Dan Porter left Zynga in April 2013, almost exactly one year after it acquired his startup, OMGPOP, for ~$200 million.
OMGPOP was the maker of Draw Something, one of the first mobile games to go viral. It racked up 1.2 million downloads within its first week and a half. Three months later, Zynga dropped tons of money on it. After the acquisition, users promptly lost interest in the game. Zynga later shut down its entire New York operation, and Porter agreed to leave.
That year for Porter was exhausting.
"That was a tough experience at Zynga," Porter tells us. "Obviously making an app and having it be so successful is amazing. It's really fun and I wish it on everyone. It was just like, I wanted to make something else."
As a free agent, Porter and his wife spent the summer traveling. When they returned to New York, Porter took a cushy corporate job at Ari Emanuel's talent agency, WME. Emanuel and Porter had been introduced by an OMGPOP investor, Marc Andreessen. The role, head of digital, would allow Porter to continue innovating at startup speed.
"I basically took [Emanuel] at his word that I could join WME and we could figure out cool stuff to make, and they’d support me," Porter says. "And that ended up being true." Over the past year, he's stayed out of the spotlight, quietly making digital investments for the company in startups such as ClassPass and Into the Gloss.
Now, Porter is ready to be a startup CEO again.
He and a group of former OMGPOP-ers have launched a new mobile startup, Tally, that's backed by WME. Porter will remain head of digital at the parent company while trying to get Tally off the ground. It launches on iOS today.