The hidden pattern behind successful products | Mark Pincus (FarmVille, Words with Friends, & more)

[00:00] If you're truly ambitious, burn your resume. You have all these amazing contrarian perspectives on how to build amazing products. Your instincts are right 95% of the time. Your ideas are wrong 75% of the time. We've seen so many founders who just stoically, heroically stick with a losing idea. How do you know if this is just the wrong path you're following? If you're asking whether or not your product is an A, it's not an A. When you have lightning in a bottle, when you have true signal, everything works. Most products are better versions of things that existed before.

[00:30] get over that hump of copying. It's almost a moral arbitrage. You became a founder, an entrepreneur because you wanted to go be an innovator, but you're trying to win the hearts and minds of nurses in Indiana, like for Farmville. You're not trying to win awards and respect from your peers. Define your ambition in the eyes of your consumer. Building a consumer social app. Very few people have successfully done it and built something durable. We have beyond a latent demand for social. [01:00] are proud to tell you they're not on Instagram.

They're not missing the party. If you want to reinvent social, look for where the cocktail is. We know it when we see a great cocktail party. You feel like, oh, I'm so glad I'm here. Today, we're all hanging out on our clod, on our GPT, but there's no cocktail party. My challenge to your listeners is figure out how to make it rowdy. [01:23] Today my guest is Mark Pincus. [01:25] founder of Zynga, who has arguably created more successful consumer products than anyone else in history, over a dozen, both within Zynga and before Zynga.

And over the past five years, he has been working on a book that synthesizes all of the things that he's learned about building successful consumer products. [01:42] It's called "Life at the Speed of Play." It's coming out in a few weeks, and it is so good, and it's also a really quick read. In a quote for the book, Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI, [01:53] said that today the only bottleneck to building great products is knowing what to create. Mark is an expert at this. [01:59] And after reading this book and having this conversation, I could not agree more.

In his book and in this conversation, Mark shares a really clever and counterintuitive framework that he's developed for coming up with successful product ideas, why being less ambitious is often the path to coming up with the most ambitious ideas, why you need to kill your hope before your hope kills you, why your instincts are usually right, but your ideas are usually wrong. Also, what he's learned about raising kids, he's got five, and so, so, so much more. [02:29] This episode is for anybody who is building a product or thinking about starting a company.

Before we get into it, don't forget to check out com for a free year of the hottest and most well-crafted AI products in the world, available exclusively to Lenny's newsletter subscribers. And [02:45] With that, [02:46] I bring you Mark Pincus. [02:50] Mark, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast. [02:55] I've [02:55] Been a big listener. Oh, wow. Thank you. And I'm excited to... [02:59] I'm excited to finally be on. I'm excited to finally have you on. You just put out a book. It's coming out around the same time that this podcast is coming out.

It's called Life at the Speed of Play. There's so much here I want to talk about. [03:13] I want to start with this framework that you developed. [03:16] called Proven Better New. [03:19] And the framework is basically designed to help you come up with and refine your product ideas and your startup ideas. [03:27] to basically increase the odds that your idea is a good idea and that it will work. [03:31] It is such a clever idea. It's such a simple idea with so much depth. I want to [03:35] spent a bunch of time on this [03:37] So, first of all, just give us kind of the overview on this framework, what it is, how people might use it.

[03:42] in coming up with ideas. Sure. Well, this is... [03:45] A framework that we got to early on at Zynga and it became like a religion... [03:51] and the fundamental [03:53] The core... [03:55] principles and engine [03:57] behind how we did product management at Zynga. [04:01] and it's, [04:02] It was so fundamental to the book that for three of the four years writing the book, we called it Proven Better New. But then I was like, oh, that's too dry in the name. And I love this concept of life at the speed of play, which we can talk about, but...

[04:17] is the bigger gestalt of the book. [04:20] But [04:20] Proven Better New is this core... [04:23] Um, [04:24] philosophy that I've had around products since I started Zynga, which is that we have these [04:31] We have these instincts... [04:33] like in our gut, these human level instincts that are pretty much always right. And then we [04:39] put these ideas on top of the instincts that are usually wrong. My rule of thumb is, [04:45] Your instincts are right 95% of the time, your ideas are wrong 75% or at best right [04:51] 25% of the time.

[04:53] The framework of Proven Better New takes that – [04:56] philosophy. [04:58] and says, [04:58] Okay, what do we do with that? Okay, let's... [05:01] Let's isolate. [05:03] your innovation zone. [05:04] Let's isolate people. [05:06] that thing you have in your gut. And let's just [05:10] Test. [05:11] Many, many ideas around that. [05:13] And let's [05:15] Fail for the right reason, not the wrong reason. [05:18] It might be... I mean, Zynga... [05:20] we'd see new game launches. Sid Meier's like the [05:24] you know, godfather of game design, who's the most revered game designer.

[05:30] He came out with, I think, a social civilization [05:33] on Facebook. [05:34] And we thought, oh, God, here comes, like, the... [05:38] ultimate game designer [05:40] And [05:40] 10 minutes after the game came out, the Zynga PMs, [05:44] emailed around their analysis and they said it's dead on arrival because [05:48] his FATUI, his first time user experience, [05:51] with so many clicks and so bad. [05:53] that no one was ever going to see as great game design. [05:55] Even Sid Meier's tripped over... [05:58] What were the [05:59] understood by the most junior product managers at Zynga was [06:04] the best of breed approach to [06:07] onboarding a new user to the first time user experience [06:10] on the Facebook platform.

[06:12] but because [06:14] He didn't perfectly copy that. He didn't do the proven right. [06:18] his innovation never got seen by anybody. This episode is brought to you by our season's presenting sponsor, WorkOS. What do OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, Vercel, Replit, Sierra, Clay, and hundreds of other winning companies all have in common? They are all powered by WorkOS. If you're building a product for the enterprise, you've felt the pain of integrating single sign-on, skim, RBAC, audit logs, and other features required by large companies. WorkOS turns [06:48] eyes with a modern developer platform built specifically for B2B SaaS.

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[07:34] All the proven off the table. [07:36] If... [07:37] You want to build... [07:39] The AI Snapchat or the AI camera, there's so many of those I see now, AI cameras. [07:44] Fine. [07:45] Let's start with what you're not innovating on. [07:49] You're... [07:50] The icon. [07:51] Um, [07:52] Maybe just the way a camera works. [07:54] Look for... [07:55] Where that's the best of breed proven, whether it's Apple or Snapchat or Instagram, [08:01] AND [08:01] copy those legally [08:04] And. [08:05] with [08:05] Hopefully some taste we can get into like great copies and bad copies.

[08:10] But, [08:11] But be a master of the proven first. [08:14] Get your PhD and prove it. [08:17] first. And I like to say [08:19] We... [08:19] We don't we haven't earned the right. [08:22] to innovate on the camera until we are the world's leading PhD on the best mobile cameras [08:29] they already [08:30] exist. [08:31] and then better is [08:34] Usually we can't find better. Better is [08:37] Usually, very small increments and innovations and better is something that 10 out of 10 [08:45] the existing users of that product [08:47] would say fuck yeah.

[08:48] 10 out of 10, not you, what you think is better is called new. [08:52] What we think is better is new. [08:55] We usually are two ambitious people [08:57] on the new. [08:58] And and so [09:00] Better could be [09:02] It's now free. There's no download. There's something that [09:05] you can both statistically show... [09:08] works, you know, is better and every user would say, [09:12] Yes to and [09:13] and usually it's [09:15] It's very small and it's polished and it's things that [09:19] intense users, power users, [09:22] will notice.

[09:23] the most in [09:24] In our game Words with Friends, [09:26] You know, it was Scrabble. [09:28] But if it was just Scrabble, why was it a massive hit? [09:31] with 14 million DAUs, [09:34] and Scrabble itself [09:35] wasn't right there must have been something [09:38] you know, better and novel about it, [09:40] But it had... [09:41] such a polish for mobile. [09:44] was the better and the new, what's the novel new idea, the back of the box idea? [09:49] idea that's going to get [09:51] people to download and try it in the case of words with friends it was [09:55] social.

It was your friends are just [09:58] It was attached to the Facebook page. [09:59] Graf and your friends are just already there to play with you, which – [10:03] with a new idea, you know, even that which you think, of course I want, [10:09] you might not get 10 out of 10 people saying yes. [10:11] And we have to [10:13] Except that that new idea... [10:15] is probably going to fail. It's a reason to try it. [10:18] for people [10:19] but it's probably going to fail. And if we do... [10:22] proven better new right [10:24] The product...

[10:25] has much better odds [10:27] of succeeding in the market, not failing for the wrong reasons, [10:32] And if we start with the premise that the new [10:35] is probably not right and we've got four other new ideas ready to test [10:40] then [10:41] We just prosecuted. [10:43] in a different way and we [10:45] I like to think, [10:47] If you do proven, better, new, right, [10:49] It's like a time machine because – [10:52] What if [10:53] I could go back to Mark [10:55] you know, [10:56] 2000 [10:57] three and four and say, dude, [11:00] You don't even realize how right you are.

[11:03] one of your... [11:04] instincts is going to be a $1.6 trillion company once and you – [11:09] are a year ahead of them. [11:11] You're a year ahead of a $1.6 trillion company. [11:15] That's. [11:16] I'm not going to tell you which. I'm not going to [11:18] Totally cheap, but I'm just going to tell you there's something – [11:21] There's another answer in this. [11:23] that you could pursue, [11:25] It would be worth $1.6 trillion. Oh, and by the way, your tribe's idea – [11:29] That's Reddit. That becomes a whole...

[11:31] company, industry, industry, [11:33] you know, listings. [11:35] So, [11:36] There was a point in Tribe where I knew my metrics weren't working. Our D30 retention was terrible. We were sinking speedboat. [11:44] AND, YOU KNOW, I'M NOT [11:44] If I had had this attitude of I'm going to try a lot more ideas, I'm going to look around me like – [11:51] you're doing proven better now you're also looking around you for what's [11:54] what do you find a heat it's proven the market [11:57] that you can... [11:58] Also go test.

[11:59] AND [12:00] I would have massively... [12:02] change my odds of success. [12:04] Okay, there's so much here. So just to summarize how I think about this framework, which is so [12:08] Good. [12:09] Like if you start to really think through all the products that have succeeded and how many of them actually follow this, whether they're conscious or not, it's wild. So kind of the steps that I hear is. [12:20] So proven better new proven is make a list of the things that are proven to be working already in the market.

Things people love. [12:26] about this sort of space. [12:28] Better is make something that is not just better, but that 10 out of 10 people will say, F yeah, I would switch. This is better. And then add something new. [12:37] that nobody's tried before. That adds a little wrinkle. [12:41] And I think a little bit like [12:43] You have a bunch of examples in the book, Slack and Threads. There's also like if you think about the iPhone and the iPod, [12:47] Like, you don't think [12:48] you don't think about them that way but basically the iPod there was a music player they made it better and added some new stuff and it yeah [12:56] I was there at the TED conference when this team from MIT was demoing [13:01] their touchscreen [13:03] And they did it on a gigantic...

[13:05] whiteboard [13:07] And Steve Jobs was obsessed with it. They had a whiteboard and they had a table with it. [13:11] And I watched him. [13:13] And he spent $1,000. [13:14] the whole time. [13:16] there with this team obsessing over their touch. I don't know if that's the first time he saw it, but I know he was obsessed with it. Like, okay, [13:24] There's his new idea. [13:26] is a touch screen. It's the only new idea. [13:30] And I want to say, Proven gets so misused. [13:34] and that what I've found over the years with founders [13:37] is that, [13:38] They start to use Proven Better New to justify – [13:42] A wrong idea.

[13:43] And they're like, [13:44] Look, Mark, I'm doing Proven. [13:46] Proven is... [13:48] this game that was popular in the 90s. [13:51] Proven is. [13:52] And they pick something... [13:54] And it's – [13:56] to their own [13:57] detriment. They're not using proven [14:02] We have to be precise. We have to think at the pixel level of this experience. [14:05] Proven is on this platform for this audience. [14:09] for this experience. [14:12] And [14:12] you can look to what's been proven before [14:16] as great sources of new ideas. [14:19] But if it's not on this platform, it doesn't count as proven.

[14:25] And yet, [14:26] The [14:27] The masters at university, [14:29] this product craft [14:31] do Proven Better New, whether they call it that or not, [14:34] and they do it at such... [14:37] a beautiful level that nobody even thinks [14:41] No one... [14:42] realizes what its derivative of. And Slack was... [14:45] a great example because [14:48] I think Slack might have just been proven and better and no new. [14:51] and that's even better. If you can have a successful product [14:55] I don't want to sound anti-innovation, [14:57] Bye. [14:58] people don't like change.

If you take a behavior they like, but you make it [15:05] much more accessible or something much more fun about it like in the case of slack [15:10] Um, [15:11] People love that even more. [15:13] There's this threat of copying that comes through this framework that will turn a lot of people off. [15:20] Talk about what you think people are missing and how you get over that hump of like this is actually the right approach in most cases. [15:27] In the Peter Thiel sense, it's almost a moral arbitrage. [15:31] because [15:32] There's something...

[15:33] in our gut as a product maker. You became a founder and entrepreneur because you wanted to go [15:40] Be an innovator. [15:41] And so it can feel like a beatdown. [15:44] that [15:45] your path to innovation starts with copying other people's work. And we were taught in school, [15:54] There's, [15:54] There's a lot of good [15:56] reasons why we've built this kind of moral resistance [16:02] Two... [16:03] copying [16:04] But... [16:06] But that also... [16:08] makes that opportunity in some ways more available for people who have less ego involved.

I like to say, and I said this too, [16:16] my product makers at Zynga [16:18] If you're truly ambitious, burn your resume. [16:21] and if you define your ambition [16:24] in the eyes of your consumer, not your peers, [16:27] You're not trying to win awards and respect from your peers. [16:31] you're trying to [16:33] win the hearts and minds of [16:35] nurses in Indiana, like for Farmville. [16:39] You're going to... [16:40] define innovation [16:42] differently [16:43] and you're [16:44] you're not going to worry about [16:46] whether you're going to take the best ideas wherever you can find them [16:50] if they are in service of giving her...

[16:54] an experience that she loves more. And so, [16:57] If. [16:58] you know, [16:59] So if all you did was copy [17:02] There's no reason for her to... [17:04] choose your product, right? [17:06] But if [17:07] You took something that she loves. [17:10] and you make it one inch better [17:12] She might. [17:13] Love that more. [17:15] than if you showed her something she's never seen before and didn't wake up knowing that [17:21] that she wanted. And so [17:23] And I think that the [17:24] The art of this is... [17:26] You do it in a way that she doesn't even...

[17:29] realize it because I think consumer taste [17:32] Also, [17:33] resists [17:35] just a copy. I think that if... [17:37] movies, TV shows, books if they feel [17:41] two derivative, [17:43] and they're not adding something important and new, [17:46] then it [17:48] It... [17:48] could go against our consumer taste. [17:51] but the best product makers [17:53] And I... [17:54] Love referencing someone like... [17:56] Craig Newmark and Craigslist, [17:58] took two years to add photos to craigslist listings i was like and he lived in my neighborhood he's [18:04] And he was...

[18:05] Friends with my dog Zynga more than he was friends with me. [18:08] He was a little awkward socially, and he connected more with the dog. [18:12] and I try to be friends with them through the dog. [18:14] And so he would sit and talk to me. [18:17] and he was working on [18:18] I said, what are you working? I said, I've been working for two years on adding photos to listings. I'm like, [18:23] What do you mean two years? [18:24] He's like, well... [18:25] I really want to make sure that [18:27] people like it and that the photos come up in the right ways.

I don't know. I honestly don't even understand what he did for two years. [18:34] But [18:35] If you're driving across San Francisco to buy someone's couch, [18:39] Why wouldn't you want to, why isn't that better? [18:41] In his mind, it was new. [18:43] And like, that's [18:45] a world-class product maker because what he gets is that [18:48] his... [18:49] There's [18:50] We feel the sense of ownership of products that we rely on every day and [18:55] were angry when they change. Even if they change for the better, [18:59] We're like angry because [19:01] we go through life faster because of pattern recognition, [19:05] and we don't want to think about these things.

[19:07] and [19:08] What if by adding photos to his listings, he moved... [19:11] where the text was and what if you rifle through listings [19:14] And now the text is below the fold. [19:17] A junior product maker might make the whole thing a picture [19:21] and not realize that what people liked most was... [19:25] being able to see the text real quick and they were trying to compare prices on the couch they already knew that I don't know. Yeah, I'm thinking like as you're talking, I'm just thinking, what are all the best products and are they all just kind of, uh, [19:37] One word, are they copies and evolutions of existing products or how many are just completely brand new?

And I'm looking around like the iPhone that was, you know, there's phones before and they kind of took the elements of what was great, made them awesome. [19:49] my awala i don't know uh water bottle like there was water bottles that worked and then they added [19:54] things to make it better. [19:55] Chrome, I don't know, I'm just looking around. It's so interesting how once you start to think about it through this lens, [20:01] Most products are better versions of things that existed before. And then I'm thinking about as a product team, what do you often do?

You go... [20:08] Look at the competitors. Look at all their flows. [20:10] Here's what they're doing. Here's what's working. Look at all these great ideas. [20:13] and then you build on that. So I think there's like, it's easy to get turned off to this idea of like, the word copy. [20:19] But as you think about it, this is mostly how products end up getting built anyway. [20:23] Well, there's so much on this that [20:26] We could literally spend the whole podcast on it, which I'd be fine with too, or do a whole episode just on this.

[20:32] Because so much comes up for me. On the one hand, I think about Nikita, who I think you've had on. [20:38] And [20:40] I love his story on TBH. It's a perfect story. [20:44] example of [20:45] He found something proven... [20:48] in someone else's product. That was my first company, Freeloader. [20:52] What I found was [20:54] in the Netscape browser and in the [20:57] Internet Explorer browser [20:59] they had buried in there a feature of offline browsing. [21:04] And my entire product [21:06] was offline browsing. [21:08] But they had it as this very...

[21:10] Power User feature, [21:12] And I saw... [21:14] The genius in that for that moment, because bandwidth was so... [21:18] slow, [21:20] that was like, oh, we can make an entire product just around that one feature. Nikita saw [21:25] his perfect product buried inside an Arabic-only version, right, of his product, [21:30] and he said, [21:31] Oh my God, they nailed it. So [21:33] I think... [21:35] the when we can see something that is proven already [21:40] in someone else's product [21:41] But they have... [21:43] the wrong... [21:44] idea around it, that's [21:46] That's gold.

[21:48] You know, that's... [21:49] And then... [21:51] To your question of is every product derivative, is every product... [21:56] from Proven Better to [21:58] My answer is no. [22:00] and I talk about this a little bit in the book and in my course, [22:04] But the question is, [22:06] At the outset for all of us. [22:08] Which path do you want to be on? And I argue that you, [22:12] If you go down this path of just... [22:15] Innovate, start with a blank whiteboard. [22:18] Don't look at any other products.

[22:20] That is kind of Rovio getting to Angry Birds. [22:24] They made 45 games. Every single game was totally different. [22:28] not as far as I could tell learning from the previous failures or the market, [22:33] and their 45th shot on goal, [22:35] was Angry Birds and it was a hit. [22:38] And it was innovative. [22:39] But the odds, that's wildcat drilling, and do you want to have those odds? [22:45] or [22:46] Do you want to... [22:47] be do what OMG Pop did which is [22:50] Very similar story but opposite path which was [22:54] OMG Pop.

[22:56] created the hit game Draw Something and Zynga bought them. They were the number one [23:01] game and app in the App Store for [23:04] 60 days in... [23:06] you know, 2000, [23:08] 12. [23:09] But OMG Pop was on their last dollar. They had tried something totally innovative, [23:14] No one ever seen or tried it before. It failed completely. [23:18] And now they were ruthlessly, desperately in need [23:22] of a hit and now they did proven better new [23:26] perfectly. They said, [23:27] we're going to take you. [23:29] this proven game and do everything about it.

[23:35] in [23:36] as perfect students of what is already working and viral on mobile, [23:41] and they perfectly copied our turn-based system from Words with Friends, [23:45] and they made [23:46] a massive hit. [23:48] Mm. [23:49] I love this idea of moral arbitrage. That's such a funny way thinking about this. It's very Peter Thielian, you know. [23:57] Yeah. So there's so many fun threads that kind of connect to all this. One is, and you have all these amazing contrarian perspectives on how to build [24:04] amazing product. One is Be Less Ambitious.

[24:07] Talk about why that's a really good lens to actually build more ambitious products. [24:11] I'm in the middle of relearning that lesson myself right now. [24:16] And [24:17] I'd say... [24:19] There's there's so many paradoxes in this and [24:23] And one that I've had to learn over and over again is... [24:26] is... [24:27] if we're [24:29] If we're too ambitious, [24:31] and we're at the outset and too ambitious and visionary about the product we want to build. [24:36] then [24:37] we will probably miss product market fit because – [24:41] We won't start at a small enough, humble enough level.

[24:45] place because it [24:46] It might... [24:47] Usually that [24:49] the starting point for these products is embarrassingly small. So many [24:54] of these [24:56] massive hit. [24:57] products or franchises [25:00] started with such humble words [25:02] you know [25:03] non-ambitious places and you know the Facebook [25:07] was just an app to check out [25:11] girls and guys, you know, at Harvard, right? [25:15] The irony for me is that [25:17] I've [25:18] I've found that my career has gone in these waves and maybe some of your other [25:24] founders have had this experience too.

[25:26] that I've [25:27] started in a very humble... [25:30] place of [25:32] I just want to get to anything, any product market fit. [25:36] had bigger success than I imagined I would have in my first two companies, Freeloader and com. [25:43] They both started with [25:44] very, very, [25:46] small, humble premise. [25:48] and then afterwards felt like now I can do anything. And I know [25:52] Elon is the exception to the rule. Part of it is [25:55] I think he can raise... [25:57] magical unlimited amounts of capital which helps. [26:01] And he does not start in humble places at all.

[26:04] But for the rest of us mortals, [26:07] I'd say that [26:09] we tend to [26:10] after success. [26:13] feel the need to do something bigger the next time. [26:17] That's human instinct, and we want to be more ambitious. [26:20] And so, [26:21] When I got to try, but I saw... [26:23] social networking and [26:25] LinkedIn was just starting and I saw how big [26:29] The opportunity was [26:30] I tried to do everything with Tribe, it was really ambitious and I didn't pick [26:34] one use case and there was multiple inside tribe [26:38] that worked the tribes the idea of these urban tribes work people loved it [26:43] But I...

[26:44] It was too ambitious, and so we failed. [26:49] I was so humbled and I was in this abyss we can talk about. [26:52] for so long. [26:54] And I was so... [26:56] just desperate to get out of that abyss that by time I got to Zynga I did something that was embarrassingly small. I mean, [27:03] to be 41 multi-time successful founder that [27:09] could go do something important in the world, [27:11] And what did I do? [27:13] a facebook app like a poker game not even a facebook app i mean a poker game it was [27:18] people thought I had no dignity.

People were like, "Mark, [27:21] There's so much you could do in the world. [27:24] But. [27:25] I... [27:26] was [27:27] I'd say – [27:28] my ambition came down to like [27:31] But [27:32] a thousand foot altitude, you know, not a hundred thousand foot. And, and that was, [27:38] the key to that being successful and [27:40] And I see this with... [27:42] it's just so hard. I see it with so many... [27:45] product founders and it almost gives a new founder an advantage over a multi- [27:50] successful founder because [27:52] we have too much rope to hang ourselves.

It's too easy to raise money and, [27:56] recruit teams, [27:58] against a big vision before we've gotten to product market fit, but the world doesn't care [28:03] about your resume. That's the good news for everyone watching. [28:08] has the same... [28:09] chance and in a lot of ways [28:11] If you're in a more humble place, you have a better opportunity. [28:15] I-- [28:15] The paradox is, [28:17] the more ambitious you are, [28:19] that [28:20] the more humble you should be and the smaller place you should be willing to start. [28:25] One of your insights along these lines is that this is your advantage as a startup.

[28:30] is to be less ambitious because a Zuck needs to go really big because the revenue is already so high. Anything they take on needs to be many billion dollar business opportunity. [28:39] And as a startup, you don't need to do that. [28:41] And this is how you end up discovering some of the biggest ideas in the end. Yeah, yeah, being willing to pursue these little threads. [28:49] when they're flaky, when they're [28:51] They're not a business when there's so much earlier and so many of – [28:55] the successful [28:57] companies today, you know, started there.

Yeah, is there an example that comes to mind when because I [29:01] Yeah, what's a company or two that started very unambitious? I love the story of new. [29:07] that really blew up last year. [29:09] I loved it so much I cold mailed the founder because I was just so impressed with it. [29:13] Yeah. [29:14] And [29:15] you know, they [29:17] they toiled in obscurity on something that they were into and then they [29:22] open sourced it. I think they [29:25] We're barely able to keep going with commercial development. [29:29] Then they had this realization one day of, "Wait a second, if we take these web stacks [29:35] virtual machine that we've [29:37] been making [29:39] work on the web, but we actually...

[29:41] Add that to... [29:43] an AI coding [29:44] Co-pilot. [29:46] we now have something [29:48] that's better than what anybody else has and [29:51] And I think that was just... [29:54] a great story that [29:56] He... [29:57] They were passionate about one thing and they stuck with it. Yeah. Eric was on the podcast. We talked about that. Oh, he was. [30:03] So impressed. In a lot of ways, [30:06] Slack also, you know, [30:09] was, [30:10] humbled [30:11] Stuart, [30:12] keeps trying to start game companies, [30:14] And [30:14] those turn into...

[30:16] unexpected bigger [30:18] hit companies. [30:20] We'll see what he does next. He now has probably so much capital he could [30:24] just keep doing a game company this time. But I think to your point, like he might try again to unhumble [30:30] Go big. Yeah. [30:31] But each time, right, so he started a... [30:34] Big. [30:35] uh... [30:36] idea for the mass market MMO, which I've also loved, but really difficult. [30:43] And they were humbled in that enough to say, [30:47] Okay, wait, there's this little teeny... [30:49] thing that our engineers use [30:52] Let's build a product around that.

[30:55] It really takes a really attuned – [31:00] curious humble founder [31:03] to call the ball on that. I mean... [31:05] I can't imagine. I mean, I can imagine, I guess I've been there. [31:10] how hard it is when [31:12] You've got investors and team and everybody going in one direction. [31:17] and we have to express confidence as founders. [31:21] whether or not we have actual confidence inside, [31:24] we that's [31:25] Part of, I think, the dissonance of this [31:28] How do you express confidence? [31:30] How do you stay in a place of intellectual honesty and [31:33] How do we stay authentic?

[31:35] and transparent. [31:37] and not... [31:38] rattle our team. [31:40] You know, how do you and I've [31:42] I'm still learning. I had I had people. [31:45] I. [31:46] err on the side of transparency and honesty and, [31:50] you know, off. [31:52] being authentic to a fault. And I burn out people in that process. And I did it at Zynga and I have since... [31:59] because you, [32:01] You know, people will say, [32:03] The negative critique I'm working with me is, [32:06] Oh, working for Mark is like third grade soccer, and every Monday he comes in.

[32:10] excited about a different idea. [32:13] And they're not wrong. [32:14] But [32:15] where I can get better at this maybe... [32:17] is... [32:18] you know, [32:19] If we can... [32:20] if we can build... [32:22] I... [32:23] a culture with our team that says, [32:26] Okay. [32:26] We are ambitious. [32:28] We're so ambitious that we're not going to hold on to a B plus, even if we could get funding, even if it has. [32:33] some traction [32:35] We have a North Star... [32:37] that we are... [32:39] going to stop until we find product market fit against our North Star.

[32:45] And this isn't it. [32:46] and it's going to take courage on our part and, hey, let's look around the room. Is everyone ambitious enough to do this? [32:52] Or do you want to peel off and go join someone else who's already [32:57] A rocket ship. [32:58] which... [32:59] I... [32:59] That's a fair career goal. [33:01] choice for you to make. [33:03] But, [33:04] I think that that's to me the real founder mode is, [33:08] can you have the courage [33:10] to [33:12] to [33:13] to tell your team and your investors that, [33:15] This isn't it.

[33:17] That's exactly where I wanted to go, which is this other piece of advice you give, which is kill hope before hope kills you. Talk about just... [33:25] what that is because so much of your advice is kill your bad ideas quickly. So just kind of talk about that and then I'm really curious to know when you kind of what it takes to realize an idea is bad. When do you decide, okay, this is B plus, let's move on. [33:37] I don't know if I get credit for, you know, [33:40] making up that quote, but I love it, "Kill Hope Before Hope Kills You."

[33:45] It's. [33:46] There's a difference between... [33:49] belief and hope. [33:51] Hope is... [33:53] confidence without... [33:55] basis. [33:57] Hope is... [33:58] Just... [34:00] You know, it's a prayer, but it's... [34:04] But it's not... [34:06] it's not founded in [34:09] anything that your lived experience. It's not founded in your experience with [34:14] your product, your experience with people [34:17] experiencing your product and the data and [34:20] And [34:21] And I think that too many... [34:24] founders and teams keep going [34:27] with [34:27] the hope that this next release is going to do something magical and [34:33] I think that the best product makers [34:35] I like to say they're collecting winnings.

[34:37] They're not making bets. [34:39] They already know. [34:41] you know, [34:42] If you talk to Brian Chesky about his launches... [34:45] "'He already knows.' [34:47] that he has a hit. He's not launching it to find out if people like it. [34:52] And I talk about the difference between [34:54] launching an MVP, a minimum viable product and a maximum launchable product. [35:00] because [35:01] If we're going off hope, [35:03] we're getting to this MVP minimum viable at the viable is [35:08] the word we gotta kill along with hope. [35:11] Because viable is where hope comes from.

[35:13] If it's viable, it might make it. [35:16] Right? [35:17] And there's a difference between [35:19] Get in the market early. Learn. You're putting a product out early. [35:23] that you're going to learn from, [35:25] And you're putting a product out that you're going to launch, that you think – [35:29] you believe, not hope, is going to be a hit. [35:33] and it's really important [35:34] to be crisp and to make that distinction. [35:37] And AI is a dangerous tool today. [35:42] It's so powerful that it's dangerous. It's so powerful that it means [35:46] we can get to a viable product [35:49] in much less time and money, [35:51] Then it took maybe three months instead of three years.

[35:53] And that's a dangerous drug because [35:56] It means... [35:57] that [35:58] What I thought would happen where we'd be today is that people would be using AI to build these like [36:04] incredible testing machines. [36:07] failure machines that are testing [36:09] I like to say more ideas in a week than your industry tests in a year. [36:13] How are you testing 100 ideas a day instead of one in three months? [36:17] I think AI is being used more to build one idea in three months [36:21] than 100 ideas [36:23] you know, in a day.

And [36:26] What would it look like? I like to say, [36:28] We should build it completely wrong before we know it's the right product. So build it wrong before you know it's right. [36:35] And [36:36] If you could build it right, great, but don't be slowed down by that. [36:40] Because if we start off, if we say, [36:43] Okay, what can I believe today? I believe this is the wrong product. [36:47] What are you going to do differently because you believe it's the wrong product? [36:50] You are not going to waste three months building the wrong product.

[36:54] "Oh, I'd rather waste a day or a week building the wrong product." [36:58] But the point of what I'm building is to learn. [37:00] So, is it good enough to get signal and to test my idea? [37:04] And I think we can usually... [37:07] pull that apart and test those pieces in the wrong way. So often it could be an ad. [37:13] I cannot believe [37:14] how many times a team [37:16] Hasn't even tested the ads before. [37:18] for their product before they [37:20] go and put in the markets, an afterthought.

[37:23] And it was so often at Zynga, it blew my mind. [37:25] I mean, [37:26] I'll give you one story from Zynga. [37:28] When we were launching our first expansion pack for Farmville, which became a massive, these became massive business drivers for us. [37:35] It was, I think it was Farmville... [37:39] Um, [37:40] English countryside or something. [37:42] The team... [37:43] came to me and they said, [37:45] Okay, we have... [37:46] a $10 million ad budget. [37:49] And we're going to start running... [37:50] ads before the launch [37:52] Like, wait.

[37:53] You have... [37:55] 25, 30 million people a day using your product, but you're going to put ads somewhere else for coming soon. [38:03] you have these people engaged [38:05] What if [38:06] You just. [38:08] put something on the game board. [38:10] What if you don't just start your product marketing [38:13] you're still doing product testing to see what gets the most heat. [38:17] What if you start putting different [38:19] art forms of your English countryside [38:23] locked on the game board. [38:25] and you just see how many clicks you get.

[38:27] And [38:28] You just start... [38:29] testing [38:30] the look, the feel, the marketing message, [38:33] and at the same time when people click on it, it says, [38:36] coming soon. [38:38] Click here to be a [38:40] a pre-user, you know, click here to get access [38:43] two weeks before anybody else. [38:46] And it turned out [38:48] everybody clicked on it, right? Because it's a change in your game board. [38:52] and it both gave us direction on [38:54] what was the right marketing and the right variant of the product, [38:57] But the unintended consequences was [39:00] we started selling keys to people for you and a friend [39:04] and we ended up selling 19 million dollars worth of keys [39:07] to get early access to [39:10] you know, the new expansion pack.

[39:12] And so we took something that was going to be [39:15] afterthought, advertising, try to drum up interest in this product. [39:20] and turn it into something that gave us [39:22] signal and direction of the product [39:25] And [39:26] revenues [39:27] And so often, [39:29] you know, you [39:30] You can have, this is an existing product, but you can... [39:34] turn something that was going to be marketing into a kind of scarcity [39:40] And, you know, [39:41] heat driving [39:42] something that could drive revenues or something else that matters. [39:46] So, [39:47] the way we should be using AI.

[39:50] is as a testing machine, a failure machine, and a way to [39:54] Vibe code, Claude code, [39:56] But... [39:57] but build, build, [39:59] they [39:59] you know, the lowest possible... [40:03] cycled version of your product that you can get signaled back on. [40:07] Awesome. I want to ask about something that I think might be on people's minds as they hear you talk. For a lot of product builders, when they think Zynga, they're not like, this is the product I want to build. And there's a spectrum. [40:18] of products you guys have built.

[40:21] Farmville and Cityville and all these things that I think people [40:25] turn some people off. Then there's like poker, Words with Friends, Mafia Wars that I think people are like, oh, that's amazing. I love that. Can you just speak to that? Sure. I think if I'm [40:36] when you say that the products turn people off, [40:40] It's funny you say that because – [40:42] Farmville and Cityville [40:45] were our biggest hits in terms of installs, engagement, retention, revenues. [40:52] Um, [40:52] Now, [40:54] Words with Friends and Poker were more enduring because they [40:58] made the transition to mobile and other games [41:02] Didn't.

It's a whole other story. [41:04] But I think the part you're getting to is that [41:08] Zynga was in a lot of ways a victim of its own success that, [41:12] It was... [41:14] Our games were so viral and took over the feeds on Facebook so much that – [41:21] your friend who was playing it started to bug you [41:25] as a person not playing it. [41:27] and [41:28] And [41:29] That's... [41:30] That's fair. [41:32] What I would say, I think what's misunderstood about Zynga from the beginning and [41:37] why we succeeded and we created success.

[41:41] eight... [41:42] massive hits out of 10 mass large game launches. We had a very high [41:48] hit rate, it wasn't that we were good at virality. [41:51] It was that [41:52] we were focused on two things that I think we did better than anybody else. And we had lots of competitors, lots and copying and, [42:00] we still managed to keep winning. [42:02] And. [42:03] So it couldn't be that we were just spammier or better at virality. First, we had this core mission and focus around connecting the world through games and [42:14] being Gordon and I, [42:16] kept coming back to this idea that I love and I want – [42:20] your founder's [42:22] product makers.

[42:23] watching this to join me in thinking about, which is, [42:26] How can we add more dimensionality [42:29] I love this idea of [42:31] It's why I call it bold beat. It's [42:33] It's. [42:34] how do I take this thing that's kind of gotten boring and rote [42:38] poker or whatever how do i add a whole new dimension to it and by adding social by adding real identities [42:45] By giving you this information [42:46] You're doing social networking. You're in this cocktail party. [42:49] And now we're giving you a way to, [42:51] to actually meet new people or improve your relationships [42:55] in a game.

[42:57] the reason why [42:59] people, so many, especially middle-aged women, love [43:02] Farmville and these games was because [43:05] they had this kind of hobby, but they weren't doing it alone. And they were [43:09] doing it with their good friends, making new friends, [43:12] And in the game, [43:14] Our most successful features were [43:17] co-op play. There are things that [43:19] let you [43:21] Do gifting and do things... [43:23] of value for your friends. [43:28] We called the games Invest, Express, and Connect. [43:32] do something that was [43:34] you are being seen as creative.

I like to say, [43:37] People don't want to be creative, they want to feel creative. So we're letting you [43:42] feel creative, look creative to people. It's what Mid Journey does for me today. [43:47] And then we were letting you [43:49] So you were expressing yourself and then you were connecting... [43:52] with people around it. [43:54] So that was the first thing. And then at... [43:56] If you think at a mechanical metric level, [43:59] Our core metric was retention. [44:02] not virality. [44:03] We grew, we outlasted everybody because we had the best retention.

[44:09] I think we were the only consumer company in the world that tracked day 365 retention. I don't think anyone tracks it today. [44:16] I talk about in the book. I think it's a gift to your founders. [44:20] I believe [44:21] that the most valuable companies in the world, well statistically this is true, [44:25] they have the highest day 365 retention. [44:28] you know, [44:29] Can you build against day 365 retention? Yes. [44:33] We can't wait till day 365. [44:36] we can find early indicators [44:39] of a positive day 365 and a negative day 365 retention.

[44:43] If you have low D1, low D30, you will [44:47] probably not have high day 365. So those [44:52] track, you know, those are correlated. [44:55] but you can have the opposite, you can have very high [44:58] day 30 and a zero day 365 which is most products and if you don't [45:03] Think about [45:04] why someone would use this in a year, if you don't have that mentality, [45:08] It turns out [45:09] When someone tries our product, they think that way too. They kind of think, "Is this worth investing in?"

Whether it's a game or a camera. [45:17] It's, [45:19] Am I going to use this in a year? Should I tell my friends about this or [45:23] you know, is this... [45:24] Should I bother investing? Should I bother giving it information about me or whatever? [45:29] And [45:30] I think there's a mentality to that, and I like to say, [45:34] viral based companies, there's been many, [45:37] you know, [45:38] be real. We've seen these [45:41] They're sinking speedboats. [45:42] They're trying to [45:44] drive faster than they're sinking. [45:46] They're trying to get more people in.

[45:49] You can either go faster [45:51] bail water out faster. [45:53] You know, we just try to [45:54] Get people back or plug the hole in the boat. [45:57] And [45:57] or build a better boat that doesn't have a hull. [46:00] But yeah, so we were tracking both in our games and in our network what was the retention, [46:07] we were really constantly thinking [46:09] about... [46:10] you know, about [46:11] that and [46:12] And I think. [46:13] The two things to take away from [46:16] Zynga's success, in my opinion, that I hold is...

[46:20] is to have a strong innovation vision that [46:23] translates to what your teams are doing every week. [46:26] that [46:27] And we even built [46:28] a metric that's still not used by anyone. This is an Easter egg if this doesn't get cut and anyone's [46:35] Still listening. [46:36] we built a metric called ASN. [46:38] And it stood for [46:40] what what we measured what was your active social network [46:43] So we looked at. [46:45] how many round trips you had [46:47] with a friend or another player, meaning you took a turn and they took a turn back.

You gifted them and they gifted you back. [46:55] and we found that if you went from zero ASN to one, [46:59] There was an 80% chance we saw you again in the next month. [47:02] And if we got you to a four, [47:05] there was an 80% chance [47:07] we'd see you 22 out of the next 30 days. [47:10] And so, [47:11] we could actually build and innovate against [47:14] that metric and it made sense, right? Because [47:17] If you saw... [47:20] positive feedback loops. It's like someone likes your photos, comments, you know, that [47:25] That's probably the biggest dopamine hit we get.

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It's like nothing works in consumer. It works for a little bit and then dies. And you've maybe built more social consumer products than anyone. There's like a dozen that have worked. [48:58] AI obviously changes the game in theory. What do you think needs to be true for someone for something to work again in today's world? [49:08] It's probably. [49:09] Equally surprising to you... [49:12] how little we're seeing in social media. [49:16] And [49:17] and consumer in general. [49:19] It seems like people have... [49:21] kind of given up on... [49:23] the idea that a social app could take off or be viral, and I see them every so often.