years, something like that. And considering, a proper MVP product can be built in two years, but it's only a proper MVP product. If we had more focused resources in the early stages, it maybe could have been sped up, but we got there. There was a rocky road, shall we say.

Vlad: But Dave, I remember when we were sitting in the cantina, drafting on literally on napkins how the media will work, how the tracking link will look like, and why it should look like this. All the names inside the platform, for example, Fluid. Why is it called Fluid? Because it was the kind of stuff I was doing in Google Sheets.

I always tell that ReferOn was born out of a Google Sheets CRM that I built on my own just for my purposes, because I was lazy enough not to do stuff in the legacy system I had, it took minutes to get data proper. Vlad: I would say the big excitement of the product is only thanks to the people who were working on that product, because of the spark in their eyes, the passion in their hearts.

Only because of that, we were trying to build not the same product as already in the market. It was by default, we don't want to build another one. Surya: Because you know there's 51, as per a Stats Drone report I was doing some research, there's 51 affiliate platforms. There's obviously the leaders, maybe more as well. I was wondering, when there's so many platforms, you might have also thought, do we actually need another one?

And if we need it, then what should be different than the top five? What is actually different? David: So this is what we really wanted to do in the early stages. There were meetings where it was like, okay, let's talk about the roll out. We were sitting in a booth together for five, six hours. We had this list, we need this, we need this. Once we had the need, then it was, okay, what can we own? Trying to understand what were the pains.

We were sitting in the chair of not only the affiliate manager, but the technical support, the financial team, whatever you wish. I was not having enough time to change my head, now I am financial manager, then I am that, that, that. That's why we were sitting six hours in that booth, trying to understand what will be the most important, the most valuable for at least the MVP product. Vlad: To be honest, this is just a small insight from my side as a product.

I think we are only now at this stage when I can tell that for 100% we are done with all the features that should be on the standard default affiliate tracking solution, payments, tracking, media, whatever. This kind of standardization is the point from which we have started.

Now it comes to the more interesting part, as a product part, when we can speak about not only AI, obviously, but how to unify the experience for both the affiliate manager side and also the affiliate side. Because we are trying not to forget about that side as well, if we take into account how many affiliates are using ReferOn, it's thousands. Surya: Give us a number. It's a huge number right now?

Vlad: The thing is, I can't give you a unique number, because some affiliates exist on many things, some have multiple accounts, some programs have 10k affiliates. It's very hard to do that. Surya: But I just want to touch on two things. Firstly, you mentioned 51 programs. Everyone knows platforms, everyone knows the leaders. But this is also what Vlad said earlier, some are tracking platforms, some are in-house, some are external.

It's a mixture of what they want to focus on. David: That brings to what Vlad was saying, we are now at that stage where we have done a level, according to his benchmark. Because there were many people that could have easily settled after the first year. And Vlad's benchmark, for those who know him, he has always been very passionate about the product. He's always pushing for a greater and greater product. That obviously hits onto me down the line as well.

David: You need to manage the expectations on the other side. We'll get it to you in a quarter. Fair. So that's his benchmark, which is a higher standard. This brings to the fact, how do you build a product? Is it just what the product team is saying? As a dynamic market, if we had rolled out our backlog three or four years ago, that's not going to be the same now if we did the same exercise.

So the impact and general assessment of what the market is needing, from data standpoints and functionality standpoints, this is where we have our discussions. Surya: Okay. So you bring what is needed from the client side, from the affiliate manager side, and then he has his own napkin. Then you combine both your napkins. Vlad: Only napkin. Surya: Yes, only napkin. Vlad: That works the best, to be honest. [laughter] It wipes the tears away afterwards.

If something is wrong, then I can put my tears off. Surya: That's good. I'll come back to the question again from the customer side, from the affiliate manager side. Let's say I'm an affiliate manager. I've been using the top one, two, three affiliate management platforms. What is different for me to use ReferOn? David: Okay, so we have three. Surya: Can I have like two main things? David: I can say three. Surya: Okay, perfect. Let's go. David: So, we have a nice logo.

I think this is a big point. [laughter] But anyone can find some of our tutorials on this. I would say ReferOn stands out with three major functionalities. We started off with the idea of how networks are managed in ReferOn, and we created this company grouping functionality, which allows an overseer organizational standpoint for affiliate managers to easily manage larger networks, and also affiliates to have a single sign-in point for their entire organization.

So let's say if I'm part of a big group like Betsson Group, Game Lounge, Gravity Tech, if I have 20 brands, all of this will be under the group. In most cases you probably see it split by geo or traffic, and they'll be under Game Lounge Limited or something, and they can do a single login and see their entire organization. Super easy for invoicing, for statistics, for API pools when they're doing data warehousing.

They're not just using ReferOn, they're using these other platforms as well. So we want to make it as simple and as easy for all of these users to extract that. Surya: Okay. So grouping is one thing. David: We then have our rewarding functionality, which came again from the annoyances of a lot of affiliate managers saying, oh, it's so clunky. It takes ages. I just want to set this campaign live. We basically created this fluid rewarding style.

When you want to update a threshold or update a structure, you can set deals not only at program, brand, or affiliate level, but even at tracker level, allowing you to do even more complex deal setting. It's a fluid reward window, it will just pop up on the side. You can adjust it very easily by geo groupings, thresholds, conditions, whatever you need, and then you're back there. You don't need site managers, commission group managers, or anything like that.

You set your deal as quickly as possible. And we wanted to make sure that any clunky flows either get removed entirely or get reduced to as little as we can. The third point is our reporting. Reporting is a huge deal for everyone involved. Surya: Isn't that like the whole main point of the platform itself? David: Data is the mantra of ReferOn. We see widgets, filters, gadgets, graphs.

In our reporting tool, we basically consolidated everything into a central report, allowing the user, both the affiliate and the affiliate managers, the ability to build their own report. It's like a Build-A-Bear workshop in ReferOn. You select whatever you need, maybe affiliate by brand, or campaign by player, or reward plan with click ID. And you can get all those measures by day. You can also create presets, and then these presets can be used for APIs.

Surya: Do you help them to do those presets? David: We have resources, we do training, we can help you set it all up. And I've also created videos to make people aware of how to do that. It may sound simple, but many systems still have very static reporting tools, which frustrates affiliate managers and affiliates. We wanted this as part of our first release, to showcase that you can do whatever you wish with your data, and have the data transparency there at your fingertips.

Vlad: Just a small comment from my side. I'm not trying anymore to put some features as our unique selling points. I would commend this in a different way. We at ReferOn are trying to build a habit for our customers, so that each time they log into ReferOn they're like, oh, I'm at home. We are trying to build each individual module in that way, to remove clunky flows completely, for 100%. It's not easy, it's not happening all the time.

The tool has to work for you, not the other way around. We have internally a small rule, a philosophy: if a feature is adding one click more, then it should be removed completely. Surya: So what you're saying is more about simplicity. Vlad: Simplicity is one of the most important parts. This is what I call the lazy approach. Because on some interviews I was calling myself that, or someone maybe you. Surya: I think there's this researcher called Richard Feynman.

He's very famous. And also Naval Ravikant, they talk about this thing: if someone can't explain something in simple terms, it means they don't understand it. Anyone can say a thousand words or make it complex, but if someone is able to make it simple, it really means they understand whatever it is. Vlad: It sometimes is very tough, literally the toughest thing.

For example, I will tell you what I think is the most tough thing right now in the system, the payment flow generally. It needs some time to get used to it, and then you will understand that it's really easy. It gives a lot of flexibility. But I would say we have some work to do, homework to do, to make it even easier, and we are doing this work constantly.

The whole payment flow that we have, including the recently released feature of crypto auto payments, it's a completely new product. Who knows, maybe at some point this will be an exclusive ReferOn extra product. It's quite huge now. Vlad: I always use this as an example, that great products are built not through tinkering and adjustments, not just by the technical doc. That's what we are trying always to build. I'm always open to any discussion, any kind of ideas.

I need ideas, I need feedback. I like to hear that something is bad, and I like to hear more that something is great. That's what Dave is always helping me with. Sometimes I hear only that we need to rebuild it, fine. But we have a huge team who has spark in the eye and is passionate enough for the product. Everyone who is like that can build really great products. And each time we are building something from scratch on napkins, it's always very exciting.

Surya: So from what I'm hearing, your focus on this whole product philosophy is about keeping it as simple as possible. This reminds me of what Elon Musk says a lot, he removes everything that's unnecessary. He bought Twitter X and he removed, what, 65%? David: I wouldn't say we're as deep as that one. But there is a relationship between our teams. Sometimes I come to Vlad to say, hey, I'm hearing chatter of this in the market. People are asking about this. What do you think?

And he's like, yeah, okay, next quarter. And then something has happened, and then he comes to me and is like, I have all of this stuff, and I'm like, but where were my requests? So it's a back and forth. I get the client and market side, and he still has connections in the market as well, so he gets similar stuff. It's a blend. And we both have to take our wins where we can.

You have to have the development from your side, those foundational tasks to make sure it doesn't break as soon as it's released, because as the product grows, the code grows with it. Vlad: But a very important thing to mention, not always those who are using a product understand what is wrong with it, and that something can be built or used in a different way.

Sometimes when we build and release something, always, I would say, it gets to the point that people don't understand why it's needed. For example, our reward module, how much time we spent at the beginning discussing and explaining to people why it's much easier to use. Only right now, sitting in this studio, can I for 100% tell that the rewarding engine, how it's working, how to put the commission structure, this is a standard for the industry. This should be the standard.

Whatever deal you have in your head, you're just transferring it to whatever level you wish. If you wish to put the deal on the affiliate level, please do it. Tracker level, brand level, whatever level you wish, just take it from your head and put it wherever you wish. You don't need to create a commission again. That's very hard to explain. It was very hard from the beginning to explain to people who got used to the old approach.

Vlad: And if we are trying, maybe I'm too ambitious, or maybe I'm stupid, I don't know, but I'm trying to kind of start a revolution here and give another vision, another approach to the product we're building. Some things can be done in a different way. That's why what Dave tells me is very valuable feedback, but it's not always 100% true that I'm used to this approach, please do it, means I should do it.

I need to gather all other feedback, maybe it's just from one client, maybe even from a valuable client. It's very hard to take something really valuable. And the last thing, now it's really impossible to find completely new ideas. Surya: This reminds me of Steve Jobs. You know what he said? It's very funny. He said people don't know what they need. We need to define it and give it to them, and then they realize they need it.

Vlad: To be honest, this idea I have taken also from him. I don't remember where, but he was telling this. So I'm happy that you are on the same flow. Surya: Yeah, it just came to my mind. David: Just to add on to that, there are two examples I've done recently. I was gathering what people were saying market-wide. I took the top 10 things which I qualitatively thought people were talking about, and then I put together a survey.

I sent it to all of my clients and said, rank these of how well you want them. Once that was completed, I presented it to the product team and said, look, this is now quantitative from the qualitative understanding, because we're putting numbers on how much people want these. You still have that as a record to say this is what people want in general priority. Maybe that's not what they want, but it gives us an idea.

David: I'd also come back to what Vlad was saying, when I see a problem or something that's broken, I never give him the solution. I just say, this is a problem. If I told him the solution, that's just going to fix what the client wants exactly how it is. Maybe there's stuff I don't know about or things he's working on. I just present him the problem and say, if you want to discuss it, we discuss it. It's important to define that problem clearly.

This is the business requirements. I may give suggestions, but I don't ever say, this is what it needs to be fixed. I present it and that's it. David: We have a really good example here, fraud management. Everyone's on fraud management, but no one knows what it means. Just managing fraud, player fraud, affiliate fraud, click fraud, PPC fraud. What kind of fraud? All of them together? Let's manage the whole fraud in the world.

So when this comes up in conversations, especially in demos, I'm helping with the sales cycle as well, and they go, what KYC do you have? [laughter] And it's like, we just process the information. But what would you like? Let's talk about it. We need to know when this player is not good. I'm like, okay, what do you define as that? We need a definition.

I can speak to five, six, ten clients, and I can guarantee they will all say slight differences on what it means to be fraud, or even high roller. There are different terminologies, coming into the platform not depositing is a fraud, maybe, or it's matching CPA, or they're one-time depositors, or their lifetime is one day. These can all be flags, but they're not necessarily fraud. David: And we are a data processor. We again only process anonymized player information.

We don't know payment details, address, passwords, anything like that. So it's a very good understanding that the platform needs to really denote these. And once there is standardization on certain things, then we'll get involved, because then we can understand this is what the market needs. But it's not to say we'll never do it. We need to think of a way to do it. I present the problem. Surya: On the product discussion, another thing comes to mind.

Do you ever take feature ideas from affiliate platforms outside iGaming? Vlad: Yes. Because iGaming, as we know, is not a well-updated industry. There are other industries, SaaS tech, from Silicon Valley, from other areas, where they are much more advanced and up to date. I think iGaming is like a few years behind in all senses in this case. Surya: So can you tell me something that you have taken from outside that is being used and loved by your users?