Mark Pincus: The Man Behind The Zynga IPO

Jonas Karlsson Vanity Fair July 2, 2011

CITYVILLE SLICKER Mark Pincus on the terrace of his San Francisco apartment.

correction appended

This year, Mark Pincus, the founder and C.E.O. of Zynga—the company that created the silly Facebook games FarmVille, CityVille, and Zynga Poker, the most popular online poker game in the world—had plans to spend the whole month of March at his ranch outside of Aspen. Pincus, who is himself, along with his company, devoted to the concept of “play” in theory, practice, and also as an extraordinarily lucrative business model, was determined to have fun. “Aspen is just dialed in as a sports town,” he says. “You have skiing, hiking, road-biking, mountain-biking, golf, tennis … ” A slight five feet six, with large liquid brown eyes, Pincus looks down for a moment and purses his lips. “I have to say, though, I hate tennis here. The ball goes faster because of the altitude. It’s harder to win points.”

• The genesis of Christopher Poole's 4chan (Vanessa Grigoriadis, April 2011) • "America's Tweethearts" (Vanessa Grigoriadis, February 2010) • George Lucas's video-gaming empire (Frank DiGiacomo, March 2008)

Not surprisingly, the month was whittled down to a week because of professional obligations—after all, Zynga, shockingly enough, has become one of the most buzzed-about companies in Silicon Valley, one that was just valued at $10 billion, with more than 250 million players a month, and is thought to be preparing an I.P.O. for next year. But Pincus was determined to make the most of his brief time off—skiing, hiking, and renting a snowcat for a reunion of his friends from his days at Wharton, some of whom had attended the birthday party he threw here a few weeks ago for 50. “We did a 1960s NASA-themed party,” he says. “It was like Wings—everyone was in space-themed costumes.” Pincus doesn’t think hanging out with a glass of Pinot Grigio with his feet up in front of the fireplace is fun; for him, fun is programmatic, something that should be well planned by an invisible hand—a game. “I even became so obsessed with the perfect wedding that I spent all my time deconstructing other ones,” he says, about his marriage to Alison Pincus, the co-founder of the popular home-design “flash sale” site One Kings Lane. “Toasts ruin weddings, so we had those the night before, but we allowed everyone only three minutes. Also, after dinner, we took the seats away—they all had to go on the dance floor.”

So, on this Wednesday in the middle of his Aspen week, Pincus has been having fun all morning, slicing down Aspen Mountain before barreling down his driveway for a late lunch. Plus, the most fun thing ever happened today: he became a billionaire, at least on paper. It’s an amazing feat for a guy whom, a close associate says, “no one in Silicon Valley wanted to touch in 2007,” and whose ideas a big game manufacturer turned down early on, “essentially throwing up all over them.” In the Valley, Pincus has been famous for 15 years, but he’s always been plotting his big score. “There’s an A-list [in Silicon Valley], and then there’s everyone else—and I’m not on the A-list,” he lamented to The New York Times six years ago, even after his first company, a wonky tech outfit, was sold for $38 million. Anyway, the Forbes list came out this morning, and there it was, finally, for everyone to see—Pincus, worth a billion dollars and counting. He’s one of the seven new “Facebook billionaires,” a group which includes all those guys from the Social Network movie—Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, Sean Parker, libertarian investor Peter Thiel—plus Russian tech investor Yuri Milner.

Pincus’s BlackBerry has been pinging on and off throughout the day, with messages from friends and colleagues offering congratulations. “You know, I was hoping not to be on the list,” he says later, shaking his head a little. “I’m not looking to be famous for the amount of money I have, and it’s kind of socially awkward.” But from the glint in his eye, it’s clear that he isn’t exactly disappointed. After all, it’s a win.

In the tech boom’s second wave, there are a lot fewer companies than in the first, but vast chasms still exist between their profitability and their valuations. Some are currently throwing off revenue, like the online coupon company Groupon, which is essentially an e-mail-blast machine that promotes deals such as half-price laser hair removal at local spas, but others have smaller earnings than one would expect, like the billion-tweet media darling Twitter. The business-networking site LinkedIn is preparing an I.P.O., as is Facebook, which is on track for $4 billion in advertising revenues this year. That may not sound like a lot for a company that’s valued at $50 billion, but whom do you know who isn’t on Facebook at this point? They’ve got close to 600 million members, and their valuation could go over $100 billion. It could be the biggest I.P.O. in history.

Facebook’s success, on a business level, owes something to Pincus, although most people don’t realize it. The dirty little secret of Facebook is that there isn’t really much to do there once you’ve finished looking at pictures of your friends’ babies and your crush, and signed up for a few pages run by political causes. “Is Facebook a success because of Zynga, or is Zynga a success because of Facebook?” asks Michael Pachter, a video-game analyst at Wedbush Securities. “The answer is both. But the truth is that it’s a delicate eco-system.” Zynga’s games are expected to claim at least $850 million in earnings this year. David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect, says, “Zynga could account for as much as 10 percent of Facebook’s revenues this year, a lower percentage than last year but still very significant.” “We’re going to have billions of people on social networks, so if a third of the people on Facebook love games, about a third don’t, and a third are indifferent, you’re still talking about hundreds and hundreds of millions of people playing Zynga games,” says famed venture capitalist John Doerr, of Kleiner Perkins, which has invested heavily in Zynga. “These games are not for everyone, it’s true, but it’s for more of everyone than anything else I know.”

Brad Bird of Ratatouille and The Iron Giant is set to direct the fourth Mission Impossible film.

Follow @VanityFair

Newsletters SIGN UP NOW to get our weekly newsletter Enter your E-mail address submit I understand and agree to the user agreement, privacy policy, and terms of service. Podcast Podcast Writers Reading Authors including Jay McInerney, Martha Sandweiss, and Tracey Morgan read from their new books. Subscribe in iTunes RSS RSS VF.com RSS Feeds Stay up-to-date with everything happening on VF.com. Sign Up Now # Table of Contents { Web Extras / Archive Stories ❑ iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch Edition

Letters to the Editor

Tips for the Online Editors

Magazine Subscription Questions

// Site Map Contact Vanity Fair Newsletter Signup Blogs RSS Feeds Subscription Services Careers VF Store Reprints/Permissions Vanity Fair Media Kit Condé Nast Digital Sites on politics, culture, & style: Architectural Digest Concierge.com Details The New Yorker W Magazine Vogue VanityFair.com around the world: U.K. Spain Italy Subscribe to a magazine: Subscribe to a magazine View All Titles - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Allure Architectural Digest Bon Appétit Brides Condé Nast Traveler Details Glamour Golf Digest Golf World GQ Lucky Self Teen Vogue The New Yorker Vanity Fair Vogue W Wired Visit our sister sites: Visit our sister sites - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Allure Architectural Digest Ars Technica Bon Appétit Brides.com Condé Nast Traveler Concierge Details Epicurious Glamour Golf Digest Golf World GQ Hotel Chatter Jaunted Lucky NutritionData Reddit Self Style Teen Vogue The New Yorker Vanity Fair Vegas Chatter Vogue W Wired

Registration on or use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (Revised 10/20/2009) and Privacy Policy (Revised 10/20/2009). Vanity Fair © 2011 Condé Nast Digital. All rights reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast Digital.

CN.page.config.facebook.like = {layout : "standard", showfaces : false, action : "recommend", width : 400}; CN.config.set({tweet : {layout : "horizontal",source : "vanityfair"}}); CN.page.sandbox = []; CN.page.sandbox.push({id : "#sandbox_ps2_1", url : "/sandbox/pages/ad-ebook-taylor.html"}); CN.page.sandbox.push({id : "#sandbox_ps4_2", url : "/sandbox/pages/ipadad/ipadscreen.html"}); (function(){ var ns= window.CN || window.CNP; ns.page = ns.page || {}; ns.page.config = ns.page.config || {}; ns.page.config.defaultTab = 0; }()) CN.page = CN.page || {}; CN.page.feature = ['set5','search_thumbgrid','set6','search_firstresultdescription','mostpopular','set1','manual','sandbox','set2','manual_imagetop','tabs','newsletters','set3']; CN.stats.omniture.setStatus(200); CN.stats.omniture.doPageTracking(); // does init and also tracks var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-8293713-15"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}

Letters to the Editor

Tips for the Online Editors

Magazine Subscription Questions

Read Full Article »

Comment

Show comments

Mark Pincus: The Man Behind The Zynga IPO

Related Articles