Mark Pincus of Zynga pulls out of UK trip

Given the unfortunate press that Mark Pincus, founder of Zynga has been getting in the US, it is not very surprising that he will not be coming over the the UK as part of the Silicon Valley comes to the UK trip later in November.

Zynga has experienced explosive growth since it was launched but stories and by Michael Arrington of Techcrunch amongst others has exposed some of the curious (and dubious) practices that have been employed to get there.

Mark Pincus, CEO & Founder, Zynga

You can read more about the back story here, here and here.

Whilst I am sorry that one of Silicon Valley’s more colourful characters will not be joining us, I am sure he has a few issues to deal with on the domestic front. I think there is a lot that can be learnt from such an interesting tale.

Maybe we should get him to lead a discussion on business ethics? I can imagine he is learning a lot at the moment.

There is still an amazing line up for the Silicon Valley comes to Camriddge events:

Here is the list of the currently confirmed SVC2C participants:*

• Allen Morgan, Mayfield Fund, Managing Director
• Biz Stone, Twitter, Co-Founder
• Blake Krikorian, Sling Media, Founder
• Bob Cart, Greenvolts, Founder
• Brett Bullington, Angel Investor
• Caterina Fake, Flickr, Founder
• Hans Peter Brondmo, Plum, Founder
• Hugo Barra, Google Mobile, Group Product Manager
• James Rosenthal, Google, Strategic Partnerships
• Jeff Saperstein, Author, Writer
• Jigar Shah, Carbon War Room, CEO
• Julie Hanna Faris, Kiva, Chair of the Board
• Limvirak Chea, Google, New Business Development
• Mark Mitchell, Serious Materials, COO
• Nick Heller, Google, Strategic Partnerships
• Peter Thiel, PayPal, Founder, Investor
• Premal Shah, Kiva, Founder
• Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn, Founder, Exec Chairman
• Rob Jonas, Google, Director of Strategic Partnerships
• Robert Swerling, Google, New Business Development
• Salar Kamangar, Google, Adwords Inventor
• Ted Shelton, The Conversation Group, Partner
• Toby Prehn, G2 Energy, Founder, Investor
• Marc Tarpenning, Tesla, Founder

* Obviously, whilst these individuals are currently confirmed to attend the programme, we cannot guarantee the attendance of any individual due to circustances beyond our control.