• Before There Can Be An IPO, First Comes A New CFO For Zynga

    Mg Siegler

    MG Siegler is a general partner at Google Ventures and a columnist for TechCrunch, where he has been writing since 2009. Previously, MG was a general partner at CrunchFund. And before TechCrunch, MG covered various technology beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. He’s previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked... → Learn More

    Friday, July 30th, 2010

    Social gaming company Zynga is growing at a rapid clip. More importantly, their revenue is growing at a rapid clip. And they need a big gun to handle that. They believe they’ve just got him: Dave Wehner, formerly a managing director at Allen & Company LLC.

    Wehner is stepping in for current CFO Mark Vranesh, who is becoming chief accountant of Zynga. While they obviously won’t say it, it should be fairly clear what this shuffling is all about: it’s not CFO, it’s another three-letter acronym, IPO. While Zynga is still undoubtedly a ways away from such a move, they have to get their finances in order now. Especially since they’re growing so quickly.

    At Allen & Co. Wehner was in charge of a number of key investments, including Pandora, Quantcast, and StubHub. He led the corporate finance teams responsible for capital raises and M&A in Silicon Valley.

    This move follows moves by LinkedIn, who is also position itself for an IPO run. Interestingly enough, it was just reported that a Facebook IPO was just pushed from a possible 2011 timeframe, to 2012 — well, probably.

    Facebook is obviously a key to Zynga, as most of their users come from the giant social network. But a new investment by Google in Zynga points to the search giant getting into the social gaming realm as well.

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