The Keys to Starselect’s Success ...Digital keys, that is. For game time, online subscriptions, full games, and game store credit. Richie Shoemaker talks to Starselect CEO Max Gudden about doing the right thing by publishers and partners in order to serve customers
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ounded in the Netherlands in 2016, Startselect has grown rapidly over the last five years to become “Europe’s largest reseller of mobile and game credit, gift cards, subscriptions and digital games”. Having fostered partnerships with digital platform holders and publishers, the company prides itself on its legitimacy, as well as customer trust and security, which has allowed it to expand into Australia - and soon, beyond. Planning Startselect’s rise to digital retail domination is its founder and CEO, Max Gudden, who as a young man was frustrated at not being able to buy an Xbox Live membership without either having to leave
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the house, wait for it to arrive in the mail, or convince his parents to use their credit card. As a result he brought up as many Xbox Live scratchcards as he could afford and started selling the codes online. That was in 2009. The rest, as they say, is history. Can you give an introduction as to how Startselect got started? Startselect launched in the Netherlands with a very broad (we had more titles than Amazon) PC catalog and Nintendo eShop Gift Cards, which allowed us to get traction and show to other partners that digital was the future and that Startselect is the right partner to shift the market from physical to
