What is Zynga Anyway?
Zynga is the #1 social gaming company on the web. Zynga was founded specifically to add a social element to casual online games because we love games, and we love them most when we're playing with friends! Social games provide a more fun, competitive and contagious experience. Zynga delivers on the promise of social networks, making it easy to connect with old friends and make new ones (no download required!). Zynga has something for everyone: casino games, word games, board games, role playing games and party games which can be found on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, and Hi5.
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Where The Money Come From
Bing Gordon
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
KPCB is a venture capital firm passionately committed to helping its portfolio companies, including Google and Amazon, succeed. Bing was a pioneer at Electronic Arts, where he served as Creative Officer until 2008. He is widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of the video game industry. Bing and Mark do some of their best thinking together on bike rides in Marin. Long, slow bike rides.
Brad Feld
Foundry Group
Foundry Group is an early-stage venture capital fund focused on making investments in the information technology sector. Brad and Mark first met while Brad was a partner at Softbank, Brad is a cool guy who likes to attend board meetings in loud t-shirts. Brad is a prolific blogger and reader (according to his blog).
Fred Wilson
Union Square Ventures
Union Square Ventures is an early stage venture capital fund located in New York City. Fred convinced Mark to become an entrepreneur in 1995 and then backed his first company, FreeLoader. Fred spends most of his time checking out new bands and then blogging about them but manages to make a few investments in between.
Reid Hoffman, Chairman
Reid is a prolific Web 2.0 investor who has built LinkedIn into the leading professional networking site with 17 million active monthly users. Mark and Reid have worked together since co-investing in Friendster in 2003.
Sandy Miller
Institutional Venture Partners
IVP is one of the premier later-stage investment firms in the United States. Sandy was recognized by Forbes Magazine as one of the leading venture investors in the U.S. by inclusion in the 2007 and 2008 Midas List. We believe he will bring that touch to Zynga!
Rich Levandov
Avalon Ventures
Avalon Ventures is a San Diego-based venture capital fund focusing on seed and early stage companies in the wireless technology and life science industries. Rich and Mark first met in 1995, when Mark tried unsucessfully to recruit Rich from AOL to FreeLoader (could you blame Rich for staying?).
Peter Thiel, Managing Partner
Clarium Capital
Peter is a super smart guy who runs a large and growing macro hedge fund. He led the original Series A investment in Facebook and is a board member today.
Bob Pittman and Andy Russell
The Pilot Group
Bob is a cool guy who built MTV and has run major consumer franchises like Century 21 and AOL. He is also a pilot who flew himself to Burning Man in a helicopter last summer.
Who's Leading the Charge?
Mark Pincus
Founder and CEO
Weighing in at 150 lbs, is Mark Pincus, frenetic visionary of Zynga. His DNA is one strand entrepreneur and one strand competitive gamer. Mark founded Tribe.net (www.tribe.net), one of the first social networks in 2003. Prior to Tribe, he was the founder and CEO of SupportSoft (Nasdaq: SPRT), the world's leading provider of support automation software. Prior to SupportSoft, Mark co-founded Freeloader, the first consumer push information service.
Favorite game: Texas Hold'em, of course!
Michael Luxton
CTO & Founding Team
Michael is such a hardworking, big-thinking technologist that it prompts questions about whether he’s human or simply an enormous brain. Smart money says the answer is somewhere in between. He’s responsible for overall technology and platform strategy. Prior to Zynga, he designed and built the core systems for eUniverse and developed web caching and filesystem/kernel technology at Network Appliance. He studied music, math, and physics at UC Santa Cruz and enjoys playing the violin and piano.
Favorite games: ATTACK!
Mark Vranesh
Chief Financial Officer
Mark Vranesh was named Chief Financial Officer of Zynga in May 2008. Prior to that Mr. Vranesh served as Vice President, Finance & Administration of Fortinet, Inc. from April 2006 to May 2008 and served as Vice President of Finance and later, General Manager, for SupportSoft, Inc. from 2000 to 2006. Mr. Vranesh is a CPA with over 15 years of financial and business experience in the software, entertainment and related technology industries. Mark also spent 8 years with Ernst & Young LLP’s high tech practice, most recently as an Audit Senior Manager and earned a degree in Business from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 1990.
Favorite games: YoVille
Scott Dale
VP of Engineering
Scott is the prettiest member of the Engineering team, yet he still has fewer Facebook friends than patents (6). Scott co-founded Houseglue in 2006. Prior to Houseglue, Scott co-founded SupportSoft with Mark and Cadir Lee (Nasdaq: SPRT) and spent eight years serving as both vice president of engineering and chief technology officer. Scott has also worked for Hewlett-Packard and Apple Computer. He earned a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University.
Favorite games: Texas Hold'em
Andrew Trader (aka A.T.)
EVP, Sales and Business Development and Founding Team
As VP of Business Development, A.T. is probably trying to contact you right now. You should take his call. A.T.’s interest in online gaming dates back to 1978 playing Dungeons & Dragons on Control Data Corp’s PLATO computer, the first MMOG! Prior to Zynga he was the CEO of Tribe.net (www.tribe.net), a social network sold to Cisco in 2007. He was also the co-founder of Coremetrics (www.coremetrics.com), a leader in website marketing analytics.
Favorite games: Scramble
at@zynga.comEric Schiermeyer
VP of Market Development and Founding Team
Eric is the the Guru of Growth. Prior to launching Zynga, he was the CTO at eUniverse, the company that became Intermix Media, parent company of MySpace.
Favorite games: Scramble
Zinga Zoo
Chief Mascot Officer
Zinga is Mark's 13-year old American Bulldog. She is the inspiration for the name and logo. This stately lady is on her 4th start-up!!