Owen Van Natta, Facebook's early COO and startup investor, dies at 56

Why it matters

Van Natta helped professionalize several defining internet companies, building the partnerships and revenue operations that turned founder-led products into large businesses.

Owen Van Natta, the technology executive and investor who held senior roles at Amazon, Facebook, MySpace and Zynga during defining periods for each internet business, has died at 56.

Van Natta's family confirmed his death in a statement shared by Kara Swisher (@karaswisher). The family described him as a father, son, brother and partner, and said his two daughters were the center of his life.

Dan Rose, a former Amazon and Facebook executive, described Van Natta in a Facebook post as his mentor and closest friend during the decade they worked together. Rose credited him with teaching a generation of operators how to negotiate the partnerships that helped founder-led technology companies become durable businesses.

His career traced a path through the companies that established e-commerce, social networking and social gaming as mass-market businesses. Van Natta specialized in the commercial machinery behind those companies: partnerships, revenue, acquisitions and the operating structures required once rapid adoption created an actual business.

Van Natta worked in business development at SoftBank and Zip2 before joining Amazon in 1998, according to a career history he published. He rose to vice president of worldwide business and corporate development and joined the founding group behind A9, Amazon's search subsidiary. Van Natta wrote that his work included online marketing, the Amazon Associates program and the AdWiser sponsored-search system. (read.cv)

Rose, who joined Amazon in 1999 after leaving business school, said Van Natta took him under his wing and gave him a "master class in negotiation strategy." In 2000, the pair helped negotiate an agreement with AOL that included a cash infusion. Rose said Amazon might have gone bankrupt without it.

Van Natta moved to Facebook in 2005, when the social network was a 30-person startup run by 21-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, according to Rose. A Facebook announcement from 2007 identified Van Natta as chief operating officer, a role that put him at the center of partnerships and revenue as the product spread beyond college campuses. Van Natta later became chief revenue officer before leaving in 2008. (about.fb.com)

Rose followed Van Natta to Facebook and succeeded him in business development. Rose said they negotiated a Microsoft agreement that changed Facebook's revenue trajectory, followed a year later by another Microsoft deal that valued the company at $15 billion.

After the second agreement, Rose recalled Van Natta telling him, "You're better at this than me, the student has surpassed the teacher." Rose called it one of the proudest moments of his career.

In his own account, Van Natta called himself Facebook's original COO and employee No. 26. He described the tenure with characteristic understatement as "a decent run." Those claims about Facebook's internal numbering and financial performance were self-reported, though public filings confirm the sequence of his COO and revenue roles. (read.cv)

From Facebook to its largest rival

Van Natta became CEO of the music-sharing service Project Playlist before taking over MySpace in April 2009. The appointment placed a former Facebook operator in charge of the social network Facebook had overtaken.

At MySpace, Van Natta wanted to rebuild the service around music and entertainment. He later described the plan as a "Social Spotify," a sharper account of the strategy than the broader turnaround language used publicly at the time. MySpace remained under pressure from Facebook, and Van Natta left after roughly 10 months. (read.cv)

That short tenure captured the limits of an operator's influence inside a platform already losing users and cultural relevance. Van Natta's concept anticipated the growing importance of music discovery and artist-fan relationships online, though MySpace never completed the transition under his leadership.

Van Natta next joined Zynga, initially as an adviser and then as executive vice president and chief business officer. Zynga's registration documents said he oversaw the business side and joined its board in August 2010, as the maker of FarmVille and other social games prepared for an initial public offering. The filings also cited his experience across social media and internet entertainment as the reason for his board appointment. (sec.gov)

He resigned from his operating role in November 2011 and remained a director after Zynga went public. A transition agreement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission documented the change, while Zynga's subsequent annual report listed Van Natta as a director. (sec.gov)

An operator turned investor

Van Natta spent the later portion of his career investing in early-stage technology. He established 415 and became a founding partner at Prefix Capital, where the investment strategy centered on foundational technologies, including advanced software, semiconductors and artificial intelligence. Prefix's profile of Van Natta emphasized the breadth of problems he had encountered while working for Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg, Rupert Murdoch and Zynga founder Mark Pincus. (prefixcapital.com)

He later ran OVN Capital, describing its mandate as seed through Series B investments in potential large internet businesses. On his public profile, Van Natta summarized the job with three words: "Searchin' for next..." He listed investments in companies including Dropbox, Stripe, Uber, Spotify, Datadog and Snowflake, though the profile did not distinguish between personal investments and positions held through his funds. (read.cv)

Van Natta's career made him a recurring bridge between founders and the commercial demands their products created. Amazon needed partnerships and customer acquisition. Facebook needed a revenue operation. MySpace needed a new strategic identity. Zynga needed an executive team and board capable of carrying a fast-growing gaming business into the public markets.

He repeatedly took those assignments close to the point where technology companies stopped being founder experiments and became institutions. His later investing work applied the same experience at the opposite end of the cycle, when founders were still choosing which markets, products and business models to pursue.

Rose said the two executives drifted apart after Van Natta left Facebook, then reconnected during the last year of his life. "Few people have touched my life as deeply as Owen," Rose wrote. "I miss you bro, and I love you."