Gaming mogul Mark Pincus trashed-talked his way to Wall Street's gutter, trafficked scammy Facebook ads, and is now targeted in a class-action lawsuit. The FarmVille creator's now reaping $450 million in annual revenue and may go public. Revenge is his.
You can see Pincus' swagger as he takes his victory lap in the press, a position arranged by a shiny new crew of PR handlers, believed to be trying to polish his disreputable image for the public markets. The founder and CEO of Zynga compared himself to a genius television producer (in BusinessWeek) and demanded to know why he hasn't been thanked for his contributions to humanity (in Details). He did some drinking with a reporter.
It's almost enough to make you forget Pincus was thrown out on his ass on Wall Street; left embittered and desperate in his earlier days in Silicon Valley; removed scammy commercial "offers" from his games like Mafia Wars and FarmVille amid great criticism, and is to this day fighting off a class-action lawsuit from aggrieved users.
If Pincus wants to put himself in everyone's face as the next internet titan, it's worth getting to know the Silicon Valley desperado outside of his little dog and pony show. So we've distilled a handy guide to the infamous entrepreneur, using our own coverage and recent clippings from BusinessWeek, which profiled Pincus last week, and Details, which for a profile in its May issue photographed Pincus with his bulldog Lola...
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