Scopely brings in former Zynga GM Reed Shaffner

Shaffner will be leading the product team at Scopely

(Updated to reflect comment from Scopely)

After the Zynga ship began to sink last year, there was a mass exodus of top people and executives from the company, including general managers, the Chief Security Officer, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Creative Officer. Now those people are bringing their experience to other gaming startups.

Former Zynga general manage Reed Shaffner has joined mobile gaming startup Scopely, the company announced the news via a tweet Thursday morning:

— Scopely (@scopely) May 30, 2013

Shaffner has joined Scopely as vice president of product, overseeing games in the company’s Developer Network as well as the platform itself, a Scopely spokesperson confirmed to VatorNews.

Prior to his role at Zynga, Shaffner was the senior product manager for Bing Social Search at Microsoft, and product manager for Microsoft Office. 

His first role at Zynga was as a senior product manager; he was then named director of product for Zynga.com and lead product manager on Cafe World, where he was involved with the establishment of the Zynga San Diego studio. As general manager, Shaffner was in charge of Zynga’s mobile platform and Zynga's With Friends network.

Shaffner was just one of a string of Zynga employees to flee the company.

First was Zynga’s Chief Operating Officer John Schappert who resigned in August. No explanation was given, with the company saying in an SEC filing that the resignation was “not tendered in connection with any disagreement with the Company on any matter relating to the Company’s operations, policies or practices.”

Others who have left include Chief Creative Officer Mike Verdu; Chief Operating Officer John Schappert; Alan Patmore, general manager of CityVille; Erik Bethke, general manager of Mafia Wars 2; Ya-Bing Chu, a VP in Zynga’s mobile division; and Jeremy Strauser, a general manager.

Zynga's chief security officer Nils Puhlmann also left his job in September, and in November it was Jonathan Flesher, VP of business development, who quit.

Most recently, it was former OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter, who became VP of general management at Zynga’s New York office after his company was purchased, who decided to leave. He was not the first OMGPOP executive to say goodbye to Zynga; that would be Wilson Kriegel, the company's chief revenue officer, who left in September. 

For Scopely, Shaffner is the third big hire, and the second former Zynga executive, the company has brought in this year so far.

In January, Andy Kleinman, a former general manager at Zynga and Disney, joined Scopely as its chief business officer, where he is in charge of leading business and corporate development, as well as pursuing partnerships with third-party developers and brands.

In April, Scopely welcomed former Viddy co-founder and head of business development Chris Ovitz as its VP of Business Development.

About Scopely

Los Angeles-based Scopely was founded by AdSense co-creator Eytan Elbaz, Walter Driver and Ankur Bulsara in 2011. Elbaz co-founded Applied Semantics, which was bought by Google in 2003 and became the AdSense product. Driver founded O Negative Media and co-founded Ignition Interactive. Bulsara was the lead developer on MySpace's Developer platform. 

Scopely is a consumer mobile entertainment network, which helps independent mobile game developers optimize their products for competition against products from larger competitors. The company works with independent studios to co-develop multi-player games that leverage its network for technology, distribution and monetization.

Its games include the "With Buddies franchise" such as Dice with Buddies, an asynchronous game similar to Yahtzee in that people roll the dice to get certain combinations and Jewels with Buddies, where the object is to match jewels.  

The company raised $8.5 million in seed financing from Anthem Venture Partners, The Chernin Group, Greycroft Venture Partners and New Enterprise Associates, in September of 2012.

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