Wow . . . what a year 2009 has been! What started as a very tight-knit group of social game developers, passionate about their craft and often sharing best practices over beers, exploded into a multi-billion dollar industry. Zynga opened the year with 30 million MAUs; it now boasts more than 250 million.
Social Gold both benefited from and contributed to that growth. Currently, we have hundreds of developers using or actively integrating our platform. Additionally, more than 17 million users have conducted transactions through Social Gold. This allowed us to grow our monthly payments volume by more than 2000% in 2009. We started with a single desk in a shared office space in both San Francisco and Seattle — and now we have full-fledged offices in San Francisco, Seattle and Singapore.
The most important growth number for us, however, is 25. That’s the number of superstar employees and contractors who now make up the Social Gold team. We’ve been very fortunate to find incredibly talented people who are not only great at what they do, but who all share the same level of enthusiasm and demonstrate incredible passion for our mission and brand. Invested in each other’s lives, our employees are the “lifeblood” of Social Gold — a dynamic team that makes working hard and playing hard that much more fun.
A key element of celebrating corporate success is recognizing personal milestones, and we certainly did not have a shortage in 2009. While on holiday in Japan, our analytics and subscriptions wunderkind, Mikhail, proposed to his girlfriend. Our fraud guru, Dan, got married and honeymooned in Thailand. And our payments integration specialist, Ryan, welcomed his second child into the world.
Given the global nature of social gaming, it’s not surprising that the team loves international travel. I myself took a ten-day trek through the Himalayas in August. The trip was amazing for many reasons, but it mainly served as a metaphor for the opportunities ahead for Social Gold.
In those ten days, we crossed seven high altitude passes — reaching a maximum height of 16,000 feet. Each day presented a new challenge. After conquering one mountain, we had little time to rest before preparing for the next. Each new climb taxed us both physically and mentally, but the reward of accomplishment was well worth the sacrifice. The joys, though, lay not at the end, but through each step taken along the way.
That’s how I feel about Social Gold. Each day, month, year brings new heights to climb. With new levels of success come new challenges that certainly will require hard work. But we expect a lot of fun as well. 2009 might have been great, but there’s more to do in 2010, and new heights to climb to go before we can even think of rest.
Here’s wishing every one of you the very best in 2010.
