Read time 2 mins
Author Sophia 🌱
In January 2023, Tillo launched Wild Cards, the podcast for anyone looking to take their game to the next level, but what’s the story behind that name? Read on to find out.
At Tillo, we’re very passionate about what we do, the gift card and fintech industries, and broader conversations around entrepreneurship, innovation, and leadership, yet we struggled to find a podcast that could connect all these dots.
Instead of accepting that such a podcast didn’t exist, we chose to create one of our own, utilising the entrepreneurial experience of our CEO and Founder, Alex Preece, to facilitate conversations with some of the fascinating minds that he and Tillo have had the pleasure of meeting along the way.
Plug the phrase Wild Card into Google, and you’ll find a couple of different definitions:
🃏 A playing card that can have any value, suit, colour, or other property in a game at the discretion of the player holding it.
🤸 A person or thing whose influence is unpredictable or whose qualities are uncertain.
⚽ An opportunity to enter a sports competition without having to take part in qualifying matches or be ranked at a particular level.
⚡ An unpredictable element in a situation.
While the exact meaning of a Wild Card varies depending on how it’s used, the associated characteristics of a Wild Card remain the same.
Wild Cards are unpredictable, they’re outliers, they go against the grain, and they have the potential to shake things up even when set against established, more predictable opponents.
The characteristics of a Wild Card make them a force to be reckoned with in the business world, but existing as a Wild Card also comes with challenges.
The successes, failures, and learnings associated with being an out-of-the-box innovator and Wild Card thinker are precisely what Tillo’s podcast aims to uncover - hence the Wild Cards podcast was born.
Alex himself knows what it is like to be a Wild Card. Talking with him today, it can be hard to imagine him leaving school at 16 to jump out of planes for the British Army, but that’s precisely how he started his career.
Before entrepreneurship ever crossed Alex’s mind, he served his country for seven years, touring both Iraq and Bosnia on operational duty.
On leaving the Army, Alex turned to the world of business, but it wasn’t always seven-figure deals and profitable plain sailing. At 22, Alex’s first business went bust, and after filing for personal bankruptcy, he was left back at square one.
While for many that would be the end of their entrepreneurial journey, for Wild Cards like Alex, it was just the start of something much, much bigger and not too long after, Alex went on to found and grow the UK’s first daily deals business which later sold to moneysupermarket.com in a deal worth £11m.
In 2016, Alex then went on to co-found Tillo, which quickly became one of the fastest-growing businesses in the gift card industry. Today Tillo has processed more than £2 billion worth of digital gift cards and continues to lead innovation in its sector.
In each Wild Cards episode, Alex will be talking to some of the most interesting minds across a multitude of technology sectors, including entrepreneurs, game changers, record breakers, and everything in between. He’ll be delving into the latest industry trends and uncovering the stories behind the successes and failures of his guests, all the while discovering what made them into a Wild Card and how becoming one has helped or hindered them along the way. 
If you’re ready to discover what it means to be a Wild Card, then dive into our very first episode, an interview with Gail Cohen, Director General of the GCVA, and don’t forget to follow our new Wild Cards Twitter and Instagram accounts which will soon be filled with all of the latest podcast updates.
If you consider yourself a Wild Card and would like to share your story by featuring on the Wild Cards podcast, then submit a guest application using the button below. 
