Pincus was not ousted. That's a really common misconception.
Pincus still retains voting control over the company (much like Zuckerberg retains control over Facebook). Any changing of the guard that took place had to take place on his initiative.
Now, there's no doubt that he felt pressure to leave from the stock market. But that's not an ouster.
They had $1.1 billion in cash at the end of last quarter, with no real debt. They have another $425m in long term investments, but I'm not sure what that consists of.
I came here expecting to see something like this at the top position. Apart from the standard rant about how completely unconstructive criticism -- in fact just outright insulting whole people and companies from the safety of anonymity -- seems to rule around here, there are a couple of other things I'd like to say.
HN would greatly benefit from a regional filter -- as in, a filter of which comments I read, not who can post them. WTF do I care what some guy in Australia thinks of a very prominent Bay Area employer? He doesn't have friends and neighbors who work there, we do. Geographic community still means something, and much of the news on HN happens in our locale.
(Honestly, I have a difficult time taking any developer who doesn't live here seriously, but that's a different discussion.)
Second, up/down voting is conflated with "makes me feel good/not good" -- a better system would allow feedback to be more nuanced: agree/disagree, insightful, well-researched, funny etc. So we could have filters on discussions for what's actually insightful, not just what gives people the fuzzy comfort of knowing their preconceptions can remain safe and unchallenged for one more day, because the world has made low someone who has actual accomplishments (and mistakes)
(Honestly, I have a difficult time taking any developer who doesn't live here seriously, but that's a different discussion.)
That's lovely. People outside your precious bay area don't have any sort of interesting insight (It's a Jeep thing; you wouldn't understand)? Your whole rant is pretty hilarious in this context.
...in fact just outright insulting whole people and companies...
Yes, by all means. Attack the person you're replying to right before you dismiss all developers outside of your little geographical echo chamber as inferior.
Finally, I'd like to apologize on behalf of all the stupid foreigners (read: non-Bay-Area-ites) who are offending you so badly with our deplorable misuse of the voting system. You're right; we're simply afraid that you're cutting down our sad little misconceptions about the big, scary world (which, of course, comprises solely the place where you live, as nothing else really matters).
I'm not sure if you understand it, but your attitude is a big part of the reason some of us would never, ever move there. I'm sure you find this just peachy, which would also be your own failure.
B) I'm not saying that all outside programmers are inferior. I'm saying that, given a uniformly random sample of Bay Area vs. outside programmer, I would expect the Bay Area programmer to be "better" for some set of objective measures.
If you don't think that, then you also have to disagree with basic market dynamics. Good programmers can earn more money here, and expose themselves to significant upside opportunities -- both social and financial -- which simply cannot be offered in the same quantity elsewhere. So if you show me a programmer who doesn't live in a place where they are exposed to those opportunities, I have to conclude one of only a few options:
1) not a good enough programmer to work at a company where they would be exposed to those opportunities
2) too risk-adverse or pessimistic to believe that they could leverage those opportunities, such that the cost of living here would be outweighed by the potential benefits -- which, if that is what this person believes about themselves, then perhaps #1 also applies
3) extreme aversion to city or suburban living? Or severe miscalculation of the cost-benefit of living here.
Certainly there are some cases where people who don't live here -- the center of the universe as far as technology careers are concerned -- are actually very highly skilled and leveraging those skills in their own communities. John Carmack doesn't live here, nor does Matz.
But I think you have to admit that those are exceptional cases. The average case is that you have an average programmer -- how else do you interpret the decision not to live in a place which affords objectively superior upside scenarios?
I'm not sure if you understand it, but your attitude is a big part of the reason some of us would never, ever move there. I'm sure you find this just peachy, which would also be your own failure.
Yeah I get it and I'm sorry for offending you. But I think there are certainly some realities at play, and one of them is that not all places attract talent equally. Nobody bats an eye if I said "community theater in Peoria does not attract the best acting talent," somehow that's an obvious statement -- of course if one was truly talented they'd have found a more rewarding stage.
Why is the same principle upsetting when applied to your own profession? Talented developers will find their way to the place which best rewards them. The biggest rewards tend to be available in the SF Bay Area. Ergo, to the extent that talent and compensation, opportunity etc are correlated -- the better talent is found here.
Finally, I'd like to apologize on behalf of all the stupid foreigners...
This is an unnecessary reaction. I think you must know what I'm saying here is that the voting seems to have a tendency to indicate popular sentiment, and not thoughtfulness, or insight. Consequently, it tends to punish provocative or controversial statements.
You forgot (4) -- doesn't like the idea of living in the U.S.
Having a great job in a great city with warm weather is nice and all, but that's a fragile little bubble. To my sensibilities, the U.S. society, government, media, and military is a crazy disaster.
He forgot a million other options too. At one point, I wasn't a Silicon Valley worker because I preferred to live near family.
At present, I don't even know if I should be personally offended or not -- I technically work in Silicon Valley, but I live on the other coast, where the cost of living is dramatically lower.
That isn't to say his remarks weren't offensive either way, because basing a programmer's quality on something as arbitrary as where someone happens to live seems pretty naive.
I offer you the opportunity to open your company's office in whichever city you prefer -- I'll bankroll the first three years of rent. Work on the hardest, most challenging thing you think you can deliver, which also can actually deliver real value to your customer -- i.e., solve a difficult and useful problem. I'm also paying for the first few years' salaries of your early employees.
Where would you open your office and why? Do you think the location of your family would be an important factor in determining the likelihood of success? Sure, you might be happier there -- are you going to be able to fill the 20 most important roles in your with high quality people?
There are probably a small few fields where it makes sense to not be over here. The rest, you're probably going to have a difficult time rationalizing not picking SF/SV.
He forgot a million other options too
I forgot maybe two important, distinct reasons which don't fold into the ones mentioned. Valuing family time higher than financial opportunities being one of them.
From now on, any business that I create will be seeded with remote talent. Even if talent is local, the business processes will be optimized to allow seamless remote work. The benefits are just too great.
See 37 Signals and Art & Logic.
I'll grant that SV probably has the most favourable funding environment.
Case in point: recently I've been looking at art talent, and the difference in quality between paying market rates for Disney-quality talent vs. hitting up my professional network and friends is just astounding.
> I'm not saying that all outside programmers are inferior. I'm saying that, given a uniformly random sample of Bay Area vs. outside programmer, I would expect the Bay Area programmer to be "better" for some set of objective measures.
And I'd expect that given a uniformly random sample of say.... Seattle vs Bay Area programmers I would expect the seattle programmer to be "better". But then again, both of our expectations are meaningless without real data.
> If you don't think that, then you also have to disagree with basic market dynamics. Good programmers can earn more money here, and expose themselves to significant upside opportunities -- both social and financial
And then you clearly do not understand that market dynamics don't exist in a vacuum considering salary alone. And are really only meaningful when considering salary in terms of buying power. And considering the cost of living in the bay area, there are many places where a programmer can make more "buying power" thus giving them the actual significant upside opportunities you suggest.
Imagine you're a lumberjack. Now imagine that everywhere you go, every day, all you hear about is trees, chain saws and axes. Most of your friend's social lives seem to revolve completely around lumberjacking. And there are no girls.
I can completely understand a founder's choice to live there. As an employee, it's not my cup of tea.
I have as many non-tech friends as engineers -- only a small percentage of the population work in this field here. There are also plenty of girls, many of whom are attractive, both within and outside the field. I mean, that latter point you can just verify by going on something like okcupid.
I would lump your response into pessimistic, based on insufficient information. Fundamentally it's one of the few I listed. The only other reason I can think of, which I may not have mentioned, is perhaps someone values very strongly living where their family is, and they are willing to suffer the opportunity cost of doing so.
I'm exaggerating for comic effect. But I lived in SF for six months so I feel that I'm somewhat entitled to an opinion.
Yes, there are girls. I dated a few. But the ratio is pretty bad and most of them are tired of ubiquitous tech guys. I sometimes felt embarrassed to even mention that I work in tech. Maybe that's my problem.
Yes, well... dating does not get much easier regardless of where you go. And the same dynamics apply to attractive girls as to talented developers -- more of them will be in bigger cities, and your chances of meeting them will be higher.
Accordingly, competition and selectivity will naturally go up -- you'll have to be creative!
I'm not sure it makes sense to insult a nation (one that happens to be extraordinarily diverse in most every respect) in response to one person presenting a lacking argument.
Your blanket statement is equally valid when applied to every country on earth.
How am I insulting a nation? Just pointing out it's absurd to come up with that reasoning and decide most developers that decide not to live in the SF Bay Area isn't good enough or too pessimistic. I don't find it insulting some people may prefer e.g. Europe over the US and that alone doesn't seem indicative of their development capabilities.
True -- I only count as rewarding: access to money, investment opportunities, arts, music, food, technology, a cosmopolitan scene, temperate climate and practically every biome within a few hours' drive.
And I only count as work: consumer applications, enterprise software, data storage and processing, law enforcement, intelligence, defense, robotics, aerospace, electric cars, manufacturing, real estate and some other fluff.
What do you guys work on over there? How are you rewarded?
I'm sitting here reading this after spending the last two days at Goddard Space Flight Center in MD and I can pretty much assure you that the engineering talent there would run circles around the folks building social apps in the Bay Area. Have to agree with @drpancake here, this attitude is the primary reason I stay away from SF.
Can you explain please how you're interpreting my comment to mean "no such developers exist elsewhere," when I think it's pretty clear that I said "the critical mass (most important to me) exist here"
>Honestly, I have a difficult time taking any developer who doesn't live here seriously
Really? So no serious devs at Amazon? None working for MS or MSR? Or any company anywhere else in the world? It seems a laughable proposition that everyone "serious" in programming must must live in a small, overpriced area? It's okay but not fantastic.
I said I have a difficult time -- not no such developers exist. Yes, I don't expect even a random engineer at mega insurance corp in Iowa to be as good as a random engineer at the same company's office here in SF. But FFS, of course Amazon and MS have top talent.
If you include in your scope some much less exceptional companies, however, I think you'll see that a more useful interpretation of my statement is that the average level of talent in those areas is lower than our average
If John Carmack moves to a small, otherwise ordinary town, the average level of programming talent becomes higher than the national average. But that's a rather useless statement, isn't it? Saying a random developer in that town is probably better hinges on selecting Carmack from that random sample.
It's almost never the case that the information you have is just "lives in Bay Area or does not", and almost always the case you'll know something vastly more informative than geographic location. As you put it, "FFS of course MS...". You'd probably repeat that for several areas, like around Boston perhaps?
Being able to randomly pick a better developer from the general population doesn't really help in any practical case I can think of.
You'd probably repeat that for several areas, like around Boston perhaps?
No. I'm saying that, of course, some companies in other areas have been able to attract highly talented folks -- it does not follow, therefore, that the region as a whole has been able to do so.
Being able to randomly pick a better developer from the general population doesn't really help in any practical case I can think of.
The quality of the distribution determine your pool when recruiting. If the middle of the distribution skews toward lower talent, with a low sigma, then it says something about your likelihood to even find someone toward the upper end of the scale. Let alone begin vetting them on other factors, such as accomplishments, interpersonal dynamics, expected compensation etc.
Let's take this in the context of your original comment. You first say you "expected" a negative comment about Zynga. Then you go on about anonymous users (of which cletus is not). Next, a leap to the conclusion that people's birth origin (in this case Australia) has something to do with their ignorance on the state of Zynga, leading to such unconstructive comments.
At any rate, I don't see how a highly intelligent person, who works for Google in NYC, should somehow be filtered out of HN, nor how you can arrive at such a ludicrous statement. In addition, your new argument seems to be "some companies" may attract such talent, but the Bay Area itself somehow attracts talent without companies? As if without the high-tech firms, there would still be some high concentration of talent? Or are you stating, in an incredibly obtuse way "companies that do a certain thing very well hire people to do that thing very well and since of lot of those companies are here then a lot of those people are here too"?
As far as the top level comment, I suppose the irony is that cletus works for Google, and a quick Google search would reveal Zynga's financial situation.
First, the comment was about the glee with which this person welcomes the demise of a multi-billion dollar company employing thousands of people in this area. I was lamenting that I have to wade through cheap rabble-rousing which I could already predict would be at the top, not because it contained any particular insight or was even well thought out, just because it cheered on some ill-defined hate most readers have for Zynga. I wanted to filter him out because his comment appeared to be so thoughtless and predictable that it adds nothing despite gaining so many votes, and that it was made by a non-local nobody glorifying the potential dismissal of 2000 people from their jobs here. He may actually be very intelligent, but he's not contributing to this discussion, just pandering.
Whatever else you think that comment was about, disabuse yourself of those notions. It has nothing to do with how likely or not a Zynga bankruptcy is, and whatever the latest financial news may be. It has everything to do with the irrelevance of a drive-by, senseless expression of contempt for a company which is a major employer in this area, and the how/why it has floated to the top of this thread.
Second, that you would call my comment obtuse, when you have gone to such great lengths to avoid acknowledge the obvious fact that ecosystems exist, in order to make your comment seem as though it possesses a meaningful understanding of the world -- that, in fact, is the irony. Your entire rebuttal is defeated by situating on a map the locations of top MBA programs, CS programs, VC offices, and all sorts of activity which arise from the clustering of highly talented people. The Bay Area indeed has a critical mass of all these factors -- such is not the case in Seattle, Boston, Chicago, Austin, LA nor the entire European continent.
(If you are not aware of the precise meaning of the term critical mass, check Wikipedia. It means more than "really big.")
So yes, if you want to phrase it that way -- a lot of those people are here too. Enough that we have perpetuating institutions which further our advantage, and the rate at which our advantage grows, over the rest of the country. In fact, add to your map, arrows showing where the graduates from other top programs go, and even those arrows terminate here in disportionately large measure. To the detriment of those other locations, hence my conclusion that the largest share of talented people are found here because the incentives are just too great.
The obvious question then is, what to conclude from the fact that some programmers are not enjoying those incentives found here? I've given my answer already.
Lastly, this is not "my new argument," as if I have changed the subject somehow. This thread emanates from a parenthetical I made in my original comment, which people such as yourself have chosen to take extremely personally -- mainly because you cannot understand the difference between the statement "most of those programmers are mediocre" and "all of those programmers are mediocre."
Somehow, though, I'd guess that you don't shed so many tears when you read that the average man measures 5'10" in height. Or do you whip out the ruler to let everyone know your objection to this statement, since you are demonstrably at least 6'1" tall?
I have a difficult time taking any developer who doesn't live here seriously.
Ouch, seldom I find myself truly insulted by a needlessly bigoted[1] comment. I wish I could downvote you.
[1] In the dictionary sense of the word, as in "having or revealing an obstinate belief in the superiority of one's own opinions and a prejudiced intolerance of the opinions of others". http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/bigoted
I've elaborated in many places on this thread why I believe this. What have you provided to corroborate your sentiment, apart from the fact that you live outside of SV and accordingly have a different conclusion.
Do you have anything more than personal distaste to rebutt the reasoning I've offered? If not, you're part of the problem -- you vote based on what makes you feel good, not what makes you think.
Actually I guess you haven't even indicated where you live, or why you're insulted.
What have you provided to corroborate your sentiment. (...) Do you have anything more than personal distaste to rebut the reasoning I've offered?
Nope, nothing else; just my irrational, silly reaction to being dismissed for living in Cambridge MA, of all places. Call me immature, but I think it's only human to want to express my distaste and not want to engage with the merits of your argument, sorry[1].
[1] If you want a thoughtful argument for why there might be regions other than SV brimming with talent, please see: http://paulgraham.com/cities.html
Hah at least you're honest that you're doing exactly what I'm talking about. Bonus for you because at least you know of some places on the internet where someone said a thing that might support you. But, who knows, since you haven't actually engaged the argument. (I notice that you have not mentioned that YC requires successful applicants to come here however. So when it comes to Paul Graham's money, not all cities are equal.)
I mean, by this method nobody can rationally discuss if some places are better than others for finding developers, since that might entail a conclusion about exactly how scarce programming quality is in other parts of the country. It might happen that people from those places could stumble upon such a discussion! And then they would feel bad!
Well kudos to you, human. Now hug yourself and eat some chocolate -- may your blood always run high with oxytocin.
Sir, you have trolled these poor people very hard. And they fed you surprisingly well.
All this thread is quite amusing and almost a tutorial on trolling. Very bold generalizations somehow insulting almost all the developers on the world. With ideas that are obviously false and are not nearly related to the OP.
And yet you've got an amazing degree of attention and had the dedication and energy to keep the pointless discussion going on for hours.
The whole POINT of YCombinator is that the Bay Area ecosystem is going to be open to people flying in for it.
So, turn off speech but let people enjoy the geographic bubble. Anyone who would go to the trouble of a Bay Area VPN is practically renting there already so they could be allowed in, small loss.
I would support. As long as anyone can view the discussion without participation.
So I also came in here expecting to see something like that at the top position, but I don't think this is completely unconstructive criticism (for example, I also was personally surprised that they would make a move like this, especially in light of ridiculous layoffs they have done in the past, nevermind being surprised they had the kind of money to make this deal), especially to people who have read articles about questionable practices they allegedly employ.
Regional filter == segregation. Segregation does not help communities. Especially communities that are so similar. What if Python programmers never talked to Ruby programmers and Ruby programmers never talked to Lisp programmers? If they stayed in their own regions just because of a PERCEIVED lack of depth of knowledge of the goings-on, a lot of things wouldn't get built.
Geographic community may mean something, but in a world with data that is freely available (nevermind the fact that just because he is in Australia does NOT preclude him from knowing more about the SV scene than you do -- you may be able to name buildings on streets, but may not know the players that he does), geographic community means less and less, and it should be that way. Knowledge (of non-geographic things) is not bound by geography.
It looks like you're asking for slashdot -- maybe you should check it out if you haven't already. Up/down voting IS vague, and at best, any attempts to characterize upvotes/downvotes (as you've suggested) is largely ineffective in absolute terms. Only people who have researched a subject well have the right to put something like "well-researched", if you think everyone does that, you're going to have a hard time on the internet. People like to think they are rational, but we are highly irrational.
Not trying to flame you, but maybe you shouldn't be so quick to go to righteous indignation.
Such a blanket statement certainly bears more nuance. I think some segregation can be effective -- I'd like to hear thoughtful comments about people who have a stake in the matter. Not glib, off-hand retorts from the peanut gallery. Why is that harmful, to prioritize the comments of people who have an incentive to be thoughtful?
What you seem to be referring to is valuing the word of an expert, or someone known to have more knowledge in an area. That is totally valid of course, and should be strived for (we should not listen to pundits, we should listen to experts).
However, geographical segregation (I take this to mean separating AND isolating, which might be my mistake -- segregating does not necessarily entail mutual isolation though I took it to mean that based on what was said) does not achieve this result (assuming the only people who know about SV live in SV), but it DOES exclude people who know a lot about relevant parts of SV life/culture/business that do not live in SV.
In the general case, it is not strictly impossible (nor even improbably, I would argue) that someone OUTSIDE of your geographical area (especially if you consider that people move around) does not hold important knowledge on anything related to your geographical area (and even more-so with super generic areas like "business" and "startups" and "venture capital"). If the possibility exists that someone with such knowlege exists outside of your geographical community, the geographical community will experience (I use that word liberally, you don't know what you don't know) a loss in potential knowledge -- in short, the person who COULD have contributed knowledge cannot, since they are excluded.
So what if annoying people drown out the voices of the insightful ones, or even cause people to leave? I think this is relatively difficult, without a pretty large out-pouring of annoying. They would have to be annoying enough to drive away people abroad (all potentially gained due to inclusion) AND at least one local person. I don't think HN is at that point yet, and I think it's really hard for any medium to get THAT noisy, and be obviously too noisy to be any good.
(oh also -- I didn't downvote you, actually upvoted, I just want to debate the point, since I have thought that before)
(also -- definitely, I should have qualified "community" with "community that seeks to grow knowledge, membership, involvement, etc"
Jonathan Haidt has done some interesting studies in this area. For 'harmony', segregation is indeed very effective, regardless, the kind of harmony you're going to get from segregation isn't the kind of harmony you would get from segregating on occupation.
If you're seeking knowledge, truth, or science, the notion that segregation will help you get there is indeed a very flawed notion.
If you're seeking knowledge, truth, or science, the notion that segregation will help you get there is indeed a very flawed notion.
I'm having a difficult time seeing how those objectives aren't furthered by -- in this matter -- excluding people who gleefully cheer the collapse of a multi-billion dollar company for apparently no other reason than "I don't like them." And in this case, those people can be filtered out by limiting comments from people who would be neither positively nor negatively impacted by such an event.
I was only responding to the comment you made, that "some segregation can be effective". It can, but not in the way you're thinking, not for an effect that has particularly great meaning, and not on the lines of segregation you are discussing in this thread.
For what it's worth, I'm betting you dollars to doughnuts that there are people in Silicon Valley cheering on the demise of Zynga as well, so the notion you put forth that only those bay-area haoles are the ones contributing to such blasé discussion is also likely flawed, leaving me with the (admittedly incomplete) idea that what you really want is a Hacker News populated with people who agree with you, which I'd surmise as ill-advised at the least, and unhealthy at most.
No, really I'd just like people to be more thoughtful and less populist/reactionary. I'd like a system which rewards truth and thoughtfulness more, and concurrence with popular sentiment less. I'd like provocativeness and controversial opinions to be judged independently of their tendency to align with prejudices.
Aside: not sure how you're using haole? I've only heard that applied to (unwelcome) white people by Hawaiian natives.
I would love the system you described, you're just not going to get there by bounding geographically, and thinking you can is earning you a lot of negative karma. If the statement I'm responding to here is indicative of your actual position, then it is a noble one -- if you believe that discriminating geographically will help you obtain that objective, then the nobility aspect is out the window.
As for haole, that is exactly how I was using it. The direct literal translation is 'foreigner', to my understanding, and whites just happen to have caught the slur because they were foreign to Hawaii, and annexed the place by force, not without a bit of hard feelings.
Thought this might be worth stating:
1. It is possible to engage in group-think no matter how brilliant you are, because humans
2. We don't KNOW absolutely that Australia guy doesn't like Zynga because of group-think, or because of unreasonable bias -- He may very well not think Zynga had the money to do this because he is a remote accountant that they have hired and just saw the books (however unlikely that is -- but with all this SaaS going about, why not)
also, you are crazy if you only take developers in the Bay Area seriously. I live here now, but that attitude completely blinds you to the vast majority of programming knowledge that exists on the planet.
Your choice of people to respond to doesn't do a lot to support your criticism. According to his profile cletus is originally from Australia, but now lives in NY and works for Google. I don't know him personally, but given his employer I'd hardly jump to the conclusion that he doesn't have any friends who work there.
>Honestly, I have a difficult time taking any developer who doesn't live here seriously
He's also got over 250k rep on SO, and 15k on HN, so there's more than a few other people who take what he says seriously enough.
I'm not sure how to communicate this better than I've tried -- I'm talking about populations not individuals. Most likely cletus is a better programmer than me but that does nothing to my argument. Which primarily was that I'd like to be able to filter based on comments from people who have skin in the game rather than random hate from passers-by. And secondarily that the wealth of talent and resources are located here, and therefore you can identify a significant (but inexact) correlation between talent and location.
I'm a little surprised that you'd spend so much time arguing with these peons (some of them almost certainly do not live in the same city as what you do.)
Surely with the amount of lines you have typed in this thread, your Bay Area level skills could have been used to whip up something that does exactly what you are asking HN to do on your behalf?
I'll take the average programmer from the middle of bumfutz nowhere over someone so self centered that they think anyone that doesn't buy into "SV is the best place in the world" is crap, even if that person is a "rockstar" programmer.
Want to know why? I can work with average, be quite successful, and enjoy my work.
This is impressive. I think the perception is Zynga is this poor little company that is on its last legs when in reality they are still making money and fresh off the press of the IPO they've still got a bit of money to play with and this is a smart play if I do say so myself.
It'll be interesting to see if NaturalMotion is kept as a separate entity to that of Zynga or it is merged with the current company. The 15% Zynga staff cull that just happened I guess is a sign that they're going to be using their new-found employee purchases over at NaturalMotion in place of the 15% they just laid off.
Whether or not this purchase saves Zynga remains to be seen. CSR Racing is a fantastic game, really fantastic and well played. I've been playing it for a while now on the train to work, the mechanics and graphics are stellar for a mobile game.
I agree. The NaturalMotion portfolio has lots of really great IP in it. Clumsy Ninja is such a charming character and CSR performs well critically and financially.
In my opinion, take a page from the Arthur Anderson / Phillip Morris playbook and rename the entire company. It will make recruiting easier for them and probably please investors by shedding some of Zynga's negative brand halo.
NaturalMotion technology is excellent and this is a smart buy. Can't believe they sold. Quality products, above the bar tech, best physics on mobile probably. Check out Backbreaker and Clumsy Ninja.
They're trying to stop the bleed on their cash, recognizing they're going to have to essentially build an entirely new company (and likely understanding the time and expense involved).
But can't they re-purpose the existing studios, employees and have it cost way less than $527 million? I mean is $527 million worth saving the time of re-purposing the studios and employees? I just dont know. I guess to them it is...
Not surprising that they put themselves up for sale - Clumsy Ninja never hit top 10 grossing. That was their ticket to the Billionaires Club and they missed the mark.
Still a great outcome for the NaturalMotion guys. Welcome to the Borg.
This article says Zynga has "about $1.2 billion in cash and marketable securities on hand." But a dailyfinance article suggests companies aren't really as cash rich as they seem; their money is locked up in offshore tax havens; they can't repatriate it without paying tax on it: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/07/25/why-are-rich-companie...
This strikes me as track behavior. They got a big winner by chance, and are back at the betting window putting the money into the next favored horse, hoping to come out ahead again. They'll do this until they lose big. Seriously, though, half a billion dollars?
I know Torsten from a european startup accelerator where he was a mentor for gaming...super smart guy, deeply understands mobile gaming, a great talker and a hacker at heart. Congrats :)
Their middleware is very valuable. They have probably the best behavioral procedural animation system that is most notably used by Rockstar Games in GTAIV&V, Max Payne 3 and Red Dead Redemption.
The team is gold. They understand mobile gaming like noone else and actually had a row of hit games already. MyHorse, Backbreaker, CSR Racing, Clumsy Ninja
Much like Sauron's tower in Mordor that collapsed once the foe was vanquished, you kinda expected Zynga to implode once Pincus was ousted.