We took Vator Box on the road and visited Mark Pincus, CEO and founder of Zynga, the leading social gaming company with 45 million unique monthly visitors. Lyla, Zynga's mascot also joined us. Pincus was our guest host, joining me and Ezra Roizen to analyze Raptr, an online gaming company that raised $12 million in funding from Accel Partners and Founders Fund.
Here's a few highlighted observations about Raptr, and CEO and founder Dennis Fong, who refers to Raptr as a Facebook for gamers.
- On a macro level, Raptr's gaming service - which is to connect online gamers across social networks and existing gaming communities, such as World of Warcraft - is a great idea because social gaming is a fast-growing industry. "I think he's going into a great body of water," said Pincus. Clearly, with Pincus at the helm of leading social gaming company Zynga, he's a big believer in the theme.
- While Fong was polished and came across as genuine and sincere while giving his pitch, he could have improved his pitch by discussing whether the product was in the market and demonstrating traction, or just explaining how people were using his product.
- The big macro opportunity is to be the social plumbing of the Web, much like Facebook and Twitter have become the social plumbers of the Web. Social plumbing, as defined by Pincus, is the network that seemlessly connects Web sites together without users not having to try. "If I were writing his pitch," said Pincus, "I would say, there are a small number of companies creating social plumbing, I'm going to be the social plumbing of gaming."
- Lastly, Lyla gives Raptr a big paws up!
There's a lot more observations, but you'll have to watch the show to hear them.
Founder and CEO of Vator, a media and research firm for entrepreneurs and investors; Managing Director of Vator Health Fund; Co-Founder of Invent Health; Author and award-winning journalist.
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Zynga is the largest social gaming company with 8.5 million daily users and 45 million monthly users. Zynga’s games are available on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, Friendster, Yahoo! and the iPhone, and include Texas Hold’Em Poker, Mafia Wars, YoVille, Vampires, Street Racing, Scramble and Word Twist. The company is funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, IVP, Union Square Ventures, Foundry Group, Avalon Ventures, Pilot Group, Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel. Zynga is headquartered at the Chip Factory in San Francisco. For more information, please visit www.zynga.com.
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Raptr is a Silicon Valley based startup that has built a revolutionary social games platform to change the way people play and discover games they like and share their gaming experiences with friends. Raptr makes gaming more fun and social by automatically sharing your gaming achievements and stats with friends while putting an end to the frustrating process of finding and downloading game patches and updates.
Acting as a "Windows Update for games," the Raptr client keeps your games up to date seamlessly using background downloads and a lightweight interface. Raptr automatically tracks your gaming stats and achievements and shares them with your friends. With Raptr, you can see what your friends are playing, what they've recently downloaded, and how they're doing in those games. Raptr also enables you to receive recommendations for new games you might like or meet players who share similar gaming tastes. Raptr is the home for your gaming life.
Founded in 2007 by Xfire co-founder and world champion gamer Dennis Fong, Raptr is backed by several million dollars in funding from an all-star group of investors.
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