King.com, the company that owns the Candy Crush application, is about to take off on the stock exchange with a value that could reach 7.56 billion dollars.
At this point, almost everybody knows the name of who will enjoy the fruits of this debut: Riccardo Zacconi, the company founder born in Rome and relocated to London. A lesser-known name, however, is that of the man who sold his shares too early, Toby Rowland.
The son of the British magnate Roland Tiny Rowland (who is already owner of The Observer and was also the contender for the control of Harrods who lost to Mohamed Al-Fayed) sold his shares in 2011 for the company that he had co-founded with Zacconi and left in 2008. At the time, his shares were worth little more than 3 million Dollars.
According to the research institute PrivCo, in light of the valuation for the upcoming IPO, these same shares should be skyrocketing up to a quota of 966 million. Klaus Hommels, venture capitalist and former director of King, did the same as Rowland in 2011 and seems to have left even more – 1.2 billion – on the table.
Today, Rowland is working on the educational portal Mangahigh.com, and Hommels has a seat on Spotify’s administrative board. And, it can be presumed, they must surely regret that Candy Crush didn’t leave them with sticky fingers when it came to their shares.
