It turns out you can get rich playing games, or at least building them. Zynga has just taken a stunning $180 million dollars from DST, the same company that invested $200 million in Facebook.
DST is putting quite a large pool of chips into the Facebook ecosystem. Look at it this way: they have nearly $400 million dollars bet that Facebook keeps growing and never loses its cool. That is quite a wager.
Of course, if the rumors of Zynga selling tens of thousands of tractors for Farmville are true, the startup hardly needed the cash, but they now will never have financial worries if they, sorry, play their cards well.
DST is also buying shares from people who already have them, allowing people to cash out early. An odd move I do think, perhaps it was the only way that they could get the total percentage that they wanted.
Facebook seems to be unstoppable, but then so did Twitter’s growth just a few months ago. At least now Zynga can skip the scams and get working on building a lasting business.
According to the NYT piece, the value of Zynga could be in billions, based off of revenue multiples. Who else wants to quit their job and code a Facebook game?
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