Facebook Is The Ant; Zynga Is The Grasshopper
Editor’s note: Adam Rifkin is co-founder and CEO of PandaWhale, an online network of interesting things and people. He has never owned Facebook or Zynga shares. . You can follow him @ifindkarma. Facebook and Zynga have experienced similar roller coaster-like devaluation from their peak stock valuations, and they’ve been partners for years, which is why MarkZ and MarkP often get lumped together in the same sentence by fearful investors whose stock is underwater: “Facebook and Zynga (insert analysis here).” Such bundling masks a deeper structural truth. The reasons that the two companies have tanked in the market could not be more divergent, and more indicative of the character and strategic vision of the startups’ respective founders. Forget any analysis that lumps the two companies together, and instead find lessons in Aesop’s fable that are important to every startup founder. Zynga is the Grasshopper in Aesop’s fable, playing and trying to get others to play. The fundamentals of Zy...