Mark Pincus
Founder,
Chief Executive Officer &
Chief Product Officer

Mark is the founder, CEO and chief product officer of Zynga. He founded the company in 2007 with a mission of connecting the world through games, and in founding zynga.org, he also believes that games can do good.

On his way to creating Zynga, Mark started three companies. In 2003, he launched Tribe.net, one of the first social networks. Before that, he founded Support.com, a pioneer in automating tech support, and took it public. In 1995, he launched FreeLoader, the first web-based consumer push company. Mark started his career in new media and venture capital before he discovered his calling as a consumer technology entrepreneur. Mark also made founding investments in Napster, Brightmail, Twitter and Facebook.

Mark graduated summa cum laude from University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is an angel investor in multiple Silicon Valley startups and regularly gives lectures to aspiring entrepreneurs.

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Mark Pincus

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November 06, 2009

to zwink or not?

michael arrington posted a clip today of a bar-side chat I did with Berkeley entrepreneurs in which I stressed how we were laser focused from the beginning on finding revenue opportunities that would scale. The primary reason I pointed to is that entrepreneurs should push to control their own destinies, and being profitable was the best path.

In the video I refer to how early on we experimented with offering zwinky toolbars.  Unfortunately, we offered these before trying them out for ourselves. Once we did, we found them to be a painful experience and i'm proud that even then as a 10 person startup we decided to take them down.

the lesson we learned was that while we needed to strive for early profitability, we also couldn't sacrifice user experience.

Btw, these zwinky toolbars from an IAC subsidiary are still widely offered on the web today.

 

Posted at 07:05 PM |

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Comments

Dude if you were truly sorry about us players getting scammed you would offer us some sort of compensation. Not to mention I been using Super rewards on Yoville for 6 months now and most of the offers pay out just admit that you do not want players to receive free currency without paying.

Posted by: Linish | November 06, 2009 at 07:37 PM

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