Justin Waldron
| Justin Waldron | |
|---|---|
Justin Waldron speaking in Helsinki, Finland
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| Born |
June 18, 1988 Watertown, Connecticut |
| Residence | San Francisco |
| Nationality | United States |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur, Investor |
| Known for | Co-Founder, Zynga Angel Investor |
Justin Waldron (June 18, 1988) is an American internet entrepreneur best known as the co-founder of Zynga, which makes online social and mobile games. Zynga is considered to be the pioneer of the social and mobile gaming industries, responsible for creating many of the microtransaction and viral marketing business models which are now ubiquitous. Within four years of its founding, Zynga grew to $1 billion in annual revenue, faster than any other internet company. In 2011 Zynga held the largest IPO since Google, with a valuation of over $10 billion. Waldron left Zynga in October 2013 and is currently an active angel investor and advisor in various other technology companies.
Zynga's top games include: CityVille, FarmVille, The Pioneer Trail, Zynga Poker, Mafia Wars, Empires & Allies, and Adventure World.
Waldron was born and raised in Watertown, Connecticut. He began programming his first video games and websites at 11 years old, shortly after receiving his first computer. His early software projects included hacking AOL, a favorite childhood pastime shared by other notable technology company founders such as Mark Zuckerberg. Waldron also reverse engineered the disassembled MIPS machine code of PlayStation 2 games in his spare time to add his own features.
In highschool, Waldron cracked Burger King's coupon code algorithm and launched a website to programmatically create unlimited free sandwich coupon codes for visitors. It became so popular that it resulted in a cease and desist notice from Burger King.
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