Behind Mark Pincus's Bid to Save Zynga

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324073504578116100928125228.html

by tomkit • 14 years ago

33 44 14 years ago

online.wsj.com

grantph• 14 years ago

Is it really worth saving?

alexpenny• 14 years ago

No. they shouldn't have IPO'd, their products are mind draining, they shouldn't even be a company. This whole thing is a big mess.

pxlpshr• 14 years ago

Funny thing is a lot of the baby boomers said the same thing about Mario Brothers.

harryh• 14 years ago

Certainly it is for the people that own it.

damian2000• 14 years ago

to avoid the paywall ...

http://www.google.com/url?q=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB...

joeblau• 14 years ago

Thank you!

nikcub2• 14 years ago

as a bookmarklet:

    javascript:(function()%7Bwindow.location.href='http://www.google.com/url?q='+document.URL;%7D)()

jessedhillon4• 14 years ago

Please change the link to use damian2000's Google referral link.

jval• 14 years ago

I wonder if he had tears in his eyes when cashed out?

bond• 14 years ago

Tears of joy...

chris_wot2• 14 years ago

Actually, an employee threw a stock option at his eye...

Symbol• 14 years ago

The following two things trouble me:

1) Employee morale is low. One problem cited is that they are unsure about the direction of the company.

2) The attempted fix to the moral problem was with an options grant.

The article goes on to talk about the quibble around who got what options, but this is all a tempest in a teapot. If the very people who make your products, who are the engine of your company, do not understand how you are going to continue to remain in business, then stock grants are, literally, worthless. You cannot get rich off a company that makes no revenue. I'm appalled that this was Pincus' (or whoever acted in his stead's) idea. You could actually, I don't know, TALK to your employees, elevate their ideas, and produce something of value. Hell, you could even talk to your customers and discover what they like, to try and help you drive some innovation.

shaggyfrog2• 14 years ago

> 2) The attempted fix to the moral problem was with an options grant.

Because we're talking about Zynga, I found that typo oddly appropriate.

robryan• 14 years ago

One of Zyngas big problems is that they can only really continue to make these same types of game. They could try and make better games that more people would consider fun but I doubt that will really push their valuation back up. They only really got so overinflated taking advantage of psychology and addiction and pushing low quality but high return offers at their players.

fatbird2• 14 years ago

Pincus is getting excoriated in the trade press for his aggressive tactics, his Bagdad Bob enthusiasm, and his macho indifference to common sense and good taste.

What about Kleiner Perkins? What about Bing Gordon? Why, when a turd like Zynga goes up like a rocket and comes down as hard, don't the VCs encouraging a CEO like Pincus get hammered twice as hard? Aren't they supposed to function as gatekeepers, as elder statesmen of startups? Isn't it basically their job to sort the wheat from the chaff in exactly this situation?

recuter• 14 years ago

Their job is to get as high ROI as they can, everything else they might claim is hyperbole. Zynga, Groupon, Facebook - hype, pump, and dump.

Greater Fools[1] expect loftier ideals. Let us be the Jesters who dream of a better tomorrow. :)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool

jessedhillon4• 14 years ago

There are not many people in the world who can take an idea and generate $billions with it. Even if they crash, you don't just throw those people under the bus. You can debate whether or not they conform to some specific ideals of success, but I'd hardly call him "chaff."

fatbird2• 14 years ago

You make fair points, but what I'm really questioning is why Pincus alone seems to bear the brunt of the backlash against him and Zynga, when he was enthusiastically enabled by a variety of investors. Why aren't they receiving the same criticism for failing to perform? Why aren't they receiving more, given that Pincus has only his own experience, while it's the basic job of the VCs to look at a hundred Pincus's and choose the three worth betting on?

bryne• 14 years ago

Mr. Pincus also filled his calendar with product meetings, something he had previously scaled back on. And he switched his main phone from a BlackBerry to iPhone, the device preferred by Zynga's users.

I don't think anyone was under the impression that Pincus was personally invested in any of his company's products, but I think this is still a telling anecdote, similar to cultural problems most recently corrected by Marissa Mayer at Yahoo, for example.

redthrowaway• 14 years ago

I'm having a great deal of difficulty trying to scrounge up a shred of sympathy for Mr. Pincus. A man who has made vast sums of money running an unethical company unethically, who has screwed over users and employees at every turn, is now suffering his comeuppance. Tragic.

His employees on the other hand, bound as they are by golden handcuffs and seeing their stocks plummet, are far more deserving of our sympathy and good will. I'm far more willing to extend my understanding to those caught in the machine than to he who operates it.

Hopefully, Zynga will soon be a footnote in history, Pincus will retire with whatever he stashed away from the IPO, and his employees will find gainful employment doing something less shady and banal.

danilocampos• 14 years ago

Egos like that, sadly, don't retire.

rndmize• 14 years ago

"...Zynga has consistently reported losses since going public, however; news of the CEO dumping his stock is a blow to the company's image. Of all the insiders involved in the deal, Pincus made the most money, netting around $200 million from the sale."

I don't see how he's suffering any kind of comeuppance.

firefoxman1• 14 years ago

It's amazing how far humans have progressed in 150 years isn't it? A century ago you had a right to complain about working conditions if, for example, you lost a limb in a meat factory. In the 1880s 1 in 7 steel workers would die while at work each year. Industrialists were considered "exploiting" the workers when they paid them $1 a day, hardly a liveable wage, and young children worked for even less.

Contrast that with what we consider "unethical" today about a company that makes cartoon games on a computer screen, which the user can step away from at any time. The employees are top-notch talent that could easily find employment elsewhere if they get tired of their in-house chef's meals.

jiggy20112• 14 years ago

I think the point is that a games company should be something that's actually very difficult to run unethically, yet somehow they managed it.

stevewillows• 14 years ago

is there any reason they haven't ditched facebook and focused on games for mobile phones?

abhimir• 14 years ago

they have recently launched some of their online games on mobile. I am sure that is a strategy going forward.

dkroy• 14 years ago

I hate that someone linked this in an article in the hopes that we would pay for the whole thing, by the way thanks for linking the full article in the comments whoever did that.

ghshephard4• 14 years ago

Those of us with a subscription to the WSJ can't always remember that not all of the articles are available to non-subscribers.

chris_wot2• 14 years ago

So stop posting wsj articles full stop then.

davidwparker• 14 years ago

If you Google the title for the article and click through from Google, you see the entire article- no membership required.

saosebastiao• 14 years ago

I would never, in a million years, work for this guy. I just have to wonder, is it possible to short sell stock options?

Prufrock1• 14 years ago

Is anyone going long on Zynga and picking up some stock for $2 a share?

bitops• 14 years ago

The best way for Mark Pincus to save Zynga?

Quit.

Behind Mark Pincus's Bid to Save Zynga

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