Alexandre Tomic, Founder of Alea, returns to iGaming Real Talk for a conversation that begins with the business he has built and gradually moves into much bigger questions around purpose, identity and what success actually means.

Surya and Alexandre first catch up on what has changed at Alea since their last conversation. They talk about the company's jackpot product, the very different models operators are asking for, and why building something flexible enough to serve both sides has become part of the challenge.

The conversation then moves into sweepstakes, the US market and the new formats starting to appear around skill, P2P and multiplayer mechanics. Alexandre also reflects on how his own view of sweepstakes changed as the market developed, and why he thinks gambling may be moving closer to certain parts of the video game world.

There is also a closer look at the reality behind aggregation. Alea sits between operators and game studios, which means trust, payments, technology and risk all have to work together. Alexandre explains why community, partnerships and strong technology have mattered so much to the company's growth, especially in a market where much larger competitors were already established.

But the conversation changes when Surya asks a much more personal question: what would be left if Alea was removed from Alexandre's story?

From there, the episode becomes less about building a company and more about why we build anything in the first place.

Alexandre talks about how closely Alea has become tied to his life, why selling the company no longer feels like the obvious end goal, and how he has started thinking about business as one of the ways we learn about ourselves.

That opens the door to a much deeper discussion around happiness, purpose, perception, consciousness and whether success is really something you eventually reach.

They also talk about Alexandre's support for research into psychedelic-assisted therapy and gambling addiction, his own curiosity around consciousness and ego, and why he believes some of the value created by the gambling industry should find its way back toward helping gamblers.

The episode eventually returns to more familiar industry territory with conversations around conferences, LinkedIn, AI and sobriety. But by that point, even those topics feel slightly different.

Because this episode is not only about where Alea is going next.

It is also about what keeps someone building after the obvious goals begin to matter less.