Mark Jonathan Pincus is an American Internet entrepreneur known as the founder of Zynga, a mobile social gaming company.
Early life and education
Mark Jonathan Pincus was born on February 13, 1966, in Chicago and raised in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighbourhood. Pincus is the son of Theodore Pincus, a business columnist and public relations adviser to politicians and CEOs, and mother, Donna Pincus, an architect, and artist.
Pincus attended Francis W. Parker School from his kindergarten days through 12th grade and graduated in 1984. Pincus finished summa cum laude from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1988, with a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics, and obtained an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he and Sherry Coutu, co-founded the Communications Club.
Early Career
Pincus worked first in venture capital and financial services for six years before he became an entrepreneur. After he graduated college, Pincus spent two years working in the New Media Group as an analyst at Lazard Freres & Co. Pincus moved to Hong Kong after that time, where he served for two years as the vice president for Asian Capital Partners.
Pincus returned to the United States to attend Harvard Business School where he was a contemporary of Chris Hohn, Chris Shumway, and Guy Spier. In 1992, Pincus spent a summer as an associate for Bain & Co. and graduated from Harvard Business School in 1993. After Pincus graduated, he took a job at Tele-Communications, Inc. as a manager of corporate development, which is now AT&T Cable. Pincus joined Columbia Capital a year later as vice president, where he led investments in software startups and new media in Washington, D.C. for a year.
Freeloader
Pincus launched his first startup in 1995, called Freeloader, Inc. Softbank and Fred Wilson backed Freeloader, and after seven months, Individual, Inc. bought the company for $38 million. Sean Parker worked at Freeloader when he was only 14 as a summer intern. Parker later went on to co-found Napster, where Pincus became Napster’s first investor with $100,000 as an investment.
Support.com
Pincus then started his next company in August 1997, Support.com. Pincus built the company, as CEO and Chairman, into a leading provider of help desk automation software. Support.com went public at a $1.5 billion valuation in July 2000. The company changed its name to SupportSoft, Inc in 2002.
Tribe.net
At the age of 37, Pincus established his third startup in 2003, Tribe.net, an early social network. Tribe.net was supported by Guy Spier, Knight Ridder Digital, Mayfield Fund, and The Washington Post and partnered with primary local newspapers. Cisco Systems obtained the core technology of Tribe.net in 2007 to generate a platform for social networking for its digital media services group. Pincus and Reid Hoffman acquired the Six Degrees patent in 2003, a broad, sweeping patent that represents a social network service that is the core of social networks from the extinct Sixdegrees.com company for $700,000. The two stated at the time that their purpose in purchasing the patent was to preserve innovation in social networking and to restrict large companies from intervening with this. Pincus and Hoffman have never implemented the patent.
Zynga
In April 2007, Mark Pincus, Michael Luxton, Eric Schiermeyer, Justin Waldron, Steve Schoettler, and Andrew Trader under the name Presidio Media established Zynga, an American social game developer running social video game services. The company headquartered in San Francisco, California and primarily concentrates on mobile and social networking platforms such as Facebook, Bebo, and MySpace. In July 2007, the company name changed to Zynga. It was named after Pincus’ American bulldog, Zinga, and even uses a picture of a bulldog as the company’s logo.
Pincus took the company public in 2011, with an initial public offering $1 billion. From 2007 – 2013, Pincus served as CEO of the company. Zynga hired Don Mattrick on July 1, 2013, the former president of Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft, was to succeed Pincus as CEO. Pincus continued actively committed in the company as Chief Product Officer and Chairman of the Board, but the company announced in April 2014, he stepped down from his position as chief product officer to concentrate on his position as chairman of the board.
Pincus started Zynga.org in October 2009, which is bound to molding the world through virtual social goods. Zynga.org has since grown more than $20 million for more than 50 international non-profits by occasionally marketing virtual goods for charitable causes. Zynga declared that 100 percent of the profits from the purchase of virtual goods from more than seven of its games would go toward Japan’s Save the Children Earthquake Emergency Fund on March 11, 2011. Zynga.org partnered with Toys for Tots during the 2012 holiday season, in its largest philanthropic campaign not related to disaster relief. With 100 percent of the gain price of some virtual goods proceeding to Toys for Tots, the campaign was able to raise $745,000.
In April 2015, Pincus returned as Zynga’s CEO. Pincus, on March 7, 2016, stepped down from his position as the CEO but stayed with Zynga as Executive Chairman of the Board with Frank Gibeau as the CEO. Though Pincus continues non-executive chairman, a change in stock structure and a voluntary exchange of shares in the company to a different share class decreased his voting rights to 10% from the original 70% in 2018. Pincus’ choice to renounce control was due to a vote of confidence in Zynga’s current management.
Personal Life
Pincus married Alison Gelb in 2008. They have three children, a boy, and twin girls, and live in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. Alison Gelb Pincus filed for divorce in March 2017, citing irreconcilable difference.
Pincus uses his time away from work with his daughters, surfing, playing soccer, cycling, and doing yoga.