Wanderlust: Expat Life & Style in Thailand June / July 2017: The Business Issue | Page 16

PLAYING
THE GAME
Meet Jakob Lykkegaard, 29, a gaming tycoon who made it big
not by knowing games but by mastering the game of business.
by SHANNON FRANDSEN
A
t the Playlab office in
Bangkok, the glass doors
slide open with the futuristic
kind of swoosh that the turbolift door
on the USS Enterprise makes when
Captain Kirk strides onto the bridge.
Step inside, though, and the of-
fice is exactly as you’d expect a mod-
ern, digital firm with 50 employees
to look: rows and rows of computers
with big screens, foosball and ping
pong tables, animated artwork on
the walls, even a pile of pillows for
post-lunch snoozes.
The CEO and co-founder of Playlab
is Jakob Lykkegaard, a 29-year-old
entrepreneur, and he is talking about
his success in the world of mobile
16 WANDERLUST
games. Lykkegaard — blond, glass-
es, friendly smile — greets me with a
hug, and we walk to his boardroom
to discuss his experiences as an en-
trepreneur in Thailand.
Here is a young man who attend-
ed business school for only one se-
mester, and like Steve Jobs and a
handful of other entrepreneurs who
turned away from school and struck
it rich, he dropped out in favor of
working.
As for gaming — well, that’s some-
thing for which he has no official cre-
dentials at all.
“So, how did you wind up in
Thailand making mobile games,
then?” I ask. He looks down for a
moment, takes a breath, then tells
me his tale.
ONE THING LEADS
TO ANOTHER
It started in Denmark, where
Lykkegaard worked for a few differ-
ent software companies. His relation-
ship with Asia began when one of
these companies started sending him
to the continent for business trips at
age 19.
On the back of these Asian trips,
he was inspired to try a life abroad.
Lykkegaard says he considered
moving to Japan. But then he saw
Thailand. “It just felt right,” he says.
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