[petercooper]

We could just look at the investors who put significant sums in. Crunchbase has a list: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/zynga

To be fair to them all, it reads like a who's who of the VC world from Brad Feld and Reid Hoffman through to Andreessen Horowitz, Softbank, and Union Square Ventures. I'm not sure any blame could be laid at their doors though, it was an exciting and high growth company and that's exactly what they tend to invest in (and what gets celebrated the most around here on HN.. growth > profits, a "startup" isn't really a startup unless it's growing fast and all that, etc.)

[pekk]

Which is exactly why this is an appropriate place for introspection and even harsh criticism of what has happened. Two years ago people calling this event would have been "haters" - and because of the difficulties of forecasting, it was reasonable at least to say "we'll wait and see."

But now we've seen. The question is whether we will treat this as a freak accident purely unique to Zynga, or learn something from it. First, though, we need to allow that discussion rather than just saying "just make your own company if you think Zynga was bad." Really?

[sheri]

A16Z gets touted as an order of magnitude smarter than the rest of the VC's out there, and my opinion of them has dropped after looking at their portfolio's recent performance. Yes, they have made lots of money, but that firm specifically was supposed to be about recognizing long term opportunities, and not just following growth and fads. Of course, its always easy to comment with the benefit of hindsight.