Executive Snapshot: Lawrence Vaughan, co-founder, Real Gaming

Lawrence Vaughan is a Las Vegas native who attended Faith Lutheran High School. Growing up with computers, he took it one step further and became a self-taught computer programmer. That served him well as co-founder of Real Gaming, an online poker site backed by the South Point.

Q. When and where did Real Gaming become an idea? How fast were you able to manifest Real Gaming from an idea into reality?

We originally concepted the technologies we use and how we would bring the product to market to make sure that we were on all platforms, including mobile, in early 2012. Then we got licensed in 2012 to do it. We got on the market in February of this year — live. It ended up being, in terms of what the platform is, a short timeline by most development cycle standards.

It was longer than we expected, just because of the amount of work and the regulatory aspect of it. People underestimated when building it. You don’t just build the software; you’re building the company. So there’s procedures and cultural things that go into developing a company and launching it, defining it once it goes live, and actually see how it works … It’s been a refinement process from there because once you launch there’s a million things you learn that you didn’t anticipate.

Q. Share a little about the technology. How is Real Gaming able to ensure players are within Nevada state lines? Are you anticipating expansion to other states?

What’s unique about Real Gaming is that it’s the only platform on the market that’s been built in technology, really, from this century. What that means is that the underlying core logic and technology is built with development and library standards from what people growing up now would use.

For instance, if you were building an app for an iPhone, you would use these technologies starting entirely from scratch … required or licensed technology that’s been proved but the core hasn’t been changed for 10 years or more … so that part is pretty interesting and very unique, and especially from a regulatory standpoint because it’s … from the ground up but with the regulations in mind. That’s a huge amount of work. The regulations, I would say 70 percent of project was making it compliant.

The way we handle location is unique. We developed our own location technology, where you actually get a companion app on your phone. And we went this route because we saw the people who were offering location services had some pretty interesting ways of doing it but the granularity wasn’t quite there. Once you start moving out to desert areas… you started to have issues where you couldn’t guarantee their location even within a mile from the border. So, we are able to do that with our app. We developed our own location technology, which is pretty unique.

Yes, we do intend on going into other states. We’re working on which states those are still. Things are still in motion. We’ll see where we end up. That is our goal of course, to have our platform all over the country.

Q. With great success in your 20s, what can we expect to see from you in the future? Are there any big plans for the New Year?

In terms of Real Gaming, we’re going to continue pushing out new products and new promotions. I would imagine that there will be significant substantial changes and releases over the next 12 months that will bring a much better seamless experience to the customer.

Going back to the technology, what it allows us to do which no one else can do right now in this space, which is accelerate.

Q. Are you interested in expanding into other businesses or is gaming it for you?

I am more passionate about technology and science in general. Much more so than gaming; so yes I image that I would see my way into other businesses. That’s my plan.

Q. What bit of wisdom can you share with others who are young and talented like yourself who are interested in technology and gaming?

One, when people tell you that you can’t do something, don’t listen to them. Just go for it because a lot of people don’t know what their talking about … What is status quo, what are standards, things that are taught in school like universities, what the standard is for anything; question those things. Why are those things that way? A lot of times it’s just routine; there’s not a really good answer for why things are set in stone.