WEBVTT - This Founder's Failed Social Networking Site Led to a Multi-Billion Dollar Idea - The Story 0:00:15.920 --> 0:00:18.880 Welcome to tech Stuff. I'm os Vloschin. Today we're joined 0:00:18.880 --> 0:00:21.799 by Mark Pinkus. He got his start in tech during 0:00:21.800 --> 0:00:24.280 the dot com era and has gone on to found 0:00:24.480 --> 0:00:27.200 multiple companies, including Zinger, producer of. 0:00:27.240 --> 0:00:28.760 Hit game Farm Film. 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:31.000 Mark found a Zinger in two thousand and seven, and 0:00:31.080 --> 0:00:34.160 the company was acquired by Take two Interactive in twenty 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:34.879 twenty two. 0:00:35.040 --> 0:00:36.720 For over twelve billion dollars. 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:40.960 He's also invested in startups like Facebook, which changed the 0:00:40.960 --> 0:00:44.400 Internet as we know today. Mark's new book, Life at 0:00:44.440 --> 0:00:48.360 the Speed of Play Launch Products People Love is pop memoir, 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:51.640 pop playbook for running a successful business when everything around 0:00:51.680 --> 0:00:52.519 you is in flux. 0:00:52.920 --> 0:00:54.360 Mark pink is welcome to text Stuff. 0:00:54.640 --> 0:00:54.960 Thanks. 0:00:55.720 --> 0:00:58.360 What does it mean to live your life at the 0:00:58.360 --> 0:00:58.960 Speed of Play? 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:04.360 Well, there's so many dimensions that that line has meant 0:01:04.400 --> 0:01:06.480 to me that I wrote a whole book. 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:08.120 I was like, that's got to be the title. 0:01:09.360 --> 0:01:12.240 So on the one hand, I think I think culturally, 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:16.440 I think we're on the precipice of being able to 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:21.080 feel like we're living our just our normal lives more 0:01:21.080 --> 0:01:21.960 at the speed of play. 0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:23.119 Speed in a good way. 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:25.800 I know there's speed that also is hectic, but the 0:01:26.080 --> 0:01:28.720 ideas that life can feel like a beat down, especially 0:01:28.720 --> 0:01:32.240 when we want to do something creative or launch a 0:01:32.280 --> 0:01:33.320 product or a company. 0:01:34.160 --> 0:01:36.600 And in games we get to skip all that. 0:01:37.080 --> 0:01:39.440 We just get to the good stuff and there's really 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:44.759 no consequence, especially in you know, simulation games, there's almost 0:01:44.760 --> 0:01:48.000 no consequence. Just someone else wins more than you. And 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:54.120 I think that when we lower the barriers to being 0:01:54.240 --> 0:02:01.880 generitive and creative, we also unlock a lightness of being 0:02:02.120 --> 0:02:07.920 a playfulness because we can try and experiment and a 0:02:07.920 --> 0:02:11.079 lot of things and afford to be wrong, as opposed 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:14.280 to putting all your wood behind one arrow and saying, Okay, 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:17.320 this has to work and this If this doesn't, my 0:02:17.360 --> 0:02:20.320 company is going out of business or losing my house. 0:02:20.840 --> 0:02:23.080 It's not like that, and it's getting less and less. 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:25.680 And now in the age of AI, you don't need 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:28.440 to quit your job. You can even simulate and see 0:02:28.440 --> 0:02:31.040 whether this idea might work before you even bother to 0:02:31.080 --> 0:02:33.959 try it. So I think life the speed of play 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:38.000 speaks to all of that. And then it's also this 0:02:38.120 --> 0:02:42.160 whole kind of product manager bible and playbook that we 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:46.720 developed at Zinga that I tried to lay out the 0:02:46.760 --> 0:02:47.760 case for it in the book. 0:02:47.880 --> 0:02:48.560 Yeah, I'm curious. 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:50.960 I mean, obviously you're most famous for Zinga, which is 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:53.840 a game company, and the title of the book is 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:55.680 life that the speed of play and playing games are 0:02:55.760 --> 0:02:58.360 kind of two sides of the same coin, right, So 0:02:58.400 --> 0:03:00.919 I mean, I guess what is it you in games? 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:07.040 Well? I never thought that I'd be able to work 0:03:07.320 --> 0:03:10.800 entrepreneur in games. It seemed like such a such a 0:03:11.639 --> 0:03:16.320 closed off, different kind of industry, and it always was 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:21.600 and kind of is. But for me, I thought, okay, 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:27.160 there's a chance, a very decent chance, that games have 0:03:27.280 --> 0:03:30.200 missed their real opportunity, and that in two thousand and seven, 0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:33.840 you know, it was a twenty three billion dollar, fairly 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:34.880 mature industry. 0:03:35.000 --> 0:03:37.080 This was mainly like traditional video games. 0:03:37.640 --> 0:03:42.520 Console video games was kind of flatlining, and the computer 0:03:42.600 --> 0:03:45.560 gaming business was in constant slow growth. 0:03:45.600 --> 0:03:48.360 But it was not a top ten activity on the web. 0:03:48.920 --> 0:03:51.680 Definitely not mass market, I mean in the sense of 0:03:51.760 --> 0:03:54.280 that we think about it. It was a very very big, 0:03:54.360 --> 0:03:57.640 niche business, but it was the size of the movie industry. 0:03:58.000 --> 0:03:58.920 Now it's a lot bigger. 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:03.240 So my hypothesis was, I love the idea that there 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:07.040 can be a mature industry that has lots of revenues 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:10.520 has a existing behavior that hasn't even started its real 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:13.680 growth yet, and that was searched before Google. It was 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:18.000 fairly mature, and a lot of times those industries get 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:21.719 mature and they lack real innovation. That was the defense industry, 0:04:21.880 --> 0:04:26.120 you know, it was the rocket industry. And it's such 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:28.880 a terrific place to go because you don't have to 0:04:28.920 --> 0:04:32.400 prove people want to play games. In this case, you 0:04:32.480 --> 0:04:35.160 just had to make it much more accessible to people 0:04:35.600 --> 0:04:37.960 and ask less of them, you know, drop it where 0:04:37.960 --> 0:04:40.400 they are and ask them to play, you know, for 0:04:40.440 --> 0:04:42.640 fifteen minutes and not have to learn anything. 0:04:42.760 --> 0:04:46.080 I want to come back to Zinga and games, but 0:04:46.120 --> 0:04:47.280 before we get that, I want to talk a bit 0:04:47.320 --> 0:04:50.479 more about your family life. You don't talk too much 0:04:50.480 --> 0:04:53.279 about like individual scenes I mentioned as pot memoir, but 0:04:53.320 --> 0:04:56.240 you're not kind of you know, telling this happened, then, 0:04:56.279 --> 0:04:59.080 that happened type of story. But your dad is this 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:03.240 kind of Homeston presence and touchstone, and I was quite 0:05:03.279 --> 0:05:05.960 struck by the lesson he really seemed to impart on. 0:05:06.000 --> 0:05:10.960 You is controlled, Oh yeah, yes, where to control and 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:13.240 play fit together as concepts. 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:20.719 I actually think it sounds paradoxical. But they actually do 0:05:20.800 --> 0:05:26.360 come together. They are necessary. If you think about when 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:29.680 we were kids, we could play when we felt the 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:34.240 most freedom, and in a sense, in order for you 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:38.520 to have freedom, you need control. If someone else, if 0:05:38.600 --> 0:05:42.760 our parents were controlling our time and behaviors in those moments, 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:46.880 we wouldn't have felt the freedom to really let loosen play. 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:53.119 And similarly, for us as creators and founders, we start 0:05:53.120 --> 0:05:56.600 to learn the hard way what happens when we don't 0:05:56.600 --> 0:05:57.159 have control. 0:05:57.240 --> 0:06:01.560 It's not fun, it's not playful, and we don't. 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:05.880 Get to to really explore our full expression and creativity. 0:06:06.040 --> 0:06:12.960 And so if you have control, then you're guaranteeing yourself 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:18.279 the open canvas or open highway for you to go 0:06:18.320 --> 0:06:21.039 for it and try whatever it is that you believe in. 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:24.440 And in a lot of ways, I think that the 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:28.360 more control founders get, the more room there is to 0:06:28.400 --> 0:06:34.520 see people do really risky, audacious things. Because investors don't 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:40.560 like risk, you know, they they want certainty. They like upside, 0:06:40.560 --> 0:06:43.760 but they like certainty even more than upside. I mean 0:06:44.200 --> 0:06:47.240 they say they want upside, but they'll take a guaranteed 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:51.480 three X. You know, most of them over you know, 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:55.160 a very small potential of one hundred x. Some may 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:58.920 argue with me, some might be right, but but you know, 0:06:59.160 --> 0:07:01.240 and as you get to be more and more capital 0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:03.640 you might say that there's seed investors that are fine 0:07:03.640 --> 0:07:06.760 with that, but they also have a model that assumes 0:07:06.960 --> 0:07:09.479 a huge loss rate. By the time you get to 0:07:09.600 --> 0:07:13.600 growth investors, public market investors, you're looking at almost a 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:15.360 zero tolerance for a loss rate. 0:07:15.960 --> 0:07:20.760 So control gives you confidence. Confidence allows you to play. 0:07:20.840 --> 0:07:23.040 The confidence is a part of it, but it also 0:07:23.080 --> 0:07:27.080 gives you degrees of freedom, and it's not very fun. 0:07:27.200 --> 0:07:28.960 It's not a lot of fun to play if you're 0:07:29.000 --> 0:07:32.160 told you can do anything you want between this one 0:07:32.280 --> 0:07:36.800 foot wide expanse. You know, if it's like infinite do 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:41.120 whatever you can imagine, that's a lot more creatively, you know, 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:45.880 exciting and has more potential, and you need as a 0:07:45.920 --> 0:07:50.600 foundered you need the freedom to make very very hard 0:07:50.600 --> 0:07:55.600 decisions and bet the company decisions. And you feel that 0:07:55.640 --> 0:07:57.800 you have less and less of that freedom as you 0:07:57.800 --> 0:08:03.080 have more and more constituents, more employees, more investors, higher 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:07.640 stakes in this more you know, people have more to lose. 0:08:08.480 --> 0:08:11.440 You're carrying a bigger responsibility, and you're kind of going 0:08:11.480 --> 0:08:16.040 to war to be your best. You can't worry about 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:19.239 you can't be sitting there on the front lines worrying 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:23.280 about the people that aren't going to like this decision 0:08:23.400 --> 0:08:26.280 if you believe this is the best decision. 0:08:26.480 --> 0:08:29.080 Your dad gave you this advice about control long before 0:08:29.200 --> 0:08:32.320 you were a founder. What did it mean to him? 0:08:32.320 --> 0:08:35.040 And what did you What did this word to control, like, 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:37.120 how did you internalize? How did you explain the importance 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:37.480 of it to you? 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:40.040 Well, it had a It was a double edged sword 0:08:40.120 --> 0:08:43.400 for me with my dad and control, because I saw 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:47.760 him in building his business. He had a nationwide financial 0:08:47.800 --> 0:08:52.960 pr firm, investor relations, and he had complete control of 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:55.840 his firm, and that made it very fun for him. 0:08:56.640 --> 0:09:00.760 I think it made it somewhat less fun for other people, and. 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:01.920 I either the people who work for him. 0:09:02.040 --> 0:09:06.640 Yeah, and he had very you know, he also had 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:10.360 complete control and you know, running our family, and sometimes 0:09:10.360 --> 0:09:13.880 that made that a lot less fun for us. 0:09:14.240 --> 0:09:14.920 But I did. 0:09:16.240 --> 0:09:19.240 I did get from him this idea that I talk 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:23.640 about of a democratic dictatorship, and there was room. There 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:27.120 was always room for us to express an opinion or 0:09:27.120 --> 0:09:29.760 a preference, but then he was going to make the decision, 0:09:30.200 --> 0:09:33.040 and that was very clear and there is a value 0:09:33.120 --> 0:09:37.120 in that certainty. I think that having uncertainty around decision 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:41.040 making and letting people think a lot of the problems 0:09:41.120 --> 0:09:44.640 we got into a Silicon Valley companies was a false 0:09:44.720 --> 0:09:49.480 sense of democracy and employees starting to think that it 0:09:49.520 --> 0:09:52.440 was democracy and being led to believe that somewhat because 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:56.840 they're being given more and more agency, and then this 0:09:57.000 --> 0:10:00.199 rude awakening when they found out it wasn't the democracy. People, Oh, 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:03.200 this is a business, and I run it, you don't. 0:10:04.720 --> 0:10:05.880 I mean, it's interesting. 0:10:06.160 --> 0:10:09.880 You're known as the technologist today, but your early career. 0:10:09.840 --> 0:10:13.360 Had quite a lot of intersection with media. Yeah. 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:16.640 There are two funny scenes in the book which involve 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:20.040 you as a young man telling, in one case, the 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:22.960 most successful media company in American history and the other 0:10:23.000 --> 0:10:26.439 case the most successful media entrepreneur in American history, Disney 0:10:26.440 --> 0:10:32.800 and John Malone, that they were wrong and you were right. 0:10:32.160 --> 0:10:34.079 It can happen. 0:10:34.880 --> 0:10:36.439 So but talk about both those stories. 0:10:36.480 --> 0:10:38.599 I mean, you were a job interview for Disney and 0:10:38.640 --> 0:10:40.280 they were saying, what would strategy look like if we 0:10:40.320 --> 0:10:41.480 opened a park in every city? 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:43.559 And you just said that's a dumb idea, Yeah. 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:47.199 I said, gatting more questions Yeah, Well, I'm not good 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:53.120 at interviewing. So I have one, you know, one mode, 0:10:53.200 --> 0:10:58.840 and that's authentic and that's what I aspired to and 0:10:58.880 --> 0:11:04.200 I don't really inspired anything else. And corporations want people 0:11:04.200 --> 0:11:06.400 who are going to be team players. And I've always said, 0:11:06.559 --> 0:11:07.920 I don't know if I put this in the book, 0:11:08.200 --> 0:11:09.920 that I'm a great team player as long as I'm 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:11.480 running the team like your dad. 0:11:11.600 --> 0:11:14.239 Yeah, just like my dad. Yeah. 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:16.480 What I liked about I mean, you've obviously had an 0:11:17.400 --> 0:11:21.120 amazingly successful career, but you're very open in this book 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:25.040 about the dark moments, something you call the abyss, and 0:11:25.080 --> 0:11:27.440 not just you don't just describe the abyss, but you 0:11:27.640 --> 0:11:32.360 talk about how the abyss is almost a necessary precondition 0:11:32.720 --> 0:11:35.000 of the most successful periods of your life. 0:11:35.720 --> 0:11:36.520 Can you explain that. 0:11:36.679 --> 0:11:38.800 Yeah, wouldn't it be nice if that were true? Because 0:11:38.800 --> 0:11:40.079 then you're like, oh, I'm in a dark period. It 0:11:40.120 --> 0:11:43.240 means the darkest for the dawn. It means I'm about 0:11:43.240 --> 0:11:46.320 to have great stuff happen. So that's an optimistic view, Yeah, 0:11:46.400 --> 0:11:49.440 not always true, not always true. Or how long that 0:11:49.480 --> 0:11:50.920 abyss is going to go on? 0:11:51.040 --> 0:11:51.280 For it? 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:53.079 You know, it could be six months, it could be. 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:56.080 But in your case, you hate the abyss, and therefore 0:11:56.120 --> 0:11:58.200 it gives you the motivation to do whatever you want to. 0:11:58.160 --> 0:11:59.480 Get out of the abyss. 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:03.120 Yes, but you got to be really careful that you 0:12:04.120 --> 0:12:06.959 don't have such a strong desire to get out of 0:12:07.000 --> 0:12:09.840 the abyss that you pursue a B plus idea or something. 0:12:09.920 --> 0:12:13.520 So it's the longer you've been in the abyss, the 0:12:13.520 --> 0:12:15.680 more desperate you are to not be in the abyss, 0:12:16.240 --> 0:12:19.280 the more dangerous you are to yourself in terms that 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:22.240 you have to really have the discipline still. And that's 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:25.040 why I think I try to talk about pathways out 0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:27.880 of the abyss. Are lots of little steps like engage 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:32.520 but realize that what you're engaging in may not meet 0:12:32.559 --> 0:12:36.280 your ambitions, and that's powerful knowledge for you to have. 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:39.640 I would say one thing I've realized in talking about 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:42.800 this since writing the book is when I look at 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:44.680 the pattern of my career, it seems to have gone 0:12:44.720 --> 0:12:47.720 in waves of success and failure. And it seems to 0:12:47.760 --> 0:12:51.560 be that I had a lot of success early on 0:12:51.840 --> 0:12:55.520 with Freeloader, with support dot Com going public my second 0:12:55.559 --> 0:12:59.120 company right after that in like four years, and then 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:03.840 I had a long payeroerod of failure the whole two 0:13:03.920 --> 0:13:08.240 thousand and one all the way, I mean through tribe 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:10.280 dot net all the way. 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:14.040 Tribet was your social network, which you found it at 0:13:14.080 --> 0:13:16.679 the same time as basically read Holfum was founding LinkedIn 0:13:17.080 --> 0:13:18.520 buk Zuckerberg was founding. 0:13:18.360 --> 0:13:21.280 Just before Facebook. Yeah, I still managed to fail. And 0:13:21.280 --> 0:13:23.560 that's when I remind people there were a lot of 0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:26.920 social networks that succeeded. We just don't know them because 0:13:26.960 --> 0:13:31.880 they didn't win ultimately. But tagged bibo, you know, there 0:13:31.960 --> 0:13:34.480 was a whole bunch. There was like seven or eight, 0:13:34.600 --> 0:13:37.760 so lots of social networks worked. You know, people were 0:13:37.800 --> 0:13:41.640 into it. I was one of the only ones to fail. 0:13:42.000 --> 0:13:45.079 So this wasn't like there was one that made out 0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:47.200 of one hundred. You know, there might have been like 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:50.800 seven or eight that made it out of I don't know, 0:13:51.160 --> 0:13:54.400 twelve or ten, you know, so I was in a minority. 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:58.440 Like it was like an active will to do it 0:13:58.480 --> 0:14:02.680 in a feeling way, and it was so humbling that 0:14:03.679 --> 0:14:06.840 I think it prepared me well for Zinga and being 0:14:06.920 --> 0:14:12.840 ready to do something, start something very small and really 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:18.040 get to product market fit first and then ambition after. 0:14:18.360 --> 0:14:20.840 And you saw it with your own money, right, You 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:23.040 can't take any excellent on funding. You got it to 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:26.520 be cash for positive before you started talking to investors. 0:14:26.880 --> 0:14:29.320 Yeah, I mean, I mean it was actually cash flow 0:14:29.400 --> 0:14:33.200 positive a month after we launched poker the first game. 0:14:33.640 --> 0:14:36.160 So yeah, I put up three hundred and fifty thousand 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:39.520 to start the company. We were cash flow positive and 0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:42.240 we actually never needed any of the money that we 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:45.120 raised all the way up to going public. But I 0:14:45.160 --> 0:14:47.680 didn't know that, and we kept spent doubling down and 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:51.400 spending more and more. But then our revenues and profits 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:55.240 kept growing ahead of that. And I will say a 0:14:55.400 --> 0:14:58.600 lesson I've got an investing that comes from Zinga is 0:14:59.360 --> 0:15:02.800 when you see these companies that are growing like that 0:15:03.360 --> 0:15:08.080 and they're beating their own numbers, you just invest at 0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:10.600 any price they asked for, like the. 0:15:10.640 --> 0:15:12.760 Other type of company. So you's always invested in. When 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:15.560 you've got a call saying we don't have enough computer, right, 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:18.880 yeah we just need more service. Yeah, just send them 0:15:18.880 --> 0:15:19.200 a check. 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:21.280 But I don't want to come back to zincer. 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:22.920 But starting in the beginning, as a quote in your book, 0:15:22.920 --> 0:15:25.200 at twenty eight, I found myself washed up and living 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:28.280 in a junior one bedroom apartment in Washington, DC. I'd 0:15:28.320 --> 0:15:30.080 been the only kid in my hav A business school 0:15:30.080 --> 0:15:32.640 section to graduate without a job. Over the years, my 0:15:32.680 --> 0:15:36.640 classmates have become partners at Goldman or McKinsey, started hedge funds, 0:15:36.960 --> 0:15:40.240 while I managed to get fired from every place I 0:15:40.280 --> 0:15:41.440 worked or. 0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:43.560 Standing in your way? And how did you change that 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:45.040 with freeloader? 0:15:45.280 --> 0:15:47.400 If I didn't change it, what was standing my way 0:15:48.160 --> 0:15:53.280 was self realization that I'm not employable. Right, So once 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:58.440 once I accepted that, and I was probably undermining myself. 0:15:58.480 --> 0:16:00.560 I mean, I know I was undermining myself in all 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:03.640 these jobs because I know at Columbia Capital there was 0:16:03.680 --> 0:16:07.120 a path I could have gone down to fit in 0:16:08.120 --> 0:16:10.880 to their culture. We see that, right, We're like, Okay, 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:15.760 it's not me, but I could adapt me. You know, 0:16:15.800 --> 0:16:19.320 I could dress more like they didn't have a dress code, 0:16:19.320 --> 0:16:22.480 but they all dressed like in khakis and stuff, you know, 0:16:22.520 --> 0:16:25.960 And I was just in like beat up jeans and 0:16:26.000 --> 0:16:28.280 now it's normal the way I just but it was 0:16:28.320 --> 0:16:33.960 not then. But I was I think on some subconscious level, 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:37.520 I was my father's son and I just was never 0:16:37.680 --> 0:16:38.280 going to. 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:40.760 You're forcing yourself to fail in some way. 0:16:40.840 --> 0:16:43.440 So you could do your own thing or inviting failure 0:16:43.480 --> 0:16:44.840 without even being fully aware of it. 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:45.280 Yeah. 0:16:45.520 --> 0:16:48.400 I think I just was never cut out to. 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:55.800 Fit into some corporate culture, and I tried to All 0:16:55.880 --> 0:17:00.840 that shaped the way I created companies because I wanted 0:17:01.720 --> 0:17:04.800 cultures to not be so oppressive, and I wanted I 0:17:04.880 --> 0:17:08.040 wanted to invite divergence, and I wanted to invite in 0:17:09.160 --> 0:17:13.800 weird different kinds of people and mindsets and not have 0:17:13.880 --> 0:17:16.640 people say this is and it happens the at Zinga 0:17:16.760 --> 0:17:18.800 people would say this isn't the way we do it, 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:19.920 and I would fight that. 0:17:20.200 --> 0:17:22.480 It was like fuck that if? What if the way 0:17:22.520 --> 0:17:23.480 we do it is stupid? 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:25.479 Like we need some maybe the people who are going 0:17:25.520 --> 0:17:29.159 to say, well, your way of doing it is dumb, 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:31.000 and like bring that the fuck on? 0:17:34.880 --> 0:17:35.600 After the break? 0:17:35.800 --> 0:17:46.120 Why online poker became Zinga's first success story, stay with us. 0:17:47.119 --> 0:17:50.600 There's a concept in your book which is right, instinct, 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:53.560 wrong idea. I guess with Tribe don't Net that was 0:17:53.560 --> 0:17:56.320 a classic example, right, Yeah, you're correct that social media 0:17:56.400 --> 0:17:59.440 was going to become basically the whole Internet. Yeah, but 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:03.000 you're actually was the wrong one. The company before that, 0:18:03.119 --> 0:18:07.400 which was called Freeloader You essentially had the idea that 0:18:07.680 --> 0:18:12.120 you were going to sort of push information from the 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:16.400 open Internet onto people's screen savers, and I slowly downloaded 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:18.720 overnight because that was the speed of the interests. That was, 0:18:18.760 --> 0:18:21.920 in a sense, the wrong instinct but the right idea, 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:24.359 right because you managed to sell that company for thirty 0:18:24.359 --> 0:18:27.840 eight million dollars, whereas in fact the Internet was kind 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:29.479 of moving on just as you were selling it, right, 0:18:29.560 --> 0:18:31.560 or how how do you characterize them right now? 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:33.920 It's a really interesting way of framing it. I haven't 0:18:33.920 --> 0:18:38.199 thought about it that way. I think that it was 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:40.640 the right instinct in that moment. It was the right 0:18:40.720 --> 0:18:45.280 instincts that I think I did tap into that the 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:48.440 Internet was too hard for most people and not accessible, 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:51.480 and it was too slow. Those are my two big instincts. 0:18:51.480 --> 0:18:53.320 It's like, it's too hard and it's too slow for 0:18:53.400 --> 0:18:55.920 normal people. I mean, you could also say it was 0:18:55.960 --> 0:18:59.560 wrong instinct about the Internet being slow, because bandwidth came 0:18:59.560 --> 0:19:02.120 eventually got faster. But in that moment it was right, 0:19:02.680 --> 0:19:05.240 and I think the idea was I think it was 0:19:05.280 --> 0:19:08.199 the right idea, and I think our execution was like 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:13.840 a B minus. I mean, it was a pretty janky product, 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:16.399 but it was. But it was so interesting that you 0:19:16.440 --> 0:19:21.359 can bring out kind of a really bad product that 0:19:21.560 --> 0:19:25.439 really has an idea that resonates for people, and it 0:19:25.480 --> 0:19:28.600 can do well despite that. You know, it could work 0:19:29.280 --> 0:19:33.760 twenty percent of the time and that's enough for people. 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:36.840 And in the beginning, when something's emergent. 0:19:36.760 --> 0:19:38.680 It's also I mean, so you sold that company within 0:19:38.760 --> 0:19:40.920 less than a year of building it, yeah, for thirty 0:19:40.960 --> 0:19:43.320 eight million dollars, which is exactly the same price your 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:46.040 father sold his company for. That's weird, Which is weird? 0:19:46.200 --> 0:19:47.240 What's the conversation like? 0:19:48.040 --> 0:19:50.679 It was a real kind of wake up moment for 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:53.080 my dad because he had built his company over thirty 0:19:53.119 --> 0:19:55.760 eight years and sold it for thirty eight million dollars 0:19:56.240 --> 0:19:59.080 and it was a huge success and his company produced 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:01.879 very lo large income for him and his partners. You know, 0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:05.600 he is an agency and agencies at agencies and pr 0:20:05.640 --> 0:20:09.200 firms don't have a lot of assets they build up, 0:20:09.440 --> 0:20:11.560 you know, it's just the people and the brand. So 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:15.880 that was a huge success at his time. But then 0:20:16.400 --> 0:20:20.280 this was on a different order magnitude because the Internet 0:20:20.320 --> 0:20:23.160 is a marketplace of everybody, so it was just such 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:28.640 a different scale and my dad shifted the relationship, and 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:34.359 all of a sudden he was like, okay, you you 0:20:34.440 --> 0:20:41.960 get something that I don't get, and you're like surpassing me, 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:46.880 you know, and men are very thinking a lot about, 0:20:47.000 --> 0:20:49.159 you know, money and achievement, and my dad was very 0:20:49.160 --> 0:20:53.399 achievement oriented. And so it did change the relationship in 0:20:54.359 --> 0:20:58.120 good ways. I mean we we since I was eighteen, 0:20:58.359 --> 0:21:01.520 we had had more of a p your relationship when 0:21:01.560 --> 0:21:06.400 he wasn't supporting me financially, and then this really changed it. 0:21:07.000 --> 0:21:10.119 So then you sort of you took the money and 0:21:10.160 --> 0:21:12.639 then you started thinking about basically this was was this 0:21:12.720 --> 0:21:13.720 nineteen ninety five? 0:21:13.840 --> 0:21:16.000 Was it nineteen ninety six, nine ninety six? 0:21:16.440 --> 0:21:18.720 And then you made support dot com. 0:21:18.800 --> 0:21:22.760 You took it public, another big success, and then the 0:21:22.880 --> 0:21:26.359 kind of dot com boom outside the dot com bust 0:21:26.359 --> 0:21:30.239 happened and you had time on your hands, as did 0:21:30.240 --> 0:21:33.159 a lot of other interesting people like bread Hoffmann, and 0:21:33.200 --> 0:21:35.040 you started thinking about what you referred to as like 0:21:35.040 --> 0:21:37.960 the social cocktail party on the internet. And you made 0:21:38.200 --> 0:21:42.080 tribe dot net. What why do you think tribe dot 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:45.119 net failed where LinkedIn and Facebook succeeded. 0:21:45.680 --> 0:21:50.440 Well, I saw the potential to acquire a big audience 0:21:50.520 --> 0:21:55.040 through the virality of social networking, and that worked, and 0:21:55.400 --> 0:22:00.720 Tribe was very viral and got a big audience quickly, 0:22:00.800 --> 0:22:06.159 much bigger than LinkedIn. But what I didn't see was 0:22:06.560 --> 0:22:10.639 how important trust was for mainstream Internet users. And they 0:22:10.640 --> 0:22:14.240 were just putting themselves on the Internet and they didn't 0:22:14.359 --> 0:22:17.720 like the idea of strangers seeing them and contacting them. 0:22:18.040 --> 0:22:20.879 But my business model, which was to be like Craigslist 0:22:20.880 --> 0:22:25.359 meets Friendster, the business model of Craigslist, was at odds 0:22:25.359 --> 0:22:29.240 with that because to be a Craigslist a listing, everyone 0:22:29.320 --> 0:22:32.399