I'm René Klačan and I love building software.

I am a husband, father of two, and a T-shaped software engineer with experience in designing and working on large-scale systems.

I'm co-founder and CTO of FirstLook.gg, a platform that helps game studios grow and manage their player communities, from early playtests through launch and beyond. We also build Creators.gg, connecting content creators with game studios and campaigns, and Player.gg, where players discover games and join playtests. FirstLook was acquired by Pragma in December 2024, and I now work on it full-time.

Previously, I was CTO at FetLife, a kinky social network with more than 1M daily active users and one of the largest Rails applications in the world.

I also co-founded AoE4 World with Robert van Hoesel. It's the largest community website for Age of Empires IV.

During my spare time, I love to be active, currently mainly lifting weights and running. I also enjoy cycling, hiking, climbing, yoga, games, and chess.

While I have plenty of experience with frontend and infrastructure, my biggest passion is backend development, systems architecture, and performance optimization throughout the whole stack. In other words, I love building scalable, performant, reliable, and cost-effective systems.

I have experience managing small teams but it is something I don't enjoy nor am I exceptionally good at, so I only want to focus on what I love the most - building great software.