Owen Thomas Van Natta (born November 12, 1969) is an American businessman who has found success in a variety of tech spaces, including e-tail, social networking, music streaming, gaming, finance and investment. He currently serves as Founder of OVN Capital and has held notable positions in various tech companies, including

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economi ...

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

, Myspace,

BOKU Mobile Payments Boku, Inc. is a mobile payments company that allows businesses to collect online payments through both carrier billing and mobile wallets, and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Boku utilizes mobile network operator (carrier) data to ...

, and

Zynga Zynga Inc. () is an American developer running social video game services. It was founded in April 2007, with headquarters in San Mateo, California. The company primarily focuses on mobile and social networking platforms. Zynga states its missio ...

. Van Natta holds a bachelor's degree in English and

American literature American literature is literature written or produced in the United States of America and in the colonies that preceded it. The American literary tradition thus is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature, but also inc ...

from the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California syste ...

. Van Natta is also a Founder and Managing Director of Prefix Capital, as well as a Founder of 415, LLC. Van Natta married Jennifer Van Natta in 1998 and had two children together. The couple divorced in August 2019.

Career

From June 1998 to August 2005, Van Natta was Vice President of Worldwide Business and Corporate Development at

, where he managed global marketing programs and strategic partnerships during the period where Amazon was laying the groundwork for the company's historic growth in market capitalization. He was part of the founding team of A9.com, the Amazon.com search engine optimization company, and was responsible for site operations and sponsored-link advertising. Van Natta became the Chief Operating Officer at

, where he focused on revenue operations, business development, and strategic partnerships from September 2005 to February 2008. At the time of his departure, his title was Chief Revenue Officer. He went on to serve as the Chief Executive Officer of

Project Playlist Playlist.com is a domain name that formerly hosted a commercial-free Internet radio service called Playlist, which had approximately 60 million users. The domain is owned by Playlist Media, which operates under the brand Playlist. As of mid-2017 ...

in 2008, a music sharing website allowing users to search for music, create custom playlists, and share the content with friends. In April 2009, Van Natta became Chief Executive Officer of MySpace, where he was responsible for all aspects of the company's strategic vision and the execution of its global business initiatives. Van Natta created new features as a part of his refocusing of strategy, and tried to move MySpace from a social networking platform to an entertainment content distribution platform. By the end of 2009,

NewsCorp News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp.), also variously known as News Corporation Limited, was an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in New ...

's Fox Interactive Media business posted revenue of $226 million and profits of $7 million, the vast majority of it from MySpace. After spending ten months in his position, he stepped down and joined

in February 2010. Van Natta joined

, an tech company that makes online social games, as Executive Vice President of Business and as a member of the Board of Directors in August 2010. He was responsible for the company's revenue strategy, corporate development, international expansion and brand. He resigned from Zynga on November 17, 2011. He is currently a Founder and Managing Director of Prefix Capital.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Van Natta, Owen 1969 births Place of birth missing (living people) Living people American technology chief executives American chief operating officers University of California, Santa Cruz alumni Facebook employees Zynga people Amazon (company) people American business executives 20th-century American businesspeople 21st-century American businesspeople Myspace