All signs point to a Zynga IPO

Fast-growing social gaming powerhouse Zynga, maker of hit games such as FarmVille and Mafia Wars, is expected to file for an initial public offering in the next week or two, according to a report by Kara Swisher at All Things D.

Just last month, the San Francisco company opened a new branch office in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood under the direction of former Amazon.com vice president of engineering Neil Roseman.

Swisher reports that Zynga — which reportedly attained $400 million in net income on $850 million in revenue last year– is currently valued at about $10 billion in the private markets. But an IPO will likely see the company come out with a higher valuation than that.

LinkedIn, for example, was valued at about $3.5 billion prior to its IPO. The company now has a market value of $9 billion. The Zynga IPO will be especially interesting to watch around these parts, largely because Seattle-based PopCap Games has expressed its desire to go public some time later this year or next.

Zynga CEO Mark Pincus shared some of the secrets of the company’s success at the company’s grand opening ceremony in Seattle last month. He said:

“The way Zynga is set up is we are a confederation of entrepreneurs and CEOs, and that is what our culture is all about. The only way we have been able to grow this fast has been by recruiting people who really want a clear mission, they want to own a product and they want to have clear goals for their products, and they want to be left alone or helped to be successful. We are a very decentralized company with that kind of structure.”

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