James GwertzmanFounder

United States - Greater Seattle Area

I'm currently CEO of Mudstack, where we are tackling what I consider to be one of the biggest unsolved problems still facing the game industry: wrangling all the content needed to build modern games, and automating the build process.

Previously I helped launch Games Fund One at A16Z, and I continue investing and advising in companies today. I am on the board of AI-for-game-testing company Modl.ai. I was CEO and co-founder of PlayFab, a cloud-based backend-as-a-service that we sold to Microsoft in 2018 where I subsequently led the Azure for gaming business. I co-founded casual game creator Sprout Games, which we sold to PopCap Games in 2005 where I went on to set up and run PopCap's Asia operations headquartered in Shanghai.

Before co-founding PlayFab, I took time out to play a key role at the non-profit Code.org organizing the Hour of Code initiative, which introduced more than 20 million students to computer science in December of 2013. Working with the amazing code.org team was one of the most fun and gratifying things I've done in my career.

In my free time, I am also lead artist for the Moonlight Collective, an organization I co-founded in 2021 to bring inspiring interactive art installations to the world. Our work draws from our deep experience in the game industry, and leverages immersive sound, light, and storytelling to move people.