PRAGMA HIRES GAMING VETERAN ERNIE LE AS VP OF GAMES BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Pragma, a suite of modern publishing tools for game studios including FirstLook, today announces the appointment of Ernie Le as VP of Games Business Development. Ernie leads a new wave of strategic hires joining as the company continues to scale its platform and expand support for studios globally.
Ernie brings a remarkable track record across gaming, creator ecosystems and platform growth. He co-founded and served as CCO of FreshCut, a Roblox-focused social video platform that scaled to 2.5 million users and 150,000 creators. Prior to this, he was Collectible Categories Lead at Walmart Marketplace, held senior product roles at Manticore Games and spent over six years at Twitch as Director of Game Publishers and Developer Partnerships.
Ernie will build and strengthen strategic relationships with game studios, publishers, and key ecosystem partners. His expertise in scaling communities, developing creator ecosystems, and driving platform growth positions him perfectly to expand Pragma’s network and accelerate adoption of its developer tools. Ernie’s leadership will play a central role in advancing Pragma’s mission to empower game developers globally.
Ernie joins Pragma alongside several high-calibre additions to the broader team, including:
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Jaser Ghasemi joins as Head of Community Growth. He has grown Discord communities to over 10 million users. He also served as Lead Product Manager for Habor at Windwalk Games.
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Clyde Smets joins as a Software Engineer. He is the founder and engineer behind gginsights.io and steamreviewalert.com.
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Sayaad Ali joins as a Software Engineer. He brings experience as a software engineer at Windwalk Games, and CTO of his own web development company, Varion.
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Jonno Riekwel joins as a Product Designer & Engineer, previously founding the design agency Awkward and known for creating the original design for Product Hunt. He brings deep experience across product design and front-end engineering.
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Charles Liu joins as Director of Business Operations bringing experience across strategy, investing, and operations, most recently leading Strategy & GTM at Twitch. Before that, he ran his own hedge fund after time at Balyasny Asset Management, and began his career in restructuring at Goldman Sachs.
(from left to right, Jaser Ghasemi, Clyde Smets, Sayaad Ali, Jonno Riekwel, Charles Liu)
These new hires strengthen Pragma & FirstLook’s expanding global team, bringing together domain expertise, engineering talent, and founder-driven innovation to continue building world-class infrastructure for game studios of all sizes.
Eden Chen, CEO of Pragma / FirstLook.gg, commented:
“Ernie, Jaser, Clyde, Sayaad, Jonno, and Charles are all true builders with a founder DNA. Each has shipped products, tools, or communities for game developers. Bringing this level of domain expertise into Pragma & FirstLook helps us go even deeper in serving devs with the tools they need.”
This expansion comes as Pragma builds on the momentum of its FirstLook acquisition, further advancing its mission to give developers a unified platform for backend infrastructure, playtesting, and community engagement.
