Zynga founder Mark Pincus says board blocked $400m Supercell acquisition in 2012

Zynga founder Mark Pincus has revealed that the company came close to acquiring Supercell for $400m in 2012, before its board blocked the deal.

Speaking on the Deconstructor of Fun podcast, Pincus said he had a "handshake" agreement with Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen to buy the studio. Zynga's board refused to approve it after the company's earlier $200m acquisition of OMGPOP and Draw Something had failed to pay off.

"I had a moment in 2012 where I still had voting control of the company. I had a handshake with Ilkka to buy Supercell for $400m in cash and went to my board. They were grumpy and they said, until you prove you can manage what you have, we don't want you to buy anything else," Pincus said.

At the time, Supercell's Hay Day was outperforming Zynga's own games. "Hay Day was eating our lunch," Pincus said. Clash of Clans, which had only just launched, was already climbing the charts.

Pincus said Zynga's lawyer told him that exercising his voting control to force the deal through would require firing the entire board and replacing it with his own appointees, risking a personal lawsuit. He chose not to pursue that path.

"Elon would have done that. Elon has much bigger balls than I have. I wish I had more conviction. I wish I had bigger balls," Pincus said. "I wish I had more confidence as a founder and CEO to go against the grain and fire my fucking board for being idiots."

Supercell posted $500m in net profit the following year, Pincus noted. When he later stepped down as CEO, his successor approved a $550m acquisition of a company Pincus described as having "no revenues, no hit games." The figure and timing align with Zynga's 2014 purchase of NaturalMotion.

Pincus returned as CEO in 2015 when Zynga had around $1bn in cash. He said he spent $800m on stock buybacks at roughly $2.20 a share, which he later called a good investment given Zynga was bought by Take-Two for around $10 a share. However, he acknowledged the buyback period came at the expense of other investments.

"There were so many other good investments that I could have done at the time. And didn't, because I was playing defense," Pincus said. "I was not my best CEO self."