A lived experience
For more than 20 years, Karolina built her career the hard way: from casino floors to boardrooms in one of technology’s most competitive sectors. In 2024, she led her company to a rapid acquisition by FanDuel and stayed on as an operator accountable for results inside a global gaming leader.
Now working across capital, leadership, and narrative, she advises founders and investors navigating high-stakes decisions — challenging the idea that success is luck, and examining what truly creates it. Her work strips away the illusion of overnight success and confronts what it really takes to build — and endure.
Now working across capital, leadership, and narrative, she advises founders and investors navigating high-stakes decisions — challenging the idea that success is luck, and examining what truly creates it. Her work strips away the illusion of overnight success and confronts what it really takes to build — and endure.
Founder
Built and scaled BeyondPlay, raising €7M+ and leading the company to one of the fastest tech exits in the industry.
C-Level Executive
Award-winning operator with C-level and public board experience. Product-led, P&L accountable, performance driven.
Author
Author of Her Play: Make Your Own Luck. Shares unfiltered founder stories and BTS insight across media, podcasts, and social platforms.
Thought Leader
Frequent panel guest and sought-after keynote speaker across diverse subjects. Featured on global stages and in leading business media.
As seen on
Book release 9th of June 2026
What if the greatest gambles aren't on the cards — but on the life you dare to build?
Author of Her Play: Make Your Own Luck. Shares unfiltered founder stories and BTS insight across media, podcasts, and social platforms.
International Keynote Speaker
Karolina speaks on global stages as a founder, operator, and investor who has built inside some of the most competitive environments in technology. Her perspective is shaped by lived experience, not abstraction — bringing rare candour, strategic clarity, and earned authority to every room.
Keynote Speaker
Delivers high-impact keynotes that combine operator realism with powerful storytelling. Known for challenging comfortable narratives about success, she brings psychology, neuroscience, and real boardroom pressure into the room — leaving audiences thinking differently, not just feeling inspired.
Industry Perspective
Offers rare insight from operating across leadership, board, and venture-backed environments in one of the world’s most competitive industries. Speaks to innovation not as theory — but as performance measured in outcomes.
Founder Insight
Speaks from lived experience of building, scaling, and exiting under intense pressure. Through her proprietary mindset framework, she breaks down what actually builds resilience, conviction, and execution — and what quietly destroys companies from within.
Investor Lens
Brings the perspective of backing ambitious founders and working alongside private capital. Cuts through hype to examine judgment, discipline, risk calibration, and the decisions that determine whether companies scale — or stall.
Featured on
“Karolina brings something genuinely uncommon to the stage. She is not attempting to perform credibility, she naturally commands it. Karolina does not simply tell stories, she changes the way people see things.”
Harry Singha
Speaker, Mentor, Humanitarian
Conversations
that matter
Dive into Karolina’s world through her own podcast episodes and guest appearances on leading shows. From honest conversations about mindset, relationships, and personal growth to behind-the-scenes insights from her journey, each episode is designed to inspire, challenge perspectives, and spark meaningful change.
Featured
1m
Her Play Pre Launch Dinner #1 Highlights - Seamus Library, the Bloomsbury Hotel, London
The first Her Play Pre-Launch Dinner. An intimate evening in London bringing together founders, investors, operators, media and creators for honest conversations around risk, reinvention, ambition and engineered serendipity. Hosted ahead of the launch of Her Play: Make Your Own Luck, the evening was designed less like a traditional networking event and more like a modern salon dinner. No panels. No pitching. Just thoughtful people sharing real stories about the messy middle behind careers, startups and bold decisions. What started as a book launch dinner quickly became something bigger: a room full of people building in public, questioning conventional paths and exploring what it really means to create your own luck. Featuring conversations around entrepreneurship, leadership, media, identity, modern ambition and the psychology behind taking leaps before certainty exists
Watch on
1m
Featured
1m
Entrepreneur UK Women In Business, Mr Potter's, Hilton Park Lane, London
Highlights from the Entrepreneur UK Women in Entrepreneurship event at London Hilton on Park Lane. An incredible evening of conversations around entrepreneurship, leadership, visibility and building bold careers on your own terms. In collaboration with Entrepreneur UK, this event also became a special moment in the Her Play journey, with early copies of Her Play: Make Your Own Luck reaching the hands of inspiring speakers, founders, investors and members of the wider entrepreneurial community gathered in the room. A night filled with honest discussions, meaningful connections and a reminder that some of the most powerful opportunities are created through conversations, community and showing up before the outcome is guaranteed.
Watch on
1m
Featured
29 mins
Private Capital Perspectives With Founder, Investor And Author Karolina Pelc
Jamie & Karolina discuss everything from when it's right to turn down investors, unconscious bias in the next-generation and what you need in place to support a quick exit, to where the opportunity lies in the private capital ecosystem.
Watch on
29 mins
Investments
& Projects
HerPlay, is an investment and mentorship platform created to “pay it forward” by advising, mentoring, and supporting early-stage founders, with a particular focus on women entrepreneurs. By leveraging her two decades of industry experience, network of investors, and influence as a thought leader, Karolina helps promising startups gain access to capital, strategic partners, and opportunities to scale.
Investor
Backs ambitious founders and partners with other private capital across early and growth stages. Brings operator experience from fundraising, building teams, and executing an exit.
Mentor
Works with founders and senior leaders building and scaling companies under pressure. Advises on decision-making, positioning, leadership, and growth at speed.
Take a peek at past
Her Play Events
More from
Karolina
Stay up to date with Karolina's latest thinking with articles, interviews, and reflections on mindset, business, and what it really takes to back yourself.
London Daily News
From casino floor to multi-million-pound exit: The rise of Karolina Pelc
June 10th, 2026
Article
As a pioneer in the online gaming field, Karolina Pelc has achieved extraordinary things. A mix of being in the right place at the right time and sheer hard work have seen her profile rise in a previously male-dominated industry.
The Industry Leaders
From Casino Floors to Startup Founder: Karolina Pelc on New Book 'Her Play', Embracing Risk, and Redefining Success
June 10th, 2026
Article
Karolina Pelc’s career is a powerful story of repeated reinvention, resilience, and learning to operate through uncertainty. After moving from Poland to London for financial opportunity and adventure , she began her professional path on casino floors and spent over three years working on cruise ships. Pelc spent more than 15 years working for employers across multiple companies, roles, and countries before leaping into entrepreneurship.
Laura Bartett
From Casino Floor to Eight-Figure Exit. Karolina Pelc on Engineering Your Own Luck
June 8th, 2026
Article
Some people stumble into their lives. Karolina Pelc engineered hers. From the casino floors of post-communist Poland to the boardrooms of a global tech exit, she’s built a life that doesn’t look like anyone else’s blueprint, because she never followed one. Her debut book, Her Play: Make Your Own Luck, publishes on 9th June, and it makes the case that luck isn’t something that happens to you. It’s something you create.
GB News
Business founder Karolina Pelc sits with GB News to discuss her business success and why 'engineered luck' is key for any founder
May 22nd, 2026
Article
Speaking to GB News, Ms Pelc breaks down her journey from a teenager in Warsaw to her business success in Britain, and what future entrepreneurs can learn from it.
