Building the Pokercode Stream Team: A Status Quo Update

After trying to elaborate on the early findings of our new project, the Pokercode stream team, I tried to dive deeper into the first steps and progression of this new endeavor in part 2 of our miniseries 'Building the Pokercode Stream Team'. Today it's time for part 3. let’s call it 'A Status Quo Update', in which I will try to disclose where we currently stand with the project, what the actual purpose is, and what our goals and common objectives are.

Progress and scale of the Pokercode Stream Team

After realizing how well interconnected the DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) Twitch poker community actually is through the mumble in the DACH Twitch jungle upon Q’s initial signing, we had to turn down quite a lot of applications. Most of them were not really authentic, or didn’t 'feel honest'. Some were just looking for a sponsor and they happened to stumble upon our stream team and smelled an opportunity. Some were simply too small. You have to keep in mind that we have a limited team and limited resources, hence we cannot work too much into the microstructure. So it doesn’t make sense for us to support streamers who are super irregularly streaming, but also it just doesn’t make any sense to work intensively with a streamer who has <50 avg. viewers at least. Let me elaborate a little bit on why.

If we do it, we really do it

Trying to understand our decisions on how and if to extend our Pokercode stream team, basically always comes down to our main objective. Asking and challenging the “WHY” of the Pokercode Stream Team project will pretty much lead to the right conclusions. Why did we start the Pokercode stream team?

Surely, Q’s reach out was the initial push for us, however, we soon understood what we really felt attracted to. Supporting young talent through the sustainable environment we had built up until the point. Guided by our impressive feat of head coaches and founders, Fedor Holz, Matthias Eibinger, and Simon Rønnow. It would only make sense if we could give it everything, or nothing. All or none. But what does that mean? Joining the Pokercode stream team doesn’t mean getting an affiliate link and that’s it. By putting our signature under a paper, we give the vowel for pure support. Aimed with the goal of helping our stream team members to become bigger and better poker players and streamers, everything but acting towards that goal would be a lie to ourselves. So, what does that mean? Practically, it not only means, that our stream team members get a monthly retainer via Pokercode powered by GGPoker in order to take away some stress and pressure off their careers. This way they can focus on what truly counts. But no, it actually means a lot more. Pokercode seeks to support our stream team members as players, streamers, brands, people, literally, we try to have a positive impact on any aspect of their life. Practically, this means that there will be one on one sessions with our coaches. Fedor has already visited the streams of our members almost 10 times in the short time of the project’s existence. Also, it means branding support.

If you check our stream team members’ social media accounts, you will notice that they get design support, stronger assets, simply, more tools to tell their story and share their mission. So, a cutter (shoutouts to Carsten!), as well as a graphics designer, are submitted to the stream team’s needs. Also, we are constantly looking for other projects and ideas in order to sustain, nurture and grow the project. We consider ourselves a strong and guiding partner in all aspects of our steam team members’ careers. Not just a “traction vs money” exchange model which doesn’t really benefit anyone, is very short- and transaction-oriented. That’s also why we consider the culture- and values-fit to be so important. Simply put, we would not want anyone to join our Stream Team with who we wouldn’t want to organize a “grindhouse” (stream house) with. If you consider this threshold as a filter for any application, the ice gets thinner, and certainly, the project grows slower, but also it is way more sustainable, authentical, honest, and, thus for us, valuable.

Completing our Squad, “Pferdinho” joins

After having welcomed Q_Poker, Moni_Poker, and HansiWurst to our Stream Team Squad, we had a pretty good feeling of having selected the candidates out of the DACH twitch poker landscape who fit our vision, values, and goals, by far the best. Little did we know back then that there was another gem soon to be discovered. I have to honestly admit, that I had never heard anything of “Pferdinho” previous to January 2021. Hansi was kind of familiar to me, other than that I neither had known Q, nor Moni or Raffael “Pferdinho” Crose at the time of making contact. With Raffi, it was yet again another special connection, where it just instantly “clicked”. Raffi reached out to me via e-mail on January 14th, 2021, after he had informed himself about our project in talks with Moni. Already in his first e-mail, I was fascinated by his story, which includes him being about to leave his home and job as a police officer in Germany, in order to go “all-in on poker” from February 2021. So, not only the connection and sympathy were there, but also the timing seemed to be just about right. We are super happy that Pferdinho literally “completed” our Stream Team DACH as our fourth edition, and we are really happy about the collaboration and project. For our German readers, you can find out more about Pferdinho in his blog and on his socials, be sure that he finds a good mix between strategy and playing on stream, all that whilst writing and updating in his blog regularly. Raffi is a great guy with the heart in the right place, and we couldn’t wish for a better fourth stream team member.

Outcast and goals for the Pokercode Stream Team

You might wonder, or have noticed, that all four current stream team members, Q_Poker, Moni_Poker, HansiWurst, and Pferdinho, are located in Germany, or Austria, hence nurture and support the DACH community. Moreover, they are all exclusively communicating and streaming in german, which makes our stream team exclusively german up until the point. However, this is not a strategical calculation, but the logical consequence of the Pokercode having its routes and traces in Vienna, Austria, and thus attracting the DACH community mainly since day one. The fact that we translated our Netflix-like content platform to german very early on already, makes it even more understandable that many Germans, Austrians, and people from Switzerland get attracted to our community. Moreover, our grindhouse project from Summer 2020 was held in Germany to some extent, and we are embedding German subtitles not only in our study offerings but also youtube videos. So it is obvious that we want to serve our home community a lot. However, we definitely are open to expanding our stream team internationally, however, the threshold of who we are interested in partnering with, and what the requirements would be, should be clear after reading this mini-series. Also, we are practicing macro patience over micro speed, thus, we would rather create scalable and sustainable resources internally, before scaling horizontally into different countries or even languages, since we must not ever compromise our values and vision, thus supporting our stream team members to the absolute best of our abilities.

Overall, the Pokercode stream team is definitely a passion project for all the internal Pokercode Team, and we are extremely happy and proud about it, and cannot wait for future projects and updates from all our ambitious and great members.

Thanks a lot for reading this Pokercode Stream Team Mini Series! Feel free to send me your feedback to johannes@pokercode.com

Yours,

Johannes Mansbart and the Pokercode-Team

CEO & Co-Founder

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