"CTO in Focus" John Debono, Elantil
- Kevin Jones
- Apr 25
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 28
Elantil Co-Founder and CTO John Debono dissects the structural tenets and personal convictions shaping the company's momentum in iGaming. Speaking to Gaming Eminence, John explains how his obsession with removing bottlenecks—both technical and cultural—fuels Elantil’s operator-first architecture. From engineering a frictionless marketplace to rejecting legacy inertia, his leadership leans on scalable simplicity, deliberate redundancy, and a sharp eye for automating the “impossible.” While many chase innovation for its own sake, John’s lens is fixed on foundational shifts—especially AI’s evolving role in platform autonomy. Above all, his framework prizes empowerment over control, fostering a company culture that learns fast and governs lightly.
Gaming Eminence: Your path to co-founding Elantil likely came with moments of reinvention—technical and personal. What’s one principle or internal compass that’s remained steady throughout your evolution as a technologist and leader?
JD) "When we started Elantil, our goal wasn’t to simply improve on existing platform solutions, but to bring something entirely new to the table. The biggest driver for us was addressing the pain points that operators in the iGaming industry were continually experiencing by answering key questions like “why and when does a platform provider become a bottleneck for operators?” and “how can we allow operators to thrive without stifling their creativity by treating all of them the same way?”"
One principle that has remained steady throughout my evolution as a leader both on a personal level and for Elantil is the unwavering commitment to delivering a product that has the highest quality standards. I truly believe that no matter how quickly you want to expand your business, rapid growth should never come at the cost of quality – so by maintaining this focus, we ensure the company’s longevity in the market and build a foundation that really stands the test of time."
Gaming Eminence: Every CTO leaves a kind of imprint—an architectural instinct, a way of framing complexity, a rhythm in how teams operate. If we traced the systems and culture at Elantil back to their origin, what aspects would unmistakably reflect your own wiring?
JD) "If you traced Elantil’s DNA back to my influence, I think you’d find it mainly reflected in the Elantil’s Marketplace. For those unfamiliar with this pillar of our business, the Elantil’s Marketplace is more than just an architectural system; it embodies a cultural shift in the relationship between supplier and operator. I wanted to instil a mindset of self-service where operators feel empowered to make choices with all available content at their fingertips, without being slowed down by bureaucracy.
At its core, my imprint is about promoting scalability through simplicity, empowered autonomy, and having a continuous redundancy check to ensure that teams and systems can operate efficiently without unnecessary dependencies. But there’s something else in there too: I also thrive on proving the ‘impossible’ wrong! When people said a seamless, operator-driven marketplace couldn’t work in iGaming, that was my fuel to build it. Our marketplace is proof that with the right vision, what initially seems unattainable can quickly become the industry standard."
Gaming Eminence: Can you recall a decision—technical, cultural, or structural—where your thinking ran counter to convention? What shaped your judgment in that moment, and what did it teach you about your own reflexes as a leader?
JD) "Technically, we automated the content availability process in our marketplace so that once a third-party supplier integration is developed and tested, it’s instantly published and ready to use.
Culturally, we decided to absorb the costs for these integrations because we see them as an investment that accelerates time-to-market and adds value to our operators right from the start.
Structurally, we redefined how our development teams operate by splitting them into two scalable streams – one for core platform development and another for content enrichment – enabling us to quickly ramp up ahead of new market entries and diversify content independently.
These decisions taught me that my reflex as a leader is to challenge the status quo when I see inefficiencies that hinder progress. I trust my instincts to find innovative solutions and try not just to look at what’s being done, but ask “why’s it being done this way?” and “how do we do it better?”
These counter-conventional choices often involve stepping outside of comfort zones, but they’ve consistently accelerated growth and efficiency. This reinforces my belief that leadership is about making bold decisions that create lasting change, even when those choices go against the grain."
Gaming Eminence: Innovation tends to court disorder, while governance demands precision. How do you personally hold that tension without defaulting to extremes? Is there a framework, habit, or belief you rely on when those forces pull in opposite directions?
JD) "I see innovation and governance as being a dynamic balance rather than two opposing forces. My approach to accommodating both aspects of this dichotomy without defaulting to extremes has been to set ‘guardrails’ rather than ‘roadblocks’. By this I mean I always define clear principles that allow creativity to flourish, without ever running the risk of everything descending into chaos.
To do this efficiently, I typically rely on a ‘Two-Speed Execution’ model. I have one lane for rapid experimentation where failure is learning and another for structured, high-stakes delivery where precision matters. The key to making this kind of model work is knowing when to shift gears – and that’s something we have to do often when faced with evolving regulation or new emerging trends.
Of course, when you’re working this way, culture also plays an important role. You need to foster a team that respects governance without fearing experimentation, as this is the only way to ensure that the tension that exists between these two areas remains productive, not paralysing."
Gaming Eminence: Looking ahead, what’s capturing your intellectual curiosity most—not in terms of hype, but in the quiet, foundational shifts you believe will reshape your sector? What are you reading, exploring, or prototyping that keeps you up at night—in a good way?
JD) "Like a lot of other people in our industry, I’d say my current topic dichotomy is definitely AI. As a company, I think Elantil has already gone one step ahead of many of our competitors in terms of how we’ve implemented the technology so far. A good example of this is the way that we develop third party supplier integrations, as when the initial development is ready, most of the steps that come afterwards – including unit, component, e2e and performance tests as well as the actual publishing to the Elantil’s Marketplace – can easily be automated through the use of AI technology.
When compared to what businesses were doing several years ago that’s no doubt a small wonder in itself, but what really piques my curiosity is how we can take this technology forward in future. What if even the development aspect I mentioned could be automated? Are we able to train a GPT to assist with this process and can tools that leverage AI like Co-Pilot help us achieve that?"
Gaming Eminence: Outside of code and strategy decks, what’s one daily ritual or habit that keeps your thinking sharp or your perspective intact? Something low-key, but deeply yours.
JD) "It might sound counterintuitive at first, but every time I sync with my teams, the one question I ask myself is “am I making myself redundant?” You might initially think that if the answer is “no” then this is a good thing, but actually it’s quite the opposite. The way I see it, if I’m not making myself redundant, then I am in fact becoming a bottleneck, because this means my knowledge hasn’t been fully transferred and my team is relying on me for things when they shouldn’t have to.
I think this is a situation that you often see in legacy companies where key information tends to be siloed the higher up you go. That’s not something we ever wanted at Elantil, so I much prefer to share my knowledge with others so that the teams around me are empowered to act autonomously. At the end of the day, my goal is to work – and the best way for me to achieve that is to ensure everyone else is equipped to do likewise so that we can all operate more efficiently."
