WEBVTT - Founder of Zynga Mark Pincus Talks Outlook on AI 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:07.040 Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:09.280 We're gonna stay in technology and how it continues to 0:00:09.280 --> 0:00:11.640 transform himid the AI backdrop, and it takes us to 0:00:11.680 --> 0:00:14.840 someone who's been innovating and disrupting as well, and remembers 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:17.120 all too well the boom and bust and changing landscape 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:19.239 of the dot com era. He's best known as the 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:21.680 founder and CEO of Zinga, the social games company that 0:00:21.720 --> 0:00:25.040 iPod in twenty eleven, but he's built and invested in 0:00:25.120 --> 0:00:27.639 so much more and through every iteration of the Internet, 0:00:27.720 --> 0:00:30.040 the nineties boom and bust, the social media boom of 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:33.040 Web two point zero, and now the AI era. Carol. 0:00:33.280 --> 0:00:35.080 He's also a prolific investor. 0:00:35.200 --> 0:00:38.680 He is. Indeed, he's invested you'll know these names, folks, Napster, SpaceX, 0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:41.239 and he had he held on to his shares. His 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:44.240 thirty eight thousand dollars seat investment in Facebook now Meta 0:00:44.720 --> 0:00:46.640 for about half a percentage of the company would be 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:49.800 worth many, many billions of dollars right now. Smart investment. 0:00:49.840 --> 0:00:52.960 I would say, we're talking about Mark Pinkas he's got 0:00:52.960 --> 0:00:54.520 a new book out and we know all this thanks 0:00:54.560 --> 0:00:56.560 to the new book. It's called Life at the speed 0:00:56.600 --> 0:00:59.600 of play, launch products, people love. Mark Pinkus joins us 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:02.640 here in the Blue and Interactive Broker's Studio. Welcome, Welcome, 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:03.840 How are you. Congrats on the book. 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:07.199 Thanks, thanks, by the way, I really am happy about 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:08.000 the memory stocks. 0:01:10.080 --> 0:01:10.800 What's why? 0:01:11.800 --> 0:01:16.200 Well, for diving right into the AI trade, let's not 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:21.600 mess around. I'd say that that it's it's a pretty 0:01:21.640 --> 0:01:23.319 simple trade at this point. 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:24.000 It's a belief. 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:29.120 And either you believe that the AI infrastructure investment is 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:32.680 going to pay off and keep playing out, in which 0:01:32.720 --> 0:01:39.039 case all of these companies are generationally undervalued and it's 0:01:39.080 --> 0:01:40.759 a generational buying opportunity. 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:42.920 If you're getting a PEG ratio of. 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:47.440 Point three you know or less, or you think that 0:01:47.680 --> 0:01:49.080 it's not going to play out, and then you should 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:50.240 stay away from all of it. 0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:52.080 So well, I'm a believer. 0:01:52.520 --> 0:01:55.120 It's funny because we just spoke with you with Ted Oakley. 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:58.200 He manages money for Oxbow Advisors, and he sent us 0:01:58.240 --> 0:02:00.400 a bunch of stocks, and missing from there we're names 0:02:00.400 --> 0:02:02.440 and memory names. He does own some tech, but he 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:05.320 said the memory got too expensive. And he said, I've 0:02:05.320 --> 0:02:07.920 been doing this for decade, many decades. I remember the 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:11.200 nineteen nineties we sold Intel, and I watched Intel stocko 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:14.200 up for the next twelve months before then it went down. 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:16.840 So he understands these cycles. Are we in one of 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:18.840 those cyclical moments right now? 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:23.359 Well, we'll know in the future, but it'll be it's 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:29.600 only cyclical if this, if these AI growth rates and 0:02:29.680 --> 0:02:33.480 numbers don't play out, If they play out, I think 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:36.000 he would even agree that they're still undervalued. 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:38.080 You know, Mark, one of the things that we're thinking, 0:02:38.120 --> 0:02:39.920 we want to get into the book and talk about 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:42.040 the you know, life at the speed of play and 0:02:42.040 --> 0:02:42.800 what it all means. 0:02:42.800 --> 0:02:44.280 But we are curious. 0:02:44.480 --> 0:02:47.040 You have been in Silicon Valley for all of the 0:02:47.080 --> 0:02:51.280 iterations of the mettle no no season, like a great wine. 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:53.280 Like That's how I think it. Love talking with people 0:02:53.320 --> 0:02:56.839 who have seen cycles right and can sometimes figure out 0:02:56.919 --> 0:03:00.400 the silly from the stuff that really matters. How do 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:02.480 you like, how do we make sense? Like we see 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:06.120 the money going in, We see the circular financing that 0:03:06.160 --> 0:03:10.240 makes us a little uncomfortable. We see the narrative around 0:03:10.280 --> 0:03:13.120 AI changing. I get it, disruption, this is what happened. 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:16.239 But help us understand, like is this a boom cycle 0:03:16.280 --> 0:03:18.760 with no bust? Or is there going to be a 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:22.160 breaking point at some point or for only maybe for. 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:26.000 Some it's the I have the perfect answer. 0:03:27.080 --> 0:03:28.240 You wouldn't be talking to us. 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:31.720 I would have held my metastoptik. 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:37.280 You did, okay, you did, okay? How do you think 0:03:38.280 --> 0:03:38.680 some of this? 0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:43.520 I built a boring enterprise software company in the middle 0:03:43.560 --> 0:03:45.520 of the dot com boom. You know, it was called 0:03:45.520 --> 0:03:49.320 support dot Com, but it was actually an early SaaS company. 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:52.720 We went public on the last day of the IPO window. 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:58.160 I'd say that then versus now. My peers and I 0:03:58.200 --> 0:03:59.080 thought it. 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:00.000 Didn't make any sense. 0:04:01.160 --> 0:04:04.760 During the dot com bubble, we thought it was crazy 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:09.000 what we saw going on around us. And now my peers, 0:04:09.080 --> 0:04:12.240 my smartest friends, think this makes a lot of sense. 0:04:12.360 --> 0:04:15.360 I mean, it's it was dark fiber then and now 0:04:15.360 --> 0:04:16.720 it's like hot GPUs. 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:19.320 I mean it's actually being used. 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:26.640 It was betting on a whole consumer that that didn't show. 0:04:26.520 --> 0:04:28.040 Up or didn't show up yet. 0:04:28.360 --> 0:04:33.279 And now the the investment the infrastructure is going to 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:38.480 enterprises who are bottom line oriented. And you know, then 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:41.960 it was eyeballs and now it's arr you know, it's 0:04:42.040 --> 0:04:46.000 it's actual revenue. So it's definitely not the same. I 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:50.599 think what we do have is extreme volatility. And I 0:04:50.600 --> 0:04:54.640 think that the volatility comes from where it's hard to 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:58.560 remember this level of growth market. And when there's this 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:01.840 level of growth like we've seen just this week and today, 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:06.280 when there is a negative data point or even absence 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:09.720 of more positives, it starts to be run for the 0:05:09.800 --> 0:05:13.799 hills and doom and bubble. And then when we see 0:05:14.040 --> 0:05:17.799 like microns numbers and guidance, all of a sudden, everyone's 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:19.960 bullish again, and we're going to keep seeing that. 0:05:20.120 --> 0:05:21.119 It's my take. 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:23.960 One thing that you write about in the book repeatedly 0:05:24.080 --> 0:05:25.880 is that you know, when you get into your whole 0:05:25.920 --> 0:05:30.800 background Wharton, Harvard Business School, going and working for some investors, 0:05:30.880 --> 0:05:33.320 that our household names of the Bloomberg audience, I mean 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:39.919 Steve Ratner, John Malone, I mean, these are legends. You 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:42.560 are constantly saying you don't know how to code, you 0:05:42.560 --> 0:05:44.200 don't know how to write code, yet you built all 0:05:44.200 --> 0:05:47.760 these companies. What struck me about reading that was that 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:50.679 that kind of doesn't matter now in a way that 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:53.359 it mattered when you were building all these companies. You 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:57.200 write about, how has the idea of like open Ayes, 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:01.720 Codex or Claude code from an How does that completely 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:03.040 change the game moving forward? 0:06:03.400 --> 0:06:04.880 Well, if you. 0:06:04.839 --> 0:06:07.599 Pull the camera back and even think more broadly, like, 0:06:08.120 --> 0:06:12.120 how has the game of startups just changed? And how 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:16.240 has this another step function changed? In each chapter, the 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:19.320 amount of capital that you needed to get going has 0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:23.480 gone down, you know, not up. When I was starting 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:29.520 my first company, I had to recruit these government mainframe programmers, 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:33.640 have them learn C plus plus and HTML, and I 0:06:34.040 --> 0:06:37.160 needed a fair amount of money to convince them to 0:06:37.640 --> 0:06:38.480 quit their jobs. 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:40.600 And each my subsequent companies. 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:44.840 Today, you know you don't need that, right, You don't 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:47.800 need as much capital. You don't need to go and 0:06:47.880 --> 0:06:51.760 necessarily recruit a whole team of the world's best engineers. 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:54.200 It's being democratized today. 0:06:54.880 --> 0:07:00.400 Really there, it's more possible than ever for somebody with 0:07:00.680 --> 0:07:03.800 an amazing idea who's willing to move on it now 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:08.440 to really get somewhere in a far more capital efficient way. 0:07:09.400 --> 0:07:11.240 Yeah, I mean, I feel like we also said that 0:07:11.240 --> 0:07:13.280 in the pandemic of people just being able to start 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:19.320 things while they were home. I am curious about the 0:07:19.360 --> 0:07:21.720 speed of play because that is on your book. Talk 0:07:21.720 --> 0:07:23.640 to us about that and the importance of it. 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:28.600 Sure, so there was a lot of debate with my 0:07:29.120 --> 0:07:33.160 co author Carly, my amazing editor Hollis. 0:07:32.680 --> 0:07:34.200 On the title to the book. 0:07:34.240 --> 0:07:36.760 It was originally called proven Better New, which we can 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:39.160 get into. But that's that's kind of some of the 0:07:39.160 --> 0:07:41.600 core value in the book, and I eventually said, you know, 0:07:41.680 --> 0:07:45.520 it's just that's not the whole gist of the book. 0:07:45.640 --> 0:07:47.960 It's life at the speed of play. And that's because 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:52.840 it's both. It's both the place that we are moving 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:59.160 into in this AI era. It's it's really I like, 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:01.400 I start the book by saying that that this is 0:08:01.960 --> 0:08:04.400 Elon is the one person who's already been living his 0:08:04.440 --> 0:08:06.720 life at this b of play, and I definitely think 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:08.440 he's having more fun than the rest of us. 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:09.800 Okay, he's also working harder. 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:11.280 I want to push back on this because Caroly and 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:11.840 I talked about this. 0:08:12.000 --> 0:08:13.360 He doesn't always look like he's having fun. 0:08:13.480 --> 0:08:15.640 Yeah, he really. I mean, I think he's been really 0:08:15.680 --> 0:08:18.320 public about having this tortured existence and how difficult it 0:08:18.360 --> 0:08:20.800 is to be Elon Musk and the challenges that he 0:08:20.880 --> 0:08:25.440 struggled with personally, I think more so than professionally. Do 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:27.160 you actually think he's having more fun than the rest 0:08:27.200 --> 0:08:27.480 of us? 0:08:28.320 --> 0:08:28.680 I do. 0:08:29.200 --> 0:08:33.240 He's got an amazing sense of humor. He's every time 0:08:33.520 --> 0:08:39.440 I see him, he's joking, laughing. I was with him 0:08:40.480 --> 0:08:43.400 at a friend's house one night and it wasn't long 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:46.280 after he had bought Twitter, and it was basically like 0:08:46.600 --> 0:08:49.199 an hour of the best stand up comedy I've ever seen. 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:52.559 I mean, he the way he talked about his experience 0:08:52.600 --> 0:08:57.520 of coming in to Twitter and how insane the company 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:01.760 was was just was just really funny. So so my 0:09:01.840 --> 0:09:05.120 point of view, I mean, whether he's having more fun, 0:09:05.160 --> 0:09:09.320 who knows. I think that that what I what we 0:09:09.400 --> 0:09:11.520 can see, you know, I said, maybe he's the one 0:09:11.520 --> 0:09:14.760 who solved the simulation. What we can see is that 0:09:15.480 --> 0:09:19.920 he can almost tweet something into existence that he said, there, 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:22.520 this traffic in la is terrible. There should be a 0:09:22.640 --> 0:09:25.360 boring tunneling company. And then a few months later and 0:09:25.400 --> 0:09:28.560 a few billion dollars raised, there was. And my point is, 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:32.640 to some degree, we all are on the brink of 0:09:32.720 --> 0:09:36.240 living a part of that. And the reason I called 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:38.640 this life lets Speed of Play is that to me, 0:09:39.360 --> 0:09:43.240 what the book is really about is a product mindset, 0:09:43.520 --> 0:09:46.959 and and I think that every so many of us 0:09:47.040 --> 0:09:49.200 have an idea we don't know how to pursue it, 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:52.400 or we are pursuing an idea, but the odds of 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:56.120 success are too low, too many, too many founders are 0:09:56.160 --> 0:09:58.080 feeling for the wrong reasons. 0:09:58.240 --> 0:10:00.080 So a good idea is a good idea, but that 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:03.040 that's not enough necessarily to run with something and build 0:10:03.120 --> 0:10:07.160 something that lasts for longer or has some significant impact. Correct. 0:10:07.600 --> 0:10:11.079 Yeah, and it might be that you have a good idea, 0:10:11.480 --> 0:10:16.960 but it's behind some like obvious mistakes that you're making. 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:20.000 That the more junior product maker or a founder is 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:23.000 and the less experienced they are, the more likely they 0:10:23.000 --> 0:10:26.959 are to do too much new to just reinvent everything. 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:28.800 Steve Jobs talked about this. 0:10:29.320 --> 0:10:33.160 So the point of the book is I like to 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:36.240 think that this book is like a cheat code that 0:10:36.640 --> 0:10:39.360 you can whatever it is you're doing, you can change 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:43.160 your odds of success and getting to a hit. It's 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:45.400 the book I wish I had early in my career. 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:48.120 Just as for founders, like, who do you think about? It? 0:10:48.160 --> 0:10:49.880 Sounds like it is for people who have an idea 0:10:49.960 --> 0:10:51.480 or want to run with something, right. 0:10:51.440 --> 0:10:54.720 This book is every one of your listeners right now 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:59.600 probably has some instinct. They have some sense it's either 0:10:59.600 --> 0:11:02.480 a speci of an idea or a sense that something 0:11:03.120 --> 0:11:07.040 could be better, And the book is the point of 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:11.560 the book is that they should What is when you 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:15.520 think what should they do with that instinct? Very few 0:11:15.559 --> 0:11:18.280 of them will act on it and turn that into 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:21.560 a product or a company, and then their odds of 0:11:21.600 --> 0:11:24.200 success will be solow because they're going to take one 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:27.520 shot on goal and it's probably going to miss well. 0:11:27.679 --> 0:11:29.120 I like how you write about that in the book 0:11:29.160 --> 0:11:31.679 because you use the idea of Uber as an example 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:33.760 in the book. You had the idea for Uber in 0:11:33.760 --> 0:11:37.560 two thousand and two. I did SMS dispatching to a cab. 0:11:38.320 --> 0:11:41.439 You're not Travis Kalanik. He did not start Uber. No, 0:11:41.720 --> 0:11:43.880 so you make this argument that I think a lot 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:45.480 of people everybody has these ideas. 0:11:45.520 --> 0:11:47.720 I had that idea. Yeah, because you had. 0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:50.400 That idea, it doesn't mean you actually create the company. 0:11:50.200 --> 0:11:53.000 Why was Travis able to do it? But Mark Pinkus, 0:11:53.000 --> 0:11:54.680 who was in Silicon Valley in two thousand and two, 0:11:54.679 --> 0:11:55.520 wasn't able to do it. 0:11:56.840 --> 0:11:59.480 I can't tell you why Travis was, but I can 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:00.520 tell you why I wasn't. 0:12:01.200 --> 0:12:02.520 I didn't. 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:05.679 First of all, I looked at the world as it existed, 0:12:05.960 --> 0:12:08.280 not as it could exist the way that Travis did. 0:12:08.320 --> 0:12:10.360 And by the way, in two thousand and two, there 0:12:10.400 --> 0:12:13.960 wasn't a mobile, you know, smartphone then, and I thought 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:15.640 about it in these conventional ways. 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:16.959 Oh, I'm going. 0:12:16.840 --> 0:12:20.760 To deliver your order to the taxi broker, who will 0:12:20.800 --> 0:12:24.840 call a cab. I didn't ever think Travis's idea of 0:12:24.880 --> 0:12:27.520 the gig economy. I'm going to let anybody become a 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:30.160 driver and have a driver within a minute of you. 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:35.320 That was that was brilliance. But but I had. 0:12:35.160 --> 0:12:39.360 An instinct, an instinct that we should be able to 0:12:40.160 --> 0:12:43.160 order a phone through order a taxi through our phone. 0:12:43.679 --> 0:12:48.120 And you know the importance The point I'm trying to 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:51.400 get people to focus on the book is that if 0:12:51.400 --> 0:12:54.160 you assume your instincts are right, you know, ninety five 0:12:54.160 --> 0:12:56.200 percent of the time, and your idea is right at 0:12:56.320 --> 0:12:58.680 best twenty five percent of the time, what would you 0:12:58.800 --> 0:13:02.880 do with that information? You know, it's like a time machine. 0:13:03.000 --> 0:13:05.959 You write about these instinct veins deep sources of insight 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:10.080 about human needs and behavior that can spawn multiple product ideas, 0:13:10.160 --> 0:13:14.200 even whole new industries. Is that what AI is right now, 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:16.520 like what we're doing, is that what that is or. 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:18.520 Is that beyond an instinct vein? 0:13:18.600 --> 0:13:24.400 I mean, AAI is is a fundamental shift in in computing. 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:27.280 I mean the way that the Internet was, and so 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:29.000 so I wouldn't. 0:13:28.920 --> 0:13:32.720 Apples to apples. Yeah, yeah, no, it's interesting. You know. 0:13:32.960 --> 0:13:36.920 One of the things that I find also is some 0:13:37.000 --> 0:13:40.160 of the things you talk about, like leadership, you talk 0:13:40.200 --> 0:13:43.280 about micromanagement is beautiful. And I think about how many 0:13:43.320 --> 0:13:47.520 times when you think about leaders that it's like, don't 0:13:47.520 --> 0:13:52.400 micromanage people? Yeah, right now, think about it, Like you 0:13:52.440 --> 0:13:56.160 bring in you know, you know, experts or consultants and 0:13:56.200 --> 0:13:59.440 they're like, don't micromanager people? Why is it so important? 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:01.600 Why is it so important that you do do that? 0:14:01.679 --> 0:14:02.640 You do micromanage? 0:14:02.800 --> 0:14:08.120 Yeah, because the point I'm trying to make here is 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:10.720 that at the end of the day, what matters most 0:14:11.160 --> 0:14:15.000 is your customer experience, not how you delivered it. 0:14:15.320 --> 0:14:17.280 And so the point to me. 0:14:18.040 --> 0:14:23.760 Is deliver the best possible customer experience any way that 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:28.720 you get there. And if it's through micromanager, if you 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:32.600 can guarantee the quality, if you can guarantee the delivery 0:14:32.640 --> 0:14:36.320 because you micromanaged, then by all means do that. I'm like, 0:14:36.600 --> 0:14:39.720 I don't care that McDonald's served fifteen million burgers today. 0:14:39.720 --> 0:14:42.520 That doesn't make mine any better if I want the 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:45.560 kernel cooking mine, you know, individually. 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:48.280 Well, that's a major theme in the book is sort 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:51.960 of throwing out this idea of the minimum minimal viable product. Yeah, 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:54.080 I'm not going to repeat what the chapter's called. 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:57.960 Because no, we're FCC regulated here, but we're family. Well, 0:14:58.000 --> 0:15:00.760 that chapter you can say, was the MVP trap. Okay, 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:01.760 other chapters no. 0:15:01.960 --> 0:15:06.680 Okay, maybe, yeah, great, there it is why we've been 0:15:06.760 --> 0:15:10.120 sold this idea though, of iterating and Silicon Valley sort 0:15:10.160 --> 0:15:12.160 of throw something, you know, see if what sticks, and 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:14.560 iterates on that over and over again. Why wasn't that 0:15:14.600 --> 0:15:15.440 ever right for you? 0:15:16.000 --> 0:15:22.320 Well, the original concept that Eric Reese had of minimum 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:24.560 viable product and moving fast and being in the market 0:15:25.880 --> 0:15:27.320 is a great concept. 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:30.720 It's just that we now we don't. 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:33.640 The point I make is that we no longer have 0:15:33.800 --> 0:15:37.920 time to go wait, the learning. 0:15:37.720 --> 0:15:38.600 Is too slow. 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:42.360 If we build a minimum viable product, there's hope in 0:15:42.400 --> 0:15:45.040 the word viable that this might be your launch product, 0:15:45.400 --> 0:15:47.520 and then you're going to invest more in that product 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:49.920 than you should. And I like to say, just build 0:15:49.920 --> 0:15:53.920 it wrong before you build it right, just build to learn. 0:15:54.320 --> 0:15:59.840 Be whatever gets you signal from your customer the fastest 0:16:00.160 --> 0:16:03.720 is and and in the age of AI, we can 0:16:04.240 --> 0:16:09.479 prototype something or test something so much faster, but it's dangerous. 0:16:09.840 --> 0:16:13.240 What I'm seeing with AI is less that people are 0:16:13.320 --> 0:16:17.440 using AI to test and learn faster, but more build faster. 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:20.160 And so if I can build something now in three 0:16:20.160 --> 0:16:24.400 months instead of three years, that's so alluring that I 0:16:24.480 --> 0:16:28.080 might go do that. But I don't have three months 0:16:28.120 --> 0:16:28.880 to learn. 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:30.600 I'm wrong. Does that makes sense? 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:31.640 I don't know that makes sense. 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:33.560 So the viable word is tricky. 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:36.600 Well, I think you had also shared in the book 0:16:37.200 --> 0:16:39.880 the example of Twitch and building. You know, the founder 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:42.560 of Twitch, their team was was changing their product every 0:16:42.560 --> 0:16:44.960 two or three days at that point. Yeah, they were twitchy, 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:47.040 and that was that ended up being a good thing 0:16:47.080 --> 0:16:49.360 for them. Yeah they got immediate feedback. 0:16:49.680 --> 0:16:51.920 Yeah, well they I don't even know if it was 0:16:52.240 --> 0:16:53.360 getting any customer feedback. 0:16:53.360 --> 0:16:55.120 The feedback was just from themselves. 0:16:55.200 --> 0:16:59.640 It was I don't like this product idea anymore, let's switch. 0:17:00.480 --> 0:17:07.000 So that's also important. And I guess part of what 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:09.640 makes this so hard to be a founder. 0:17:09.320 --> 0:17:11.200 To be a CEO is that we're supposed to. 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:15.800 Express confidence when we don't personally feel confidence, right, And so, 0:17:16.359 --> 0:17:19.320 how do you come in on Monday and what if 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:21.880 you just what have you learned something in the past 0:17:21.960 --> 0:17:25.639 week that just said this product isn't quite right or 0:17:25.680 --> 0:17:28.639 it's finally part built and you're like, I'm just not 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:31.040 that into it. Do you come to your team on 0:17:31.119 --> 0:17:34.320 Monday and say, guys, I know I got you to 0:17:34.320 --> 0:17:36.760 work nights and weekends for this, but I don't think 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:40.679 this is right anymore. Or do you say, well, I 0:17:40.680 --> 0:17:43.560 don't want to demotivate my team and so I'm just 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:46.359 going to continue on this path for this whole product cycle. 0:17:46.880 --> 0:17:47.720 Or I can't. 0:17:47.760 --> 0:17:50.800 I'm afraid to tell my investors who backed me that 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:53.720 I was wrong. Right, And so questions, are you more 0:17:53.760 --> 0:17:57.640 committed to the intellectual honesty or to harmony? 0:17:58.080 --> 0:17:59.480 I would say intellectual honesty. 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:01.840 People would not I most people would not active. 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:03.840 I know, but it's like, I don't know. At some 0:18:03.840 --> 0:18:06.000 point you need to be doing that. Hey, we're talking 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:08.119 with Mark Pinkus, founder of Zinga. He's got a new 0:18:08.119 --> 0:18:11.240 book out. It is entitled titled Life at the Speed 0:18:11.240 --> 0:18:15.720 of Play. Launch Products that people love? Are there products 0:18:15.800 --> 0:18:19.160 I mean, the product cycle is it getting shooters or longer, 0:18:19.359 --> 0:18:21.560 especially when it comes to technology, because I feel like 0:18:21.640 --> 0:18:23.639 there are things that people are so into and then 0:18:23.640 --> 0:18:25.439 they move on to the next thing, and there's so 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:26.280 much out there. 0:18:26.680 --> 0:18:28.919 From a consumer standpoint. 0:18:29.359 --> 0:18:31.360 Well, I say in the book that I think there's 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:34.600 a metric that I don't know anyone but me who 0:18:34.680 --> 0:18:38.480 focuses on it and my former teams day three sixty 0:18:38.520 --> 0:18:41.280 five retention. So if one hundred people were using your 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:44.439 product today, you know, or a year ago today, how 0:18:44.480 --> 0:18:49.240 many would still be using it today? And it's such 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:51.800 a hard thing to build against because we don't have 0:18:51.920 --> 0:18:53.560 a year to wait, right, But. 0:18:53.600 --> 0:18:56.120 You never would have made your own That maybe works 0:18:56.119 --> 0:18:58.239 from a product perspective of building a company, but from 0:18:58.280 --> 0:19:00.840 a venture capital perspective, that doesn't work. You write about 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:02.960 what attracted you to Mark Zuckerberg when he was a 0:19:03.000 --> 0:19:06.480 teenager still was that they were able to sign up, 0:19:07.080 --> 0:19:09.879 you know, school's twenty percent on the first day, the 0:19:09.920 --> 0:19:13.200 next eighty percent the next week. Like that happened instantly. 0:19:13.600 --> 0:19:17.679 Yes, yes, I didn't know. But it turns out that 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:23.840 this is necessary but not necessarily complete and sufficient. Is 0:19:23.880 --> 0:19:29.000 that that if you have sixty percent engagement, sixty percent 0:19:29.040 --> 0:19:32.200 of your users show up every day, which has been 0:19:32.240 --> 0:19:35.840 true to this day. With Facebook, the likelihood that you 0:19:35.960 --> 0:19:41.160 have high day three sixty five retention is highly correlated. 0:19:41.320 --> 0:19:45.399 It may not be the case, but it's highly highly correlated. 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:48.879 Did you know the minute you spoke with him that 0:19:48.920 --> 0:19:50.320 this was just something remarkable? 0:19:51.040 --> 0:19:51.680 Meaning Facebook? 0:19:51.760 --> 0:19:51.960 Yes? 0:19:52.080 --> 0:19:54.400 Yes, and and by the way, so would you both 0:19:54.440 --> 0:19:54.639 of you. 0:19:55.040 --> 0:19:59.760 So people who point to the fact that they invested, 0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:03.639 you know, early on in Facebook, these companies as a 0:20:03.680 --> 0:20:06.919 sign that they're a great investors, it does not necessarily 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:08.240 mean that they are a great. 0:20:09.480 --> 0:20:11.240 You know that their judgment is. 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:14.360 So great because we all would have said, yes, their 0:20:14.400 --> 0:20:15.879 access is very impressive. 0:20:15.920 --> 0:20:18.919 You know that they had and you didn't have. So 0:20:20.720 --> 0:20:22.680 But here's what's so painful. 0:20:22.680 --> 0:20:25.399 If you think about it, that story is less like 0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:29.960 kudos to Mark that he invested, and it's more like, like, Mark, 0:20:30.520 --> 0:20:31.199 how is it? 0:20:31.640 --> 0:20:31.720 Like? 0:20:31.800 --> 0:20:32.359 Think about this? 0:20:32.880 --> 0:20:35.560 How is it that in two thousand and four when 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:38.200 I met him, I was doing Tribe. I was doing 0:20:38.240 --> 0:20:40.960