Showing posts with label MarkPincus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MarkPincus. Show all posts

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Mark Pincus Is Really Something

(Article first published as Mark Pincus is Really Something on Technorati.)

Mark PincusImage by Joi via FlickrMark Pincus stands out. He really does. He does not fit the stereotype. The guy is responsible for one of the fastest growing companies in history, but his past is littered with all sorts of entrepreneurial failures. To the seasoned eye, those failures were the stepping stones to his grand success, but only in December 2009 he was being pilloried by some small name journalist to whom Pincus pleaded on the air: "We go way back."

He did not drop out of college. He was not 19 or 23 when he started Zynga. He is not 20s young. He is not the most photogenic entrepreneur out there. His public appearances tend to be littered with all sorts of horror stories of him having had to deal with venture capitalists and other creatures of the tech ocean. John Doerr's firm rejected him several times, and Zynga has been better for John Doerr than Google has. Now why would John Doerr do that? I think there is a cultural bias against people who are not the most photogenic.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

A Victory For Larry

Larry Ellison, Welcome Keynote, Oracle OpenWor...Image by yuichi.sakuraba via Flickr
Bloomberg: SAP Must Pay Oracle $1.3 Billion Over Unit's Downloads: the largest jury award of 2010 ..... s the largest ever for copyright infringement and the 23rd-largest of all time for any jury award

Larry asked for two billion. SAP offered 20 million. So Larry upped the ante. He asked for four billion. Looks like he has been awarded close to what he asked for. Asking for two billion and getting 1.3 billion is close.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Zynga: The Google Of Games?

Image representing FarmVille as depicted in Cr...Image via CrunchBase
That is common practice. To use a well known entity as a metaphor. At an event I attended during Internet Week, an entrepreneur on the panel said, "We are the Netflix for fashion." You don't buy dresses, you rent them. (Women In Tech-Media Event At JP Morgan: Internet Week) That is a great way to describe your company. If your company is not very well known, it makes sense to use a well known company as a metaphor. I'd love to be able to say about this blog, we are the Zynga of blogging (we are not, I am not), because Zynga, let's face it, is a well known name and it is huge. At the layperson level people probably are more familiar with the Farmville name than Zynga, but Zynga is big. So you have to ask, what's going on here?

New York Times: Will Zynga Become the Google of Games?
Mark Pincus, Zynga’s 44-year-old founder....... he had set out to build an enduring Internet icon, one that was synonymous with fun. ..... There has to be more than “a garage sale, a bookstore, a search engine and a portal ...... the opportunity to build an online entertainment empire was “like search before Google came along.” ..... the hottest start-up to emerge from Silicon Valley since Twitter and, before that, Facebook ...... While Facebook needed four and a half years to reach 100 million users, Zynga crossed that mark after just two and a half years. ....... the games are free to everyone ...... has been profitable since shortly after its founding. ...... investors, including Google and the Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, have put about $520 million into the company ...... Zynga has been valued at more than $4.5 billion ..... Silicon Valley’s next billionaire .... “He has nailed the next killer app, the next compelling thing that’s going to happen” in media. ...... Six million Facebook users, who grew tired of constant updates about their friends’ games, joined a group called “I don’t care about your farm, or your fish, or your park, or your mafia!!!” ...... Facebook started restricting the messages, and Zynga’s traffic dropped sharply. ..... little effect on revenue because many players who dropped out didn’t buy virtual goods. ..... about four times larger than its nearest rival, Electronic Arts. Playdom is third ...... Pincus is something of an aging whiz kid. ..... 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. ........ talks of building a “digital skyscraper” ..... a visionary leader. ..... also known for his sharp elbows and irreverent style ..... brags about being fired from a consulting firm job for having little patience with his bosses. ...... “I didn’t believe in paying dues” ...... open about his distrust of many venture capitalists ...... a Silicon Valley firm turned down an investment in Zynga, telling him he was “not coachable.” ......"I did every horrible thing in the book to just get revenues right away." ...... “As the company has had more exposure and visibility, I have had to realize that more people take what I say seriously” ..... Twenty to 30 percent of visits to Facebook are to play games .... When Mr. Pincus first envisioned Zynga, most investors and peers doubted that a gaming start-up could become the next big thing. .....“Zynga has the most revenue, growth and happy customers of any three-year-old venture we’ve ever backed,” says John Doerr
Farmville was the next big thing because Farmville offered Facebook users that Facebook itself did not. Sitting down to catch up or talk serious topics can be socializing, but you can't do that all the time. That is why people play board games.

And traditional video games were missing a big point: the Internet. There was email before Hotmail, but they all missed a big point: the Internet.

There were other online games, but many of them were solitary exercises. To Farmville social is fundamental. Social has been as big a trend as search, and Zynga respected that.

And there has been the interactivity part. Playing Farmville is a very different experience from blogging. It is very different from taking pictures and sharing.

Free might not count for innovation, but it is. It is a big one. What if you did not have to download anything to play Second Life? What if it had been free? Keeping the game free has been fundamental to Farmville's growth.

There has been a monetization fit. Yahoo did display ads, fine. But Google could not have done that. Ads on Google had to act like search results to make sense. Similarly Farmville monetization had to be part of the gaming experience. There has been a great fit.

Pincus is not 22. Zuckerberg is not the norm in entrepreneurship. Most - the vast majority of - entrepreneurs are closer in age to Pincus than to Zuckerberg although the media will have you believe otherwise. I think Mark Pincus' age is an important detail in this story.

Pincus has had a track record of giving the finger. Out of the box thinking requires that. Bloomberg got fired too. And so he went ahead and started a company. Got to do something. What are you going to do with all that nervous energy?

Gaming as a basic fabric of the web experience, wow.

Every human activity ever, if you can figure out a way to take it online, there is a business model for that.

And there is room for reinvention. Believe it or not, Geocities was my first blogging platform. It was simple enough. But then platforms like Blogger came along and blogging took off. Geocities was a community before Facebook was a community. Facebook did not invent community, it reinvented it.

Farmville is a reinvention of gaming. The question to ask is, can Zynga re-reinvent gaming? Will it still be hot five years from now? Google is still around and fairly hot. Android and Chrome alone make it pretty cutting edge, I think.

Farmville Farmer's Market: My Idea
Farmville Has Not Been Loading For Me
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Monday, January 04, 2010

I Just Became Friends With Anu Shukla



FarmVilleImage via Wikipedia

I just accepted a Facebook friend request from Anu Shukla. I am guessing the friend request is a direct result of a long comment I left on TechCrunch earlier in the day: Zynga Investor Calls Scamville Debate Irrelevant And Unfair.
Fred Wilson is one of the pillars of the New York tech community, and he has been a brilliant investor for over a decade. I have lost count of how many times I came across a truly exciting company only to find out later that was one of Fred’s portfolio companies. If he were not a big investor, and only a blogger, he would still be considered a brilliant visionary.
As for Zynga, both Fred Wilson and Marc Andreessen are investors. I’d give an arm and a leg to belong in the same club as Marc Andreessen. Wouldn’t you?
I have not read all 22 of your “Scamville” posts. And I don’t pretend to have followed all the nuances of your argument.
And TechCrunch is my favorite blog by far. I read it more than I read any other news outlet of any kind, period. So I have respect for its founder and mascot.
You seem to suggest something murky might have been going on, but now, thanks to your work, much of that has been corrected. If that is the case, this story has had a happy ending.
As for Farmville the game, I can vouch for it personally. I have been an avid player for weeks. I never spent a single dime on it. And I am about to buy a million dollar villa there.
I had an email exchange with Mark Pincus only a few days back. I suggested he add a Farmers’ Market to Farmville. He said that was a good idea.
I am glad all three of you are around. What can I say?
By the way, I read those comments by Fred in the original at his blog before I saw them here. Good to know you and I sometimes end up at the same blog in some of the same comments sections.
My first email to Anu was standard. I have more than 130 lingering friend requests from people I don't know. My privacy settings on Facebook are lax. They are set to everyone. So you don't need to be my friend to be able to visit my full Facebook page. But if I don't know you, I am not accepting friend requests.  
Hello Anu. Thanks for the friend request. I am open to online only friendships. But we are going to have to exchange a few emails, get to know each other, and become friends first. :-)
My second email to her a few minutes later: 

Hey. Wait a minute. After I sent you the email, I googled up your name because it sounded kind of familiar. You are t-h-a-t Anu Shukla. Arrington dragged you into a controversy a few months back. I remember reading in real time.
I am honored you should send a friend request my way. I am accepting it right away.

I am guessing this friend request came from a looong comment I left on TechCrunch earlier in the day. I am going to leave more such long comments in future! :-)

Hello friend. 
And so that is that, I got myself a new friend.






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