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John Thantranon
Director of Digital Product Development at OTG • Full Stack Game Dev • Riot Games (League of Legends) / Gamblit / Disney / CTY Alumnus
Professional Background
John Thantranon is a seasoned professional with over 21 years of extensive experience in the tech and entertainment sectors. Having dedicated more than 11 years to the video games and interactive media landscape, he has cultivated a diverse skill set that encompasses game production, entrepreneurship, programming, and software design. His dynamic career has seen him step into pivotal roles across various well-known companies in the gaming industry, navigating the challenges of launching and optimizing games in different international markets.
During his tenure as a Publishing Manager at Riot Games, John demonstrated exceptional leadership and strategic vision. He was instrumental in launching two new League of Legends platforms across two countries, quickly amassing over 100,000 registered users in Thailand within just the first month. This remarkable accomplishment underscores not only his capacity for project management but also his deep understanding of market dynamics and user engagement strategies. Working directly with teams across Riot, John was pivotal in brainstorming game play mechanics, developing competitive systems, and directing efforts across disciplines such as eSports, QA, Marketing, and Engineering to achieve successful market introductions.
In addition to his role at Riot Games, John has held multiple positions that highlight his expertise in program operations and technical production. His experiences at Gamblit Gaming included serving as Technical Producer and Program Operations Manager, where he oversaw game development processes and collaborated closely with engineering and development operations to ensure products met high standards of quality and innovation. He has also successfully shipped over six mobile game titles on iOS and a significant PC game on Valve's Steam Platform, establishing him as a prominent figure in producing engaging and high-quality video games.
Education and Achievements
John Thantranon's academic journey is as impressive as his professional accomplishments. He holds an AACSB/EQUIS MBA from the prestigious Kellogg & Wharton joint-program completed at the Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration. His focus on Marketing and International Business established a solid foundation for his later ventures in tech and gaming, allowing him to blend business acumen with creative innovation.
Moreover, John earned his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and studied Computer Science at California State Polytechnic University-Pomona. This diverse educational background has equipped him with a multifaceted perspective that enhances his decision-making and strategic planning abilities, essential for navigating the fast-paced landscape of the interactive entertainment industry.
In terms of notable achievements, John has been honored to work with nearly every department at Riot Games, creating synergies that drive success across an organization renowned for its influence on the gaming world. His efforts are a testament to his strategic thinking and collaborative nature, which are critical to navigating the complexities of launching and optimizing games globally.
John's passion for multifaceted gaming genres manifests not only in his professional life but also in his personal pursuits. He dedicates time to various interests, including playing right-wing in a local ice hockey league, snowboarding, and developing a passionate side project focused on video game design utilizing his full-stack development skills. This blend of leisure and professionalism underscores his lifelong dedication to the gaming and tech sectors, motivating him to stay engaged and innovative.
Achievements
Some of the major highlights of John's career include:
- Leadership at Riot Games: Successfully launched League of Legends into new countries, quickly growing the user base to 100,000 in Thailand.
- Game Production: Shipped multiple mobile titles to iOS and a PC title to the Steam platform, showcasing his ability to foster projects from conception to launch.
- Entrepreneurship: Founded a start-up where he played a crucial role in coding and designing a game engine prototype, demonstrating his commitment to innovation and creativity in gaming.
- Diverse Industry Experience: Over two decades in various roles spanning music production, project management, and technology, showcasing a breadth of knowledge that enriches his contributions.
Conclusion
John Thantranon stands out as a passionate and innovative leader in the gaming industry, equipped with a robust educational background and extensive professional experience. His rich journey through technology, business, and creative arenas reflects a dedicated commitment to growth and forward-thinking strategies. As he continues to lead initiatives, develop games, and nurture talent within the industry, John exemplifies the essence of a modern-day tech pioneer, setting the stage for a bright future in interactive entertainment.
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Clay is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Clay centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Clay works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Clay offers several powerful features including:
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- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
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- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Clay is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Clay is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Clay as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Clay offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Clay takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Clay encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Clay work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Clay is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Clay is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Clay is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Clay offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Clay offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Clay for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Clay accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Clay offers extensive integration capabilities. Clay introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Clay supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Clay also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
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Clay makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Clay's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Clay is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Clay stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Clay excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Clay is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Clay offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Clay's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Clay has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Clay is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Clay beneficial.
Clay offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Clay offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Clay's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Clay offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Clay focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Clay also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Clay offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Clay isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Clay instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Clay is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Clay can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Clay is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Clay's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Clay has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Clay a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Clay's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Clay's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Clay has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Clay's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Clay as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Clay eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.