Mark Pincus (Francis W. Parker School)
wikipedia | 2013-06-27 14:05

Mark Jonathan Pincus (February 13, 1966)  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 Support.com.  Pincus currently serves as CEO of Zynga, which had 232 million monthly active users as of July 1, 2011.  Zynga's top games include: CityVille, CastleVille, FarmVille, The Pioneer Trail, Zynga Poker, Mafia Wars, Empires & Allies, Indiana Jones Adventure World and Draw Something. In 2009, Pincus was named "CEO of the Year"  in The Crunchies  and in the same month of 2011 was named Founder of the Year for 2010, as well.
 
Early life and background
Pincus was born in Chicago and raised in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood. He is the son of Theodore Pincus, a business columnist and public relations adviser to CEOs and politicians, and an architect mother. He attended Francis W. Parker School from kindergarten through 12th grade and graduated in 1984.
 
Pincus holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
 
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 time, he moved to Hong Kong, where he served as a Vice President for Asian Capital Partners for two years.

He returned to the United States in order to attend Harvard Business School (HBS) and graduated in 1993  and also spent a summer as an associate for Bain & Co. in 1992. After the internship Bain did not extend an offer for Pincus to return full-time.

After Pincus graduated from Harvard Business School, he took a job as a manager of corporate development at Tele-Communications, Inc., which is now AT&T Cable. A year later, he joined Columbia Capital as Vice President, where he led investments in new media and software startups in Washington, D.C. for a year.
In 1995, Pincus launched his first startup, Freeloader, Inc., a web-based push technology service which was acquired seven months later by Individual, Inc., for $38 million.

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

In 2003, at age 37, Pincus founded his third startup, Tribe.net, one of the first social networks. Tribe.net partnered with major local newspapers and was backed by Guy Spier, 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.

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.

Zynga
Pincus co-founded his fourth company, Zynga Inc., in July 2007 and currently serves as CEO.  Zynga is named after a former friend and business partner of Pincus' named Mike Parisi who goes by the handle "Mazinga". Associates all called him "Zinga" for short. Pincus stole the name outright, and then named his dog "Zynga" after the fact. The early supporting team included Kyle Stewart, Scott Dale and John Doerr.  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  across its network of games, which include CityVille, Empires & Allies, FarmVille, FrontierVille, Mafia Wars, Zynga Poker, Café World, Treasure Isle, YoVille, FishVille, PetVille and Indiana Jones 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.

In a video posted on 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,".

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

On March 11, 2011, Zynga announced that 100% of the proceeds from the purchase of virtual goods from more than seven of its games would go toward Japan's Save the Children Earthquake Emergency Fund.

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

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