our team

Mark Pincus is the founder of Workplay Ventures. Mark is an accomplished entrepreneur and investor. He founded several internet companies including Zynga, which pioneered social games to help establish gaming as a mass-market activity. He was the Chairman of Zynga’s Board and also served as Zynga’s Executive Chairman and twice as its Chief Executive Officer, including when he returned in 2015 to lead its turnaround and reinvention as a mobile-first games company. Zynga merger with Take-Two Interactive in 2022. Before Zynga, Mark founded tribe.net, one of the earliest online social networks whose technology was acquired by Cisco Systems. He also founded Support.com, a provider of help desk service and support automation software, one of the first enterprise software companies to go to market with a subscription-based model. Support.com went public in 2001. Mark also founded FreeLoader, Inc., a web-based, push technology news company, which was acquired by Individual, Inc.

Mark has made numerous investments in many internet, media, and software companies, including Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb, Snap, Epic Games, Xiaomi, JD.com, and Niantic. He is also an active angel investor in technology startups. Mark has prioritized social impact in his personal and professional life. Zynga was one of the first companies to use in-game virtual goods to allow players to contribute directly to disaster relief and other nonprofit efforts. Mark was appointed by President Barack Obama to the Board of the Presidio Trust, a federal agency that operates the Presidio as part of the Golden Gate Recreation Area. He also regularly lectures to aspiring entrepreneurs at colleges and universities, including Stanford Graduate School of Business, Harvard Business School, and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Mark has built an intellectual practice around product management. He was an early pioneer in reimagining product management for consumer internet products, notably the use of rapid testing and experimentation to inform design decisions in all stages of product development. He also developed a product roadmapping process that tracks engineering resources to expected outcomes. Mark was among the first to bring these lessons to games, spawning an always-on, product-as-a-service operating model that empowers product teams to react in real time to user behavior by deploying product updates. In addition, Mark co-created the Stanford Graduate School of Business course on Product Management with Professor Amir Goldberg.