Correction: Andrew Mason actually is a programmer. He built Groupon in Rails.
Also, as the other commenter pointed out, Mark Pincus's co-founder Justin Waldron is a programmer, but Zynga's probably a bad example anyway because Pincus was very much an accomplished entrepreneur with a lot of resources at hand prior to founding Zynga.
Incorrect, at least one of Zynga's co-founders (Justin) is a programmer -- though he's probably not doing much of that anymore. One of the common misconceptions is that Zynga has only one founder ... it actually has many.
But I get the point you're making and it's still valid.
Fair enough but both of them are highly technical people. Not programmers but that's not the yard stick that I put down here.
Additionally it's not a good idea to use critical successes like that to extract any kind of lessons from. Groupon won the business plan lottery and found a real need in the market that wasn't being served. Zynga rode the coattails of facebook.
Obviously i'm not dismissing those companies accomplishments. The founders are idols to me.
Groupon and Zyngas's founders aren't programmers. I'd say they're the two biggest hits of the last 5 years.