Mark Pincus

Mark Pincus
Mark Pincus
Born February 13, 1966 (1966-02-13) (age 45)
Chicago
Alma mater University of Pennsylvania Harvard Business School
Occupation CEO at Zynga
Net worth increaseUS$2 billion (2011)[1]

Mark Jonathan Pincus (February 13, 1966)[2] is an Internet entrepreneur best known as the co-founder of Zynga, which makes online social games. Pincus also founded Freeloader, Inc., Tribe Networks, and SupportSoft.[3] Pincus currently serves as CEO of Zynga, which had 232 million monthly active users as of July 1, 2011.[4] Zynga's top games include: CityVille, FarmVille, The Pioneer Trail, Zynga Poker, Mafia Wars, Empires & Allies, and Adventure World. In 2009, Pincus was named "CEO of the Year"[5] in The Crunchies[6] and in the same month of 2011 was named Founder of the Year for 2010, as well.[7]

Contents

Early life and background

Pincus was born in Chicago and raised in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood. He attended Francis W. Parker School from kindergarten through 12th grade and graduated in 1984.[8]

Pincus holds a Bachelors of Science in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Harvard Business School.[9]

Career

Before he became an entrepreneur, Pincus worked in venture capital and financial services for six years. Pincus spent two years as a financial analyst for Lazard Freres & Co. after graduating from Wharton. After that, he moved to Hong Kong where he served as a vice president for Asian Capital Partners for two years.

He returned to the US to attend Harvard Business School (HBS) and graduated from HBS in 1993[10] and also spent a summer as an associate for Bain & Co. in 1992.[11] After the internship Bain did not extend an offer for Pincus to return full-time.[12]

After Pincus graduated from Harvard Business School, he took a job as a manager of corporate development at Tele-Communications, Inc, now AT&T Cable. A year later, he joined Columbia Capital as a vice president where he led investments in new media and software startups for a year in Washington, DC.

In 1995, Pincus launched his first startup, Freeloader, Inc., a web-based push technology service that was acquired seven months later by Individual, Inc. for $38 million.[13]

He then started his second company, Support.com, in August 1997. As chairman and CEO, Pincus built the company into a leading provider for service and support automation software. The company went public in July 2000.[14] In 2002, the company changed its name from Support.com to SupportSoft, Inc.[15]

In 2003, at age 37, Pincus founded his third startup, Tribe.net, one of the first social networks[dubious – discuss]. Tribe.net partnered with major local newspapers and was backed by The Washington Post, Knight Ridder Digital, and Mayfield Fund. In 2007, Cisco Systems acquired the core technology assets of Tribe.net to develop a social networking platform for its digital media services group.[16]

In 2003, Pincus and Reid Hoffman purchased a broad sweeping patent that describes a social network service that is the heart of social networks from the extinct sixdegrees company for $700,000.[17]

Zynga

Pincus cofounded his fourth company, Zynga Inc., in July 2007 and currently serves as the CEO.[18] Zynga is named after Pincus's late American Bulldog, Zinga. The early supporting team included Kyle Stewart, Scott Dale and John Doerr.[19] Zynga develops social games played on various social networks including Facebook, as well as on mobile devices including the Android, iPhone and iPad. Zynga currently boasts over 265 million monthly active users[20] across its network of games, which include CityVille, Empires & Allies, FarmVille, FrontierVille, Mafia Wars, Zynga Poker, Café World, Treasure Isle, YoVille, FishVille, PetVille and Adventure World. In addition to making their own games, Zynga has created a network which allows third party developers to become part of the Zynga network. Zynga claims to be the largest social game network on the web.[21]

In a video posted November 9, 2009, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said "I did every horrible thing in the book too, just to get revenues right away. I mean we gave our users poker chips if they downloaded this Zwinky toolbar which was like, I don't know, I downloaded it once and couldn't get rid of it,".[22]

In October 2009, Pincus started Zynga.org, which claims to be "committed to transforming the world through virtual social goods".[23] Zynga.org has raised more than $10 million for several international nonprofits[24] by occasionally selling virtual goods for charitable causes.[25] However, the company had been criticized in the past for keeping up to 50% of donations it collected.[25]

On March 11, 2011, Zynga announced that 100% of proceeds from purchases of virtual goods in more than seven of its games would go to Japan's Save the Children Earthquake Emergency Fund.[26][27]

Personal life

Pincus has lived in several cities across the U.S. including Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, D.C. and Denver and currently resides in San Francisco with his wife, Ali Pincus (founder of One Kings Lane) and his twin daughters.[28]

External links

References

  1. ^ Mark Pincus. Forbes. Retrieved on 2011-11-13.
  2. ^ "So What Do You Do, Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga?". mediabistro.com. 16 September 2009. http://www.mediabistro.com/articles/cache/a10636.asp. Retrieved 23 June 2010. 
  3. ^ Miguel Helft (July 24, 2010). "Will Zynga Become the Google of Games?". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/business/25zynga.html?_r=1&src=busln&pagewanted=all. Retrieved 2010-07-24. "A serial entrepreneur, he sold his first company, Freeloader, an early Internet broadcast service, for $38 million, and took public his second, a business software maker called Support.com." 
  4. ^ "Form s-1 registration statement". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Website. July 1, 2011. http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1439404/000119312511180285/ds1.htm. Retrieved September 23, 2011. 
  5. ^ VentureBeat January 2010[link]
  6. ^ TechCrunch January 2010. Crunchies2009.techcrunch.com. Retrieved on 2011-11-13.
  7. ^ Congratulations Crunchies Winners! Twitter Takes Best Startup Of 2010. TechCrunch (2011-01-21). Retrieved on 2011-11-13.
  8. ^ "Corner Office Are You CEO of Something?". The New York Times. Jan. 30, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/business/31corner.html. 
  9. ^ "BusinessWeek Executive Profile Mark Pincus". BusinessWeek. http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=245956&privcapId=40151328&previousCapId=40151328&previousTitle=Zynga,%20Inc.. Retrieved 23 June 2010. 
  10. ^ Harvard Business School NamesThirteen Entrepreneurs-in-Residence – Harvard Business School. Hbs.edu (2011-10-04). Retrieved on 2011-11-13.
  11. ^ "Mark Pincus Background". Mark Pincus Blog. http://markpincus.typepad.com/bio/. Retrieved 2010-07-15. 
  12. ^ Big Fat Story: The Geek Kings. The Daily Beast. June 5, 2011.
  13. ^ "Mark Pincus". startup2startup. http://startup2startup.com/2009/06/24/june29-markpincus-zynga/. Retrieved 2010-07-15. 
  14. ^ "SUPPORT COM INC S-1 Filing". Edgar. http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1104855/0001012870-00-000859-index.html. Retrieved 2010-07-15. 
  15. ^ AllBusiness March 2002[link]
  16. ^ Stone, Brad (March 3, 2007). "Social Networking’s Next Phase". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/technology/03social.html?ex=1330578000&en=f718f182170673a4&ei=5088. 
  17. ^ Kirkpatrick, David (2010). The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 1439102112. 
  18. ^ "About-Team". Zynga. http://www.zynga.com/about/management.php. Retrieved 2010-07-15. 
  19. ^ CrunchBase[link. Crunchbase.com. Retrieved on 2011-11-13.
  20. ^ "AppData". http://www.appdata.com. Retrieved 26 September 2011. 
  21. ^ CrunchBase. CrunchBase. Retrieved on 2011-11-13.
  22. ^ Michael Arrington (6 November 2009). "Zynga CEO Mark Pincus: "I Did Every Horrible Thing In The Book Just To Get Revenues"". Techcrunch. http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/06/zynga-scamville-mark-pinkus-faceboo/. Retrieved 14 March 2009. 
  23. ^ Web 2 Summit. Web 2 Summit. Retrieved on 2011-11-13.
  24. ^ FarmVille Crops for a Cause.. Blogs.WSJ.com (2011-03-28). Retrieved on August 30, 2011.
  25. ^ a b Zynga Will No Longer Take A Cut Of Charitable Donations. Techcrunch.com (2010-11-16). Retrieved on July 9, 2011.
  26. ^ Zynga Enables Donations To Tsunami Relief Through In-Game Purchases. TechCrunch (2011-03-11). Retrieved on September 23, 2011.
  27. ^ Save the Children and Zynga Team Up to Help Japan Disaster Relief Efforts. Save The Children (2011-03-12). Retrieved on September 23, 2011.
  28. ^ JetLib News November 2010. Jetlib.com. Retrieved on 2011-11-13.

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужно решить контрольную?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Mark Pincus — est le fondateur de la société de jeux sur Facebook et sur Myspace qui se nomme Zynga. Portail du jeu vidéo Catégories : Entrepreneur américainEntrepreneur en informatique …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Pincus — *Warburg Pincus *Walter Pincus *Pincus Green *Mark Pincus, a co founder and CEO of Tribe Networks *Gregory Goodwin Pincus, co inventor of the contraceptive pill *Ed Pincus, filmmaker *Shimshon Dovid Pincus *Hoagland Pincus Conference Center… …   Wikipedia

  • Mark Taper Forum — Address 135 North Grand Avenue City Los Angeles, California Country   …   Wikipedia

  • Mark D. Siljander — Mark Deli Siljander Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Michigan s 4th district In office 1981 – 1987 Precede …   Wikipedia

  • Mark Khaisman — Born 1958 Kiev, Ukraine Nationality Ukrainian Field Mixed media, Sculpture, Video art …   Wikipedia

  • Zynga — Zynga, Inc. Tipo Privada Fundación 2007 Sede San Francisco, California (Estados Unidos) Industria …   Wikipedia Español

  • Zynga — Logo de Zynga Création janvier 2007 Fondateurs Mark Pincus Personnages clés Mar …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Tribe.net — (often shortened to tribe ) is a website that hosts an online community of friends, similar to other social networking sites. The site name is always spelled in all lower case.HistoryTribe was founded in early 2003. As of March 2004, the… …   Wikipedia

  • Martin Roscheisen — Born Roland Martin Röscheisen Muenchen, Germany Residence San Francisco, California Citizenship Austrian Education Munich Technical University (B.S., 1992) Stanford University …   Wikipedia

  • Zynga — (Зинга) История создания Zynga Game Network, руководство компании Zynga, прибыль Zynga Крупнейший в мире производитель игр для социальных сетей, дочерние компании Zynga, основатель и директор компании Марк Пинкус Содержание Содержание Раздел 1.… …   Энциклопедия инвестора

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
… Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”