Riaan Hodgson - Chief Operating Officer

Riaan Hodgson, is an experienced executive with extensive operational experience with technology and interactive entertainment companies. His domain expertise is in corporate strategy, mergers and acquisitions, finance, data science, predictive analytics and machine learning. Most recently he served as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer of PlayFusion, a developer utilizing artificial intelligence to power the future of enhanced reality entertainment, education, beauty and commerce. 

From 2008 to 2015, he served as Chief Financial Officer, as well as Chief Operating Officer from December 2012, of Jagex, the UK’s leading games developer and publisher, and was instrumental in its transition from an insular business to a highly profitable global intellectual property owner by applying data science for an operational competitive advantage and leveraging the power of the community to drive organic growth. 

He currently serves on the board of PlayFusion and Cambridge Venture Partners. Previous board positions include Marketwise, Ascendant Digital Acquisition Corp, Jagex, Business Objects, Crystal Decisions and Seagate Software. Between 2004 and 2008, he served as Chief Financial Officer of Fluency Voice Technology, which was sold to Enghouse, a publicly- listed Canadian company. 

Prior to his entry into the interactive entertainment industry, from 1997 to 2004 he worked in senior finance roles in the Business Intelligence sector for Business Objects, Crystal Decisions and Seagate Software, where he was involved in operations and the execution and integration of strategic mergers & acquisitions. 

Mr. Hodgson trained and qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Ernst & Young, where he began his career.