OMGPop

Overview

OMGPop spent six years and roughly 35 games searching for a breakout before Draw Something found one in seven weeks. Founded by Charles Forman in 2006 as the playful dating site iminlikewithyou, the company pivoted into social games, renamed itself in 2009, and nearly ran out of time before launching its asynchronous drawing game on February 6, 2012.^[1][2]

By March 21, Draw Something had passed 35 million downloads, nearly three billion drawings, and 13.3 million daily active users. Zynga bought 100 percent of OMGPop's stock that day for $183.1 million in cash consideration.^[3][4] The game then lost daily users, Zynga impaired $95.5 million of acquired assets, and the studio closed in June 2013. Several games and the website shut later, while Draw Something, its sequel, and Draw My Thing explicitly continued.

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Founding Story

Forman started the company in 2006 as iminlikewithyou, an auction-style dating concept. Users treated the dating mechanic more seriously than intended, so the team moved toward games. The unwieldy domain created another problem: people struggled to type iminlikewithyou.com. In 2009, the company renamed itself OMGPop.^[1][5]

The early catalog included Draw My Thing, an online drawing-and-guessing game, and Blockles, a falling-block game. OMGPop raised $5 million in March 2009 in a round led by Bessemer Venture Partners with Spark Capital and Baseline Ventures. The business was advertising-supported, with subscriptions and virtual goods planned.^[5]

Dan Porter later became CEO and led the company through Draw Something and the Zynga sale. He was not the original founder. Forman left in 2011 but retained equity. In a later profile, Forman described his success criterion as creating something a child would work hard to obtain, a product-first aspiration rather than a financial target.^[6]

OMGPop raised another $10.1 million in January 2011 from investors including Spark Capital, Betaworks, Rho Capital, and SoftBank. It said it was adding 50,000 users each day and had increased monthly active users fivefold in six months after moving onto Facebook. Cupcake Corner had served more than one billion virtual cupcakes.^[7]

Those numbers did not produce the breakout the company needed. Despite roughly 35 games and about $17 million in reported funding, former employees said OMGPop was approaching a possible May 2012 shutdown. Then the team adapted Draw My Thing into an asynchronous mobile game in which two people alternated drawing a prompted word and guessing the result.^[1][2]

The packet paraphrases founder reflections but preserves no verbatim founder quote. Two direct quotations cannot be supplied responsibly.

Timeline

• 2006: Forman founded iminlikewithyou and joined YC's Summer batch.^[8]
• 2009: The company renamed itself OMGPop and raised $5 million.^[5]
• January 2011: OMGPop raised a $10.1 million Series B-1.^[7]
• February 6, 2012: Draw Something launched on iOS and Android.^[2]
• March 21, 2012: Zynga announced and closed its stock purchase.^[3][4]
• Early May 2012: Reported daily active users had fallen from a roughly 15 million peak to about 10 million.^[2]
• Third quarter 2012: Zynga discontinued development of certain acquired games and recorded a $95.5 million impairment.^[9]
• April 2013: Porter left Zynga; Draw Something 2 launched that month.^[10]
• June 3, 2013: Zynga closed the New York studio during company-wide layoffs.^[11]
• August 2013: Former employees' buyback effort had been rejected; four named games were scheduled to close.^[12]
• September 30, 2013: The website was scheduled to close, while Draw Something, Draw Something 2, and Draw My Thing continued.^[13]