The company was named after Mark’s dog, Zinga, which was a shortened form of the word Enzinga, Swahili for warrior princess.

Zynga was founded as a project by Mark Pincus in January of 2007 to create a social poker game to launch on The Facebook platform, which opened to third party developers in May of that year.

Zynga’s first headquarters was in the “Chip Factory,” the former Williams Potato Chip factory in Potrero Hill, San Francisco.

‍