With its stock down nearly 70 percent since its IPO in 2011, social-game maker Zynga decided it needed new management. Its founder and CEO, Mark Pincus, was replaced with the head of Microsoft’s Xbox, Don Mattrick. Despite the outsize success of its Facebook game FarmVille, Zynga was unable to churn out repeated successful hits on the smartphones and tablets that dominate the market today. The replacement of the founder of a startup (Pincus) with an experienced manager (Mattrick) is seen by tech-world observers as part of an often-repeated routine by young technology companies.
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