CEO, ESL FACEIT Group (sole CEO since 2025), ESL FACEIT Group (EFG)
I passi per scalare. Niccolo Maisto di Faceit
https://beta.faceit.com/en Intervista a uno dei fondatori di Faceit. piattaforma che ospita diversi tornei di online gaming. Segui tutte ...
About Niccolo Maisto
Niccolò Maisto, CEO of ESL FACEIT Group, spoke at the FII8 conference in Riyadh on October 1, 2024, as part of a panel titled "How PIF is Reshaping Global Sports." During the discussion, Maisto described the Public Investment Fund's (PIF) investment in his company as "a visionary investment," stating that it allowed the company to build "capabilities that are quite unique" and to support events such as the Esports World Cup and IEM Cologne simultaneously. He added that while many companies exist in esports, his company was "lucky or good enough" to receive an investment from PIF and Savvy of a size and timeframe that enabled the development of that infrastructure. In a 2017 interview, Maisto discussed his background transitioning from investment banking and private equity to co-founding FACEIT. He advised aspiring entrepreneurs to "launch now," to find co-founders who "really add value" rather than friends, and to listen to customers, as they determine whether a product succeeds. He also emphasized that key performance indicators for startups should focus on engagement, such as the number of matches played and user retention.
Transcript (15 segments)
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Interviewer0:10
Thousands of players every day meet online to challenge each other on different types of games. Many enthusiasts gather in increasingly large communities. Today a platform was born—actually a few years ago—that allows these gamers to meet and compete directly online, learn from the best by watching them play, and come together in a unique network. This platform is called FACEIT. We are here with Nicolò, one of the founders. Hi Nicolò. Tell us a bit about how FACEIT was born, how you were born as an entrepreneur, and your story.
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Niccolo Maisto0:52
Yes, so I as an entrepreneur come from a background that is probably a bit different from many others. I started in investment banking and private equity, so from the world of finance. During my MBA I had to decide whether to continue in that world or not, and I always thought that to invest well you need to have first-hand experience. And that's how FACEIT was born, a bit by chance, a bit for fun, and a bit to learn, and then it actually became my life.
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Interviewer1:23
Clear. You started a few years ago, and you told me you gathered in your team two other people, one guy in particular who is a professional gamer and probably gave you a lot of insight into what the market was. How important was it for you to start with a team that was already aware of the target market?
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Niccolo Maisto1:49
It was fundamental. All three co-founders are gamers, but I played Call of Duty 4-5 hours a day, yet I wasn't fully aware of the competitive gaming market. Having Alex, a professional gamer for over 15 years, helped us embed a community aspect into the company's DNA. That's the most important thing for a startup because the only advantage a startup has is speed and niche focus. If you don't have a product that customers want, there is no future. There are two opposite examples: companies born from the community with a great product but no structure, and companies run by finance people who build a product nobody wants. The hardcore competitive gamer is a very specific niche, and you must understand them to build the right product.
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Interviewer5:04
Clear. Then you told me you made several pivots at the beginning to find the magic formula, so to speak, that made you grow a lot before facing the growth phase. When did you realize that the pivot was actually taking you in the right direction? What KPIs did you follow to measure that you were on the right track?
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Niccolo Maisto5:31
The KPI that all startups should follow to understand direction is engagement. In our case, it's how many matches are played, how many active users are truly active—not just logged in—retention, how many games they play, how many times a day. When we started, we had 25-30,000 users, and we saw that they were engaged, playing simultaneously, increasing matches per month per person. That's when we knew the pivot worked. A pivot is just a bigger change, but the product evolves based on user feedback. After that, we managed the company with smaller changes to improve the product for that community and grow strategically.
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Interviewer7:40
And you have grown a lot. You told me you went from 10 employees to now about 60, right? Yes, even a bit more. How do you manage growth? How do you go from managing a few people to having such a structured team, also across multiple parts of the world, since you are often in America now?
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Niccolo Maisto8:07
With a lot of patience and hard work. As a CEO of a startup, you have to have done everything at least once. I was interim CTO, project manager, customer support. Talking to users—14-15 year olds who insult you when something doesn't work—is normal and helps change the product. As you grow, pressure from all sides becomes too much for one person. You need to delegate to the right people. We hired a CFO when we had only 100,000 pounds monthly revenue and half a million users, because we saw we were losing control. That helped us close a $15 million round easily. For each area, hiring a senior person who can take full responsibility is key. We recently hired a director of customer support from Electronic Arts and Shazam. Until three weeks ago, I or our CPO were still answering tickets, which can't happen if you want to scale.
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Interviewer12:33
So based on your experience, is it easier, at least at the beginning, if you have the possibility, to hire experienced people and give them full control over their process, rather than training someone internally, which is what a more structured company might do to build the product in-house? Exactly.
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Niccolo Maisto12:56
It depends on how you want to manage processes and organization. There are two types of people: those you can give tasks even if not their own, and they will figure it out, making mistakes but learning; and those who need exact instructions. You either build a process-driven organization from day one, which has overhead and costs, or you build a team of people who can think independently. We opted for the latter because it allows speed. We didn't have a COO, so each division head manages processes. Until you have those processes, you can't hire people who need them, because that would create damage.
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Interviewer15:33
One of the first strategic choices you made was to start from where we are today, London. And then you are expanding after the round, but you started here. What advantages did it give you, and why did you choose London? You were already in America, if I understood correctly, and your business is totally online, so you could do it anywhere, even in the Italian countryside potentially.
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Niccolo Maisto16:04
We decided together. I was in New York at the time, and we chose London because it felt like home for the last 10 years. Professionally, it gave me a lot. We needed an ecosystem that could support us. In the US, San Francisco; in Europe, London or Berlin. As Italians, we also considered Italy. London is a good balance: in Italy, salaries are lower and less competition for hiring, but the legal framework is complex (e.g., 13th/14th month salaries). The bigger cost is the ecosystem: in Italy, there are few successful startups to learn from. London has a strong ecosystem, fair regulatory framework for both labor and IP, and allows agility. We also travel a lot—all three co-founders are rarely in the same place. Michele was in Columbus, I was in Santa Monica, Alex in Las Vegas. This international exposure helped us. We opened an office in Santa Monica a few months ago.
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Interviewer21:56
Clear, perfect. Michele, and sorry Nicolò, you gave us a lot of useful information. I'll ask you one last question: give three tips that a potential aspiring startup founder should keep in mind, which you think are important when facing this type of career.
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Niccolo Maisto22:16
The first is: launch, launch immediately, now. And don't think that launching means it's done, because your work begins the moment you launch. If you don't have customers, you don't have a job. The second tip: find the right co-founders. Find people who can really add value. Don't take your friend or your sister's friend because you go out with them willingly. Take a person who can actually help you build what you want. And third: listen to your customers. Because your customers are the ones who will decide if you have a product or not. The only thing you should really focus on at the beginning is building a product that people like.
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Interviewer23:03
Perfect. Thank you very much. Hope to see you soon in Santa Monica. We'll gladly have a coffee there too. Thanks, bye bye.