socialmedian: Zynga’s Mark Pincus: I got kicked out of some of the best companies in America

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Zynga’s Mark Pincus: I got kicked out of some of the best companies in America

Source: VentureBeat

Oct 24, 2009

Summary

(I’m live-blogging from Startup School, a daylong program from startup incubator YCombinator held at Berkeley today. This is paraphrased. Mark Pincus is the CEO of social gaming company Zynga.)

So Pincus talks about his career. About how he went into banking. Then to business school. Then hadn’t really succeeded at any of those companies.

“I thought I was washed up at 28 or 29. And then I started my first company called Freeloader. My first advice is you should set a goal. At first I wanted to just show that I had revenues. I think we sell ourselves short and give ourselves permission to fail.”

He went and built the company up. Sold it.

“It was really a disaster. The CEO had a breakdown. He was doing weird stuff I won’t even talk about. Yossi, I’m sorry. He’s now a CEO coach. So anyway, I locked in the success of a company and everybody was proud of me. But I had nothing to show for it. My investors were happy. Now I had my green card to go and be an entrepreneur. I had $8,000 in savings which everyone should do when they start a company. But I shorted three Inte

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