In Silicon Valley, Settlers of Catan is the new golf:
I recently attended a high-level technology conference that was held right next to a beautiful golf course. In my unscientific poll of about 30 attendees, only one actually went golfing, and over half had never golfed in their life.In contrast, Settlers of Catan (or “Settlers,” as it’s often called) is booming and is quickly becoming the activity of choice for entrepreneurs here in the Valley. I got into Settlers because Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, had been telling me about what a great game it is for over a year. Then one day, some of the engineers at Rapleaf (most of whom had been playing Settlers since college) challenged me to play with them, and I’ve been hooked ever since.
It wasn’t long after my Settlers initiation before I began to discover Silicon Valley technologists meeting and huddling over the board game. In fact, there might even be a high correlation between technology innovation and Settlers play – some of Silicon Valley’s most talented players include Mark Pincus, Zynga CEO; Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of Search; Randi Zuckerberg, Facebook executive; Barney Pell, Powerset founder; Tod Sacerdoti, BrightRoll CEO; Saar Gur, Charles River Ventures partner; Scott Faber, Ingenio founder; Erin Turner, Level Up founder; Ellen Levy, LinkedIn VP; super-angel Aydin Senkut; Ken Sawyer, Saints Ventures CEO; John Lilly, Mozilla CEO; Matt Sanchez, Videoegg CEO; Dave Wehner, Allen & Company managing director; Kavin Stewart, LOLapps CEO; and many others.
But it is not just Silicon Valley stars who are contributing to Settler’s growing adoption — many engineers and young founders play too. In the Valley, where geeky is “in,” Settlers is going mainstream.
Reasons for Settlers’ success include its variety for winning tactics, easy-to-understand rules, and its relatively quick and balanced game play.