Conference Keynote

9:00 am - 10:30 am - Thursday September 24, 2009
An Interview with Mark Pincus, Founder and CEO, Zynga
Mark Pincus, Founder and CEO, Zynga
Mark Pincus is a leading Internet entrepreneur, having founded and established four successful companies. His latest venture Zynga, founded in 2007, is the largest social gaming network, and marries his knowledge of social networks with his desire to create the next mass market video game phenomenon. Zynga has received $39 million in funding to date and has 32 million daily active users playing their online social games.

Mark Pincus
Founder and CEO
Zynga

Mark Pincus is a leading Internet entrepreneur, having founded and established four successful companies. His latest venture Zynga, founded in 2007, is the largest social gaming network, and marries his knowledge of social networks with his desire to create the next mass market video game phenomenon. Zynga has received $39 million in funding to date and has 32 million daily active users playing their online social games.

With a visionary eye, Mark foreshadowed the popularity of social networks when he founded Tribe Networks (tribe.net) in 2003, one of the first online communities and social networking sites. Tribe partnered with major local newspapers and was funded by The Washington Post, Knight Ridder Digital and Mayfield Venture Capital. Four years later, Cisco purchased the core tribe.net assets to provide an initial platform for its digital media services group.

Prior to Tribe, Mark co-founded SupportSoft, Inc. (Nasdaq: SPRT), originally known as Support.com, a provider of service and support automation software. Mark served as chairman and CEO and led the company through its successful IPO to become one of the world’s leading publicly traded enterprise software companies.

Mark’s initial Internet success began with Freeloader, the first web-based consumer push information service. Freeloader was acquired seven months after launch by Individual, Inc. for $38 million. Prior to Freeloader, Mark worked in various capacities in venture capital, business development and financial services.

Mark earned his B.A. from University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and his MBA from Harvard Business School. A native of Chicago, Mark has lived in several cities across U.S. including Philadelphia, Boston, Washington DC and Denver and currently resides in San Francisco.