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Seth Sivak
Founder, Entrepreneur, Game Dev
Seth Sivak is the former VP of Development on World of Warcraft and Studio Head for Blizzard Boston at Blizzard Entertainment.12 Previously, he co-founded and served as CEO of Proletariat Inc., a video game developer that Blizzard Entertainment acquired in 2022.134 He has a background in engineering, product, and design.145
Sivak's career includes:
- Proletariat Inc. Co-founded in 2012, the studio is known for its title Spellbreak.23
- Blizzard Entertainment: After the acquisition of Proletariat in 2022, Sivak took on the role of VP of Development for World of Warcraft and Studio Head for Blizzard Boston.1
- Early Career: Prior to founding Proletariat, Sivak was a gameplay engineer at Conduit Labs and held positions at Zynga as a product manager and executive producer. He also taught game design at Northeastern University.2
- Additional Experience: Engineer, designer, producer, and product manager.1 Creative Director and Project Lead.1 Lead Designer and liaison with LucasFilm on the Indiana Jones IP.1 Worked on Café World and Mafia Wars as a product manager.1 Graduate intern in the Creative Technology Group in 2008.1 Graduate studies in Entertainment Technology on a student pitched game project called Winds of Orbis.1 Professor of Game Design that taught Level Design, Introduction to Game Design and more.1 Speaker at numerous conferences.1 Writer of chapters on Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Diablo II.1 Speaker and member.1
Highlights
I recently had the pleasure of joining the @naavik_co Podcast to dive deep into a topic I care deeply about: studio culture and its impact on success. Hosted by @takeit_eazzy, we explored the question: What is culture, and why does it matter?
In this episode, we discuss the culture we built at Proletariat, the lessons I learned along the way, and how a strong team culture can be a driving force behind company success. I had the chance to talk about the definition of culture, who is responsible for setting and maintaining it, and actionable tactics leaders can use to build and nurture a thriving culture within their teams.
Over the course of our hour-long conversation, we dove into Proletariat’s core values and how they evolved as the company grew. We also touched on how values need to adapt in response to a company’s changing needs and goals. We even talk about the difficult tradeoffs of investing in culture when a company is simply struggling to survive. If you’re curious about how culture can fuel growth, retention, and success, this episode is for you.
Check it out here: https://t.co/h7celKXsTw
It is hard to hire great leaders and managers. Below are five of my favorite questions to ask in an interview to help you identify strong leadership candidates.
Unlike many individual contributor roles, management and leadership positions can be particularly challenging to evaluate in an interview setting. A conversation is just one piece of the puzzle. In addition to interviews, I highly recommend conducting thorough reference checks and ensuring you have a well-structured onboarding plan for new hires—two topics I’ll cover in future posts.
In a previous post, I discussed how to hire for grit. Beyond grit, there are several qualities I look for when hiring managers and leaders: the ability to make sound decisions, clear and effective communication (especially when delivering bad news), a results-oriented mindset over political maneuvering, and a high degree of self-awareness.
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How do you define a high-performing team? This is a strong first question because it opens the door to follow-up inquiries. Here, I’m looking for candidates who can articulate not only how their team achieves results and meets goals but also how they balance company success with individual and team growth. It’s also a good opportunity to assess their views on culture. You can dig deeper by asking how they’ve contributed to creating an environment where high-performing teams can thrive.
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What steps do you take to deliver difficult news that you know will upset your team? This question often reveals a lot about a candidate. It’s not uncommon for interviewees to seem visibly uncomfortable while answering, as delivering bad news is one of the hardest parts of management. What I listen for here is a commitment to transparency and accountability. Bonus points go to those who can explain how they foster a resilient team culture—one capable of processing and responding to challenging news.
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How would your team describe your leadership style and strengths as a manager? This question provides two key insights: first, the candidate’s level of self-awareness, and second, a baseline for comparison during reference checks. While there isn’t one "right" leadership style, I want to see that the candidate has put thought into their leadership approach and can articulate what makes them effective. Leaders who are intentional about their craft tend to be the ones who grow and adapt the most successfully.
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Describe a situation where you’ve had to manage your own emotions effectively to prevent the team from feeling demoralized or negative. It is common to ask how a leader motivates their team, but I find that learning how they avoid demotivating their team is often more insightful. This is especially true in passion-driven industries like game development, where many people are naturally motivated to do great work. In this answer, I want to hear evidence of self-awareness and a thoughtful, considered approach to communication.
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How would you handle a high-performing team member who is consistently late to work? I love this question because it challenges the candidate to think beyond rigid policy enforcement and into the realm of personalized management. If their answer is, "I’d tell them to be on time or face the consequences," I often follow up with, "What if they say they work best later in the day?" The best responses delve into the nuances of individual management, balancing team culture and performance expectations with the needs of top performers.
Final Thoughts Hiring great leaders and managers involves far more than just asking a few well-crafted questions, but these five have proven to be some of the most insightful over the years. When interviewing leadership candidates, think about your company’s culture and what kind of leaders will thrive within it. Remember that interviewing is a skill and you should constantly work to improve your ability to do it well.
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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:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- 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.
Nexus is Clay's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
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.