Mark Pincus Reportedly Raising $700 Million For New Investment Fund

By Noah Long ● Jan 24, 2019

Mark Pincus, the founder of Zynga, is reportedly in the process of raising $700 million for a new fund that would invest in publicly traded technology companies that would benefit from strategic restructuring according to Axios.


Photo Credit: Mark Pincus

The new fund is expected to be called Reinvent Capital. And Michael Thompson, a managing partner and portfolio manager at BHR Capital, is also going to be part of Reinvent Capital.

LinkedIn co-founder and executive Reid Hoffman will be serving as a senior adviser at Reinvent Capital. Hoffman is still planning to work full-time as a general partner at Greylock and will work one day per month at Reinvent.

For this fund, Pincus, Thompson, and Hoffman are each committing $33 million towards the $700 million funding goal. And Hoffman’s investment and returns will take place through his family foundation.

Reinvent is expected to invest in between 7 and 15 Internet, software, and media companies that the firm believes it can help move into a stronger direction. This means that the Reinvent team would work closely with the company founders. And Reinvent Capital would be willing to work with small-, medium- and large-sized companies.

Pincus founded Zynga in 2007, which built several popular games on social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo. One of Zynga’s breakout hits was FarmVille and the company acquired a number of social game companies after going public in 2011. Once Facebook made it harder to promote games on the platform, Zynga financially struggled for several years before reporting a full-year profit again in 2017.

As an investor, Pincus has been extremely savvy. For example, he made founding investments in Napster, Facebook, Friendster, and Twitter. Plus Pincus made early investments in JD.com, Brightmail (bought by Symantec for $400 million), and Buddy Media (bought by Salesforce for $800 million). Pincus’ net worth is estimated to be at $1.4 billion according to Forbes’ estimates.