Zynga founder Mark Pincus: great entrepreneurs get attached to losing ideas — here's how to break the pattern

market? Your business on MongoDB. Don't just build AI, own the data platform that powers it. Uh our next guest is Mark Pinkis, the author of life at the speed of play. He's with us in the TV Ultradom. Welcome to the show, Mark. How are you doing?

I'm great. Good to uh meet you guys

online virtually. Thank you so much

after a whirl whirlwind media tour.

Yeah,

I feel like I feel like you probably have worked through like all your your best bits at this point and this is going to be this is going to be the finale. Uh or or

we can play the hits. We can go a different way.

I want to play the I want to play the hits.

Okay. Okay. Where do you want to start?

Uh no. But where where should we were supposed to be the the very first one I know we were travel it was on us. No but but uh I hope this is the first of many. So it's great to have you on.

Yeah. Uh I mean let's start with the book. Uh I want to know like before the actual uh before the thesis came together like why write a book at all? Are people even reading books these days? Like we we see these charts of like books just falling off entirely. Um, what what what was the uh is it about

author should do that? They should have they should you should put something in the book that's just like, "Hey reader, I want you to pause for a second. If you ever meet me in person, I will ask you for the code word. This is the code."

Easter eggs reward you for making it this far.

And if you tell me I love your book, I will ask you for the code word. If you don't

Oh, there you go. Um, but yeah, I I I I want to hear about uh just the general motivations and the general uh

I think everyone should I think you should

build a house and write a book one time cuz neither one

ends up feeling like it was, you know, the right return on the investment of time, but it's

but you have this passion in you and you should be all in and get it out.

Yeah. one time and this is my one time I I had I'd say that there was just a lot of lessons and a whole playbook built up across five companies and in building Zinga and I give I created a course at Stanford Business School and Stanford CS and I give this advice over and over to founders and even people running companies at scale and I just said I might as well get in a book and I I'm I I that my reference was 0ero to one Peter Thiel's book and I thought it's a big reach goal but if if my book can be referencable 10 years later like that then you know it's of use.

Yeah. Where do you think you either differ with the 0ero to one uh thinking? Do you think it needs expansions, updates? Like what uh what needs to be added to the cannon that isn't in zero to one? Well, like what what to actually do. So,

I mean, that's a good point.

0 to one is I just reread it a year ago and and it motivated me again. And I was like, "Oh, yeah. I love the moral arbitrage and the monopoly." And it's these big ideas that you love and you can repeat,

but it's not a it's not a how-to guide or a playbook. And I think so many people have ideas and they either don't pursue them and I think in this new world AI that's a shame because the the bar is so low

or they they do and they fail for the wrong reasons. I think you guys have probably seen this too. So many people who they have a great idea but it's buried in a losing product. And so the the core thesis that

I've been saying over and over to myself and other people across my career is that that it once you realize that you have winning instincts and you've attached them to losing ideas, it changes everything. And that's how you change your odds of success.

Yeah. Yeah. I've heard that a A+ entrepreneur with a C++ market or C++ opportunity

or a B+ idea

is the enemy of an A because it's good enough to get funding and get a team. And

yeah, it's funny cuz when I was when I was uh like around maybe senior year of college, I was working on a product and I felt like I was getting like two different types of advice. Like one is like don't listen to anyone. Just like you know advice is worthless. Just like do do and you'll and you'll figure it out. And then uh and then and then on the other side uh you know people are giving you know advice and and sort of playbooks. And I distinctly remember one meeting that I had where uh somebody who's now a friend was like you're super talented. Uh this idea like it's okay but it's not great and it's going to hold you back from your potential. And I and I just like didn't fully listen but it's just stuck in my head uh

since that point. bad, right? We see founders who are talented and they are just sticking with an idea that's just not quite right or not that good and it's because there's something in their gut that they know is amazing. And that was me. I mean,

I talk a lot about in the book that I, this is not a humble brag, okay? I managed to fail. I created one of the first three social networks, Tribe.net. Yeah. And there were probably 10 launched in that two or three year period including Facebook and MySpace and Tagged and Bibbo. Eight of the 10 probably made it were successful on some level. I was probably amongst the two that weren't. And so it took an act of willpower to fail and and I had that much will. I was I was so determined uh to to stick with this one losing idea that really by the time I got to Zingga, I was just not going to do that again. And and I think that's a big message in the book and I think it's I I still need to hear that message today because we fall in love with our ideas.

Yeah.

How much uh like to you what is the balance between some ideas like I I find this in consumer like quite a quite a bit more than than enterprise because it typically is a lot more defined. But in consumer like there's ideas that I've been pitched and I'm like that's a terrible idea and then like the founder you know uh just does it and it and it totally works and and sometimes it's unpredictable and I think you can like

tune your intuition like quite a bit but it can never be like 100% crystal ball. You just know exactly whether an idea is going to work or not. like what is your what has been your framework of uh yeah like what's the point where you're like I'm not a 100% sure this idea will work but it's worth putting in the 3 weeks or 3 months or whatever time is necessary to actually get the reality check to the idea

well I think that we have idea veins or instinct veins and so there's a zone that you have an instinct around and then I have this framework proven proven better new, which is a way to kind of derisk that and keep ourselves out of trouble. So, it's like just narrow down where your idea is new or novel and wherever it's not, look for what's already proven and copy it. And and people like Nikita Bear have really really been good at that. And you know, they're he's done kind of the same product over and over again and it's worked each time. So I think that at least means you're not going to fail for the wrong reason and you get a lot more shots on goal you and the whole and in consumer even you know much more than enterprise it really is if you test more ideas in a week than the industry you're in in a contest in a year you probably have a four or 5x advantage you know higher odds of success and I'll also say that the reality in consumer is, you know, where you see traction there's a good idea and where you don't see traction there's not a good idea. And

and that might sound kind of dumb, but you know, I find in consumer you could back a you're better off backing an unproven entrepreneur who's found for whatever reason product market fit than a proven entrepreneur like me with no product market fit. And that's just, you know, that's an unfortunate reality. Uh,

I have a bunch of questions.

I have I have a I have a fun thought exercise. So, so I John and I have had this debate of is it possible to build a competitor to Instagram

and and I think that uh I would like to see someone someone try because I believe the capital markets are in a are in a state right now that you know even though it's insane and there's like you know 99% chance it doesn't work like there's going to be people that would take the bet and you have Instagram which is one of the most popular products in the entire world and the company is like very focused on like other things, right? Like they're focused on AI and and now a cloud business and and uh maybe the company overall doesn't fully appreciate just how amazing the business is. Um and it and it still continues to grow. And so I want to believe that it's possible to for for a smart team to actually go and uh and and create something that would actually compete in that in that category. John is like it's just not possible. It's over. It's like you know network effects and the scale and and the social game that it's turned into. But I want to believe I'm curious what your view is. Well, one of these instinct veins that I talk about is the cocktail party and and originally like there was a cocktail party on Napster and then there was a cocktail party on Friendster and then Facebook and now Instagram. And it once the cocktail party is there and working, it is hard to get people to move. But these cocktail parties can wear out and and kind of lose their excitement or appeal. And in the case of Instagram today, I think it's lost a lot of its original value to us, which was social networking. It was the the kind of serendipity that we get at a cocktail party. And they for maybe business reasons, you know, they pursued engagement. They want to be more like Tik Tok and get you be more entertainment reals. And so I do think that that opens up an opportunity. I I I don't know if you guys um spend much time thinking about net promoter score. It used to be really popular NPS. And there's a funny thing you can you could go research this now or maybe AI could simulate it for you even quicker. But I would bet that that today users of Instagram probably have an NPS of 35 and the day they quit it's like quitting cigarettes. It's probably a minus 35. That's usually the sign of some weakness, you know, in your product or brand. Looking at that,

you know, on the exit, you know,

they're not promoting it. In fact, they're proud that they've given up this bad habit. And what I would say though is there probably has to be a

the only thing the only thing it's it's a it's a small sample size but the friends that I know that quit quit Instagram they end up still sending me memes from like their business accounts and I'm like all right I get it. They can't give up the addiction.

Yeah. Yeah. I think they're actually like they're they're signaling that they've quit but but they're they're still like you know having a cheeky drag here and there, you Well, I got to say I I got my drags down to like I probably use Instagram once a month

and then I find myself just drawn into time wasting.

I'm on Twitter or X. That's like my

social network, my drug of choice.

Um I I tell myself it's more valuable content, but

you know, that's what we do.

I look at it as like it's an opportunity to do an you know that whatever the inverse of a meditation is, right? in a meditation, you're sitting there, you're like,

I'm going to let the thoughts I'm going to let the thoughts flow through, but I'm not going to hang on to them. You know, whatever whatever your approach is. And and it's like, what if you could add 20 new ideas to your head every 10 seconds? That is why you do that.

And it's like, here's here's drone warfare and here's a protest somewhere else and like here's some startup who's rage baiting you. You know, it's

but uh it's addictive, whatever it is. But I would say that it's probably you need a shift. You need something new, I think, to get consumers to get all of us. We are lazy and apathetic and low attention span. And so, you know, no one's downloading new apps. So, there has to be something probably AI and agents that

that is the new thing that pulls you into a new cocktail party.

Yeah. I

But I do believe it'll happen. Even though I'm I'm like skeptical about the particular go to market, I'm curious on your read on the state of venture capital because if you go back to 0ero to one, the sources of monopoly power, network effects are one of the four. They're they're very enduring and everyone believes that network effects will endure even in the age of AI. And so I guess I have been surprised even though I can't think of how to disrupt an established social network. I've been surprised that we haven't heard about a $1 billion pre-market round. So that's what I'm saying by the venture capital community to actually buy their way into network effect.

Yeah, you can build a new social media company, but you need billions of dollars and like Tik Tok is evidence of that. Tik Tok was spending how much money on Meta, how much money on on Snap, all these other

platforms. probably the biggest advertiser on the internet for a while.

Yeah. Yeah. For for a minute there. And so I do think it's possible.

I think they were getting their users, you know, from social networks.

Yeah. Yeah. But

but I would just say your question on venture capital, why aren't we seeing this funded? I think you got to pull the camera back and just also say we're not seeing a lot of consumer being funded. It it almost feels like it's not investable right now. I think Y cominator probably less than 10% of their companies

are consumer

but I'm investing in some consumer but it's after I see traction

and it feels unpredictable and completely uncertain before there's traction. So I just think

distribution is pretty broken even though AI feels like a new platform at a consumer level it's not. We have kind of a portal in GPT, but we also have to remember like we're so early. GPT is a single player experience, right? There is no multiplayer version of cloud or GPT.

There is no app

connection, you know, there's

none of the things that enabled Zingga, you know, or MySpace was started, I mean, uh, YouTube was started on top of MySpace. People forget that. So there isn't an obvious way to jumpstart distribution and I think you know VCs rightly want to see something predictable and so the small number I a company called FOMO announced a big round last week and I invested in that along with Union Square Ventures I only invested after they proved it and got the traction.

Sure. Yeah. How how do you think um vibe coding, agentic coding is going to change or is already changing game development? Because it feels like we should be seeing AAA games produced by solo developers. I don't know if that's more of a VC backable strategy or opportunity, but uh it feels like we're very very close to some inflection point there. The indie gave indie dev community is already booming, but uh how do you think it'll play out? Like a thousand flowers bloom,

happy bar simulator and

the simulators are fun, but yeah, I'm just wondering if you think that there's like a business opportunity there or if it will just be uh more like the DTOC boom where there were a ton of small brands, a couple breakouts, but by and large it was just that oh there's a ton of, you know, solo entrepreneurs on Shopify today and that's great,

right? It's it's a it's a $280 billion industry that doesn't seem to have any innovation.

You know, there I think games have gotten really boring and have kind of stagnated and and I think it's because distribution's broken.

Will AI change distribution?

Probably pretty on a pretty small level. The only place I think it could is enabling um much faster testing of ideas like what some of the hyper casual game companies like a company called Raleigh that Zingabot was brilliant at that. So they they would say what was tick tockable. So they would figure out what's a tick tock meme. They made a game in a week called high heels that became the number one game in the app store. So that happened. I don't see anyone really using AI effectively to do that. So then you get to well okay AI can reduce the cost. Sure. And I think it is making headway in reducing the cost but I don't think

you get hits in games because of less cost. You get hits because of more dimensions you can innovate on. Um, and so I think do think AAA, you know, will come

down from 100 million to maybe 30 million,

but but I don't I don't think that's going to spark growth in the market. It's so fascinating that I can't think of a single even media asset, game, anything like that where uh AI created the hit factor that whatever like the we we we go back to the Harry Potter Balenciaga video that was one of the first AI videos that really went went super viral and people were like, "Wow, this is actually entertaining and interesting."

Yeah. And it's always like the human that used the AI to do something that they wouldn't have done.

Yeah.

If they had just had an idea pre AAI because it would be like, well, I'm not going to pay for all the CGI to do, you know,

it would have just been way too much work.

But, right,

the human still is the hit maker.

Yeah.

We still got it.

Yeah. And even if it's it's awkward because when we were doing, you know, games, there was Flash, we were doing web games, and we were able to innovate and test really quickly and put things out in a day or a week. And now in the App Store and Unity, it's slower. But AI is really well suited for web languages, you know, and web gaming. Web gaming is 1.9 billion out of 280 billion. So, a lot of people are betting that 3JS is going to unlock innovation and growth, but you're going to have to see people embrace web gaming, which you know is a tough bet. So,

what do you think how how how would you how do you think Apple should approach vibe coding?

It feels like an interesting interesting challenge. They're kind of I don't think they necessarily know at least they have they don't necessarily know how they want to approach it or they haven't made it clear yet. They've made it hard for these

apps to you know I think they kind of froze updates on a bunch of apps and said like you know which is basically like saying like your business is like over until we figure something out. So clearly they want to make money from it and they want to protect users which I think are both you know developers are going to be annoyed at at uh or at least good developers will be annoyed at at both of those things. But um it seems like a tough one where users are clearly going to want modular software that they can create and multiplayer experiences that they can imagine and then share with friends, but it feels like it's at odds with all of Apple's kind of principles. Yeah, 100%. I mean, I I don't think that there is a real incentive for Apple to do anything about that. And I don't think it doesn't feel like that's not the energy I get from Apple. That's not the the vibe is vibe coding.

Yeah.

Um

Yeah. and and I I don't even see Apple doing anything to help distribution of the apps that, you know, are put out on their platform now. So, I don't think I I just I have a hard time seeing them motivated to help, you know, people put out tons more apps. I mean, I think it's more likely that that log jam gets broken because somebody makes an app container that somehow, you know, Apple allows people to keep changing massive amounts of change of content inside. I mean, almost like a Roblox, but um it's yeah, it's I it hurts my brain to figure out how that's going to happen. and and vibe coding. I actually I'm I think claude code, codeex, I think I think automating coding and using co-working agents has obviously you don't need me to tell you that has legs. I think that's going to go somewhere.

Yeah. But but vibe coding almost feels like the missed start we had with blogging and geo cities where there was a moment where everyone was going to make their own website and they did and then they just weren't very good

and it didn't go anywhere. There was there weren't really websites that blew up.

Yeah.

That I know that were built on top of like a geocities or maybe I'm dating myself. You guys don't even remember those.

Yeah. We we are like it feels like we're very close to being able to effectively vibe code an iOS app in the cloud, have it deploy it to test flight and you get that app back on your phone and close that loop entirely on your phone in an Apple compliant way. Now, it couldn't go viral because it's not in the store. you might be able to have your agent go and submit it to the store and wait two weeks um and then it gets out there which might be an acceptable flywheel for some developers but um it is like the technology is going to get there quicker than the distribution I and like the ideas I think I think you're spot

and the ability to test I'm also surprised

this far into this AI cycle that

if I would have thought

that the first thing we'd see is kind of top of the funnel massive testing of, you know, using ads and

links and things and and tell your agent to spend all night testing and come back in the morning with the winning variant. And I don't even see a I don't know about you guys, I don't see even one successful company or service offering that. And I don't find any founders doing that. It's more

you can build something in 3 months kind of that would have taken a year or two. So, so it's more of I can get to my prototype faster, but not not I can test a lot of ideas faster.

Yeah. Speaking of ads, do you think hyper casual games should be allowed to advertise with fake CGI versions of a different game to promote the install of their very basic probably pick three game?

Wow. And now we're getting to at a toss level, should they be allowed? At a morality level, I I'd say

it's it it I I don't like it. I mean, I think it's

it's misrepresenting, you know, it's I I wouldn't mind I wouldn't blame Apple for taking somebody down for that um

because it's misrepresenting things. Yeah.

It's a bad user experience. Now, what I would be okay with is what we did in the beginning of Zingga is I would go I'd put up a link for some amazing new game you want to try and it would go to 404 page not found because I was just testing for heat and interest.

Yeah.

So I or eventually we got more sophisticated and say you know

we'll you'll be the first to know about this game. You know,

I had I had an experiment record the fake game, have it have an agent vibe code you a real version of the fake game because a lot of people they want to play the fake game, but the fake game doesn't actually have the the flywheel of you will keep playing it. You'll play it for a couple minutes and then you'll get bored and so they have to funnel you to something else. Jordan,

I had a product in college. I was taking a lot of film photos and there was like it was a 30-minute drive to the closest place to get film developed reliably and I was quite frustrated by it. So, I wanted to make like effectively a subscription service. They would send you one or two rolls of film a month and you just send it back and they would develop it and upload it for you and whatever. And uh to test it, I just like ran a bunch of Facebook ads at a landing page and

I actually got I think I had like a $15$20 CAC or something at the time. Facebook ads were a lot cheaper back then. Yeah.

Ended up not pursuing it, but uh I just refunded everyone like obviously right afterwards cuz I wasn't offering I wasn't able to offer the service.

I was just like, "Hey, sorry, like you know, we oversold or whatever, but uh be best way to test something."

Yeah.

Back to the book. Uh Peter Teal did an uh a Reddit AMA after 0ero to1 uh launched and someone asked him what is the Straussian reading of 0ero to1 and he said don't become an entrepreneur which is a very funny response uh what is the Straussian reading reading of life at the speed of play

I I would not to be uh you know read completely a carbon copy. But I would say I would say don't don't become a product founder.

Um don't do it if you want to make money. Like don't don't go be a product founder if you think this is uh the best path to be, you know, rich and successful because it's I end the book by saying how ambitious are you? and and a lot of you know everyone says I'm an 11 on a 10 scale right but then the question is well what the flip side of that coin is what are you willing to sacrifice to get to that place would you toil in obscurity for 10 years in order to have an 80% chance of the greatest home run you know of your life or would you take kind of an 80% chance of a first base hit in one to two years and most people would take the latter and that's that's why they stay in their jobs or careers or that's why even once we go found a company I think we make all these compromises to derisk it.

Yeah.

Um

is that the correct question to ask to assess someone's level of ambition? Should you ask them 80% chance of a home run in 10 years versus you know 20% chance of base hit or something like that or sorry vice versa or or are there other Yeah. that those are good odds. Um but uh or are there other questions that you can dig into when you're talking to a founder to actually assess their level of ambition?

Um I think you can pretty quickly, you guys seen this too, get get a sense of what's motivating somebody and and why they're doing this. And I think I think that the best founders have a passion for this that that goes beyond this one business or opportunity. and they they need that because it's probably going to fail. And so I think that there's a question like why why are some founders repeating success and some have you know one big success and I think it is like your kind of commitment and willpower and and if you have if if if you're more committed to because there's we've talked about founder mode and there's all these moments where I think as a founder we we have to have real courage but it's not courage to go against the world. It's usually courage to go against our own team, our own investors because we've promised them things. We've built expectations with them and now we have to tell them we are wrong.

Yeah.

And you come in on Monday, you're like, we I just saw another product the competitor had last week and what we're doing is totally wrong. And people have complained working with Mark is like third grade soccer. Every Monday he wants to chase another ball. And they're not wrong a lot of the time because

I'm trying to be intellectually honest and I can burn people out that way, you know, but it's because I'm more committed to winning than I am kind of harmony or even

keeping the this team with me. Um, and so I think that's more of the thread that I look for is do I see that this person is more motivated by taking the hill and winning than, you know, being liked or respected.

Yeah. It's so it's so interesting because you have I've been in that mode too where third grade soccer strategy where and I think that comes from like fundamental knowing that what you're working on is there's something wrong with the idea

at least in the early days for me because like with with t with with with our with our with the podcast early on

even when we literally had like a hundred viewers I didn't have that I didn't have that like third grade soccer strategy Y was just like I this is a good product and I know because there's people I trust that uh are not lying to me and they say like this is great keep doing it and so like we had the blinders on but I've been in that mode and in hinds where you're just kind of like oh like let's try this other variation of this thing or let's you know we need to go in a totally different direction and that was it it it comes off as scattered but if you're able to admit that it's it's more like you need to be intellectually honest with yourself and your team that you're scattered because there's something that's fundamentally off with the approach,

right? You knew that you liked this product that you I mean I think and and feedback loops you got from people around you like you felt good about it and they liked it. You're like, "Okay, if it's not catching on yet,

I think it's a marketing question and a patient's question." That's different than you kind of feel in the pit of your stomach like it's just not that good. And I think a lot of times we're so hopeful about a product we're building and then when we finally see it, it's usually never as good in code as it was in our mind. And and what do you do? I mean, that's happened to me so often in games that like this will be so cool and then we build it like ah or we see a competitor who has that and I want to send them a thank you note because I'm like thank you for building my bad idea for me. I'm definitely not going to do that now. And but when you it's kind of like love, you know, finding your partner when when I think when you do find the person, you're not asking is this right? You're not asking other people, do you what do you think of her? You know,

totally.

You mentioned a bucket list. Everyone should build a house. Everyone should write a book. Uh was taking a company public on your bucket list before you did it? Did was it appropriate to have it on that list? What was that like? Well, this is the second company I took public. I had a company called support.com that I took public

in 2000 on the last day of the IPO window because it was

because it was enterprise software.

Yeah.

Our VCs had no interest in the company until

the consumer fell apart. You know, we had 170 million in bookings. We were able to go public.

Um

I I think it's a false dream. I mean, I I and and I think I even felt it a little bit then, but I for sure by the time I got to Zinga, I didn't want to go public. We were forced to go public. We we were incredibly profitable. We had over a billion dollars on our balance sheet when we went public, but we were forced because of the SEC rules, which Obama changed with the Startup Act. And there's all this pressure because people want your stock and they're finding ways to buy it through side letters. And then that's exposing you. And there's all kinds of things. We're seeing it happen now with Anthropic. And you write really, really mean letters and policies scaring them and saying like Anthropic has that we're not going to recognize your stock if it wasn't issued to you.

But in the end,

you still the SEC is going to see you as responsible for anyone who bought it. So anyway, we were forced to go public. So was Facebook. So was LinkedIn. this other class of companies like Stripe have put it off for years for good reason. Anyone who tells you that there's anything that's going to help your company about going public, I think nine times out of 10 they are lying to you. Now SpaceX and you know these large cap

AI companies, they want legitimately need access to capital markets and so they are optimizing for that. If you don't have that need for capital market access, there is no benefit. It's only bad. In fact, you have so many employees who leave because they say, "Yeah, I always wanted to be at a company went public. It was on my bucket list. Goodbye." And so, you give them this liquidity, you know, you give them this

thing on their resume. And and so now they're gone. Your culture changes. Ours did. And now, you know, Michael Dell once told me before he took his company private and then public again that the biggest reason to go private was to control communications with his employees because he said, you know, they they get their views from stock chat rooms and what their family is reading and and not from Michael Dell. And so it's no there's there's it gives you like five other jobs as a CEO that you don't need like you should be focused on your product, you know, customer product team, not investor, IPO, you know, media.

Yeah, makes a ton of sense. Well, the book is life at the speed of play. It's available everywhere. Books are sold. Go pick up

on the launch and uh let's do this again soon. We we I have a million. go all over the place.

Yeah, there's so many more topics

to get into.

This would be great.

Yeah, I'd love to talk about my broken internet strategy of public stock investing, which

Yeah, we didn't even get to Snapchat.

Yeah, we didn't get to Snapchat. That's a whole show.

Yeah, that's a whole show. Let's do it soon.

Come back at one.

Maybe have me and Evan on together. We can debate like whether you know this this whole journey into AR goggles is is the best thing.

Shareholders love the specs. shareholders really love this facts.

We'll get to the Well, thank you.

No, I mean, wait till we see how many sell. I think, you know, I'm I'm pricing in I'm pricing in 20 I'm going to I'm pricing in 20 pairs.

20 pairs.

But I think it could. There's a chance that it surprises to the upside.

It could. It could. Anyway, thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us. Have a great rest of your day.

Great to see you, Mark.

We'll talk to you soon.

Let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. Want to change the world? Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange. Mark just gave the anti- ad