Riccardo Zacconi is an Italian businessman, management consultant, and video game developer. He is best known as CEO of

King King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the tit ...

, a video game development company he founded in 2003. King is the developer of the popular mobile game app ''

Candy Crush Saga ''Candy Crush Saga'' is a free-to-play tile-matching video game released by King on April 12, 2012, originally for Facebook; other versions for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Windows 10 followed. It is a variation of their browser game ''Ca ...

''. On May 26, 2019, Zacconi announced he was stepping down as CEO of King. (published 05-26-2019)

Early life

Zacconi was born in 1967 in Rome, Italy. He attended

Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali "Guido Carli" (Italian for ''Free International University of Social Studies "Guido Carli"''), known by the acronym "LUISS" or "LUISS Guido Carli", is a prestigious private university loca ...

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

from where he graduated in 1993 with a

Bachelor's A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ye ...

degree in

Economics Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...

Career

After leaving university, Zacconi worked as a consultant. One of his roles during this time included a six-year period as project manager at

Boston Consulting Group Boston Consulting Group, Inc. (BCG) is an American global management consulting firm founded in 1963 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the Big Three (or MBB, the world’s three largest management consulting firms by rev ...

, between 1993 and 1999. His first career role was as a consultant during a two year long stint at LEK consulting, between 1991 and 1993. At the start of the

dotcom boom The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compo ...

in 1999, Zacconi joined the

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

online messaging startup Spray before it was purchased by

Lycos Europe Lycos Europe was a pan-European network of websites, offering services including communication tools, online communities, web search, e-commerce, web hosting, homepage building and Internet access. It was an independent corporation, sharing no corp ...

in 2000. In 2001, he left Spray and moved to the UK as Entrepreneur in Residence for Benchmark Capital until August 2002 when he became vice president of European sales and marketing at Terrence "Lee" Zehrer's uDate. He left this company shortly after its merger with

Match.com Match is an online dating service with web sites serving over 50 countries in twelve languages. Its headquarters are in Dallas, Texas. The company has offices in Dallas, West Hollywood, San Francisco, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, and Beijing. Match is ...

and in March 2003, he co-founded King, becoming the CEO. He has since grown the company into one of the most successful mobile gaming businesses worldwide. He said he would remain in the King CEO post until July 1, 2019, but would stay the chairman. According to the ''

Sunday Times Rich List The ''Sunday Times Rich List'' is a list of the 1,000 wealthiest people or families resident in the United Kingdom ranked by net wealth. The list is updated annually in April and published as a magazine supplement by British national Sunday news ...

'' in 2020, Zacconi is worth an estimated £410 million, an increase of £15 million from the previous year.

Media profile

Zacconi is a leading figure in the UK tech industry and is a proponent of the UK government's efforts to establish a tech city in

East London East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the f ...

. According to an interview in the

Daily Telegraph Daily or The Daily may refer to: Journalism * Daily newspaper, newspaper issued on five to seven day of most weeks * ''The Daily'' (podcast), a podcast by ''The New York Times'' * ''The Daily'' (News Corporation), a defunct US-based iPad new ...

, he also has a positive reputation in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

as a leading tech figure following a dinner with

Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born ) is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), o ...

. He was reportedly identified as the

poster child A poster child (sometimes poster boy or poster girl) is, according to the original meaning of the term, a child afflicted by some disease or deformity whose picture is used on posters or other media as part of a campaign to raise money or enlist ...

for Europe's mobile gaming sector. He was knighted by the Italian President in December 2016 with the title of Commendatore dell'Ordine della Stella d'Italia.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zacconi, Ricardo 1968 births Living people 20th-century Italian businesspeople 21st-century Italian businesspeople Italian management consultants Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli alumni Video game developers