Nabeel Hyatt, former Zynga Boston general manager, is newest investor at Spark Capital

By Scott Kirsner, Globe Columnist

"Great. One more VC who actually understands what it's like to try to grow a business."

"Rats. One less entrepreneur building a business in the Boston ecosystem."

I mentioned those points of view to Nabeel Hyatt yesterday, when we spoke about his decision to leave the Harvard Square outpost of Zynga, the Internet games developer, and join Spark Capital as a venture partner. He'd previously been the chief operating officer at Ambient Devices, a pioneering maker of information displays, and Teamtalk, a sports media start-up.

"I do think it's important to ask yourself the question, 'Does the world need another VC?'" Hyatt said. "But in Boston these days, there are a lot more start-ups being founded, more angels, more VCs — and that's overall a positive thing. But I see a real problem in companies being successful at scaling. There are problems when things start to work, start to move, and you need to expand beyond just the founding team. I felt like joining Spark was the best way for me to influence that stage of things, to help entrepreneurs in making the transition from a nice good idea that might be starting to get a little traction, to astronomical growth, and something you can talk about becoming a billion-dollar company one day." (I should probably note here that Hyatt's last start-up, Conduit Labs, didn't manage to produce a hit game, and was acquired by Zynga for an undisclosed sum. The office grew from about ten people to 45 after it became Zynga Boston.)

Hyatt says he'll focus mostly on consumer-oriented companies. "I have a huge passion in mobile. It's still very much the wild, wild west there. Social and the web are also very interesting. Generally, the job is about looking for disruptive opportunities — something that changes in the market and allows a start-up to grow incredibly fast." He adds that he's also interested in the ecosystem of companies, like Zynga, that are using Facebook to reach an audience.