GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 2 - October 2007

17 INTERVIEWWITH Pablo Edronkin | pablo Current Hometown: Buenos Aires Age: 39 Favorite food: Asado (it’s more or less like BBQ) One book everyonemust read: Machiavelli´s“The Prince”...It shows how the world really is. Site: apostar.in Meet Pablo Edronkin: Profound philosopher, highflier H ow did you become interested in gambling? One day I saw some pilots making bets about the wheels of their plane: Essentially they made chalk streaks on those wheels and bet on the position of those marks after they landed. Since I own a search engine and place ads all the time I wondered why not try with online gambling banners? The results I got convinced me pretty soon about online gambling as a business venue. What about the industry interests you? Despite all the usual moral prejudices and fingers raised against the gambling industry everywhere, people working within it can be counted among the most professional online; I have had prior experience in e-commerce and know that you have to be flexible and straightforward to work in anything related to gambling. We are doing business here, not life philosophy, and like in the case of other perceived taboos – for some at least – things prove to be quite different once you get to know the details. Also, offering gambling products as an affiliate is about seven times more lucrative than any other online activity. When and why did you decide to become an affiliate? I first learned about e-commerce in 1996, found it interesting and soon started experimenting. Then I put up my own site, which proved to be fairly successful and as I saw how showing gambling ads worked, I began thinking about a second, more specific site. For years, however, I just stayed with one Web site, but what the U.S. government did about a year ago by passing that odd piece of legislation against online gambling finally convinced me to take the plunge, host the new site in the U.K. and to move all that I had related to this industry from the old site to the new one. When did you become interested in becoming a pilot? Why were you interested? I always loved to fly, but building myself a cabin in the Patagonian Andes got me hooked because just getting there takes about two days of rather technical mountain climbing through terrain that looks pretty much like Alaska. With a small plane I can get there from the nearest town in about thirty minutes. How longdid it take to get your pilot’s license? It took me about a year. But that was just the first license because there are various kinds, actually, and some may CONTINUED ON PAGE 48 >>