You Don’t Need To Innovate To Be Successful | FarmVille Creator

0:00 We've gotta be in a mental state. Where we're playing offense and not defense. You've gotta be in this place that you're thinking, What if everything goes right? If we're starting with what if everything goes wrong. You're playing defense and you've lost before you're even out of the gates. What are the first principles of great products?

0:21 I think great products In the consumer world. Speak to us on some Deep level. They

0:29 They speak to some human instinct or need. That we've been feeling and it's been Unexpressed or unmet. When we first experience that, there's something magical to it.

0:42 That it could be an unlock. And lots of times it's w it's where we're most cynical. that we're ready for the most magic. But I've found that if If a product speaks to you, or at least

0:51 This is my experience. This product speaks to me. And it makes it on the front of my iPhone. I think it has a billion dollar stick value. Or maybe I should update that. That's what I thought fifteen years ago. Now maybe it's Trillion. Two at least two billion. But but if it's enough to be on the front of my iPhone. To me that saying

1:10 A lot. Like then I'm gonna use it more than once. A new app so seldom And and the front of my iPhone is I can

1:18 Go get and show it to you, but it's half empty. So I still think That There's so there's so few Least.

1:26 digital consumer products. that that give us that magical experience that that we feel Compelled to Use every day. for sort of proving ideas before you know that they're gonna work really.

1:42 Talk to me about that. How do you do that? I'm looking for real heat. Around an idea. What does heat mean? Heat is something That you know it when you see it.

1:53 It's it's kinda like being really in love with somebody. When you when you found your person You I believe you know it.

2:02 And then Every other one that was not quite your person, you're not sure. Right. And heat is the same thing.

2:09 And it's like You wanna see heat, so you're looking for signs of heat. And you're like, look at this click through rate, or look at this But it's not heat. When you have the heat around the product

2:20 Everything says he. And you just know it. It's part of what I call true signal. Right. It's That's

2:27 When you have true signal We all Know it. You don't need anyone to tell you. And when you don't have true signal. You need lots and lots of stats and other things'cause you're like, is this the signal? Isn't it?

2:42 It's not. When you see heat in another product or in Even better when you see heat. In your own it's like Christmas morning, like Everything lights up.

2:53 Were you always playful? Yeah, I grew up in a family that Was very competitive around These kind of

3:03 You know, family social games like charades and scrabble and trivial pursuit. competitive like tipping the board over if you lose. Almost. Like my dad was very playful and into games. And So much so that

3:18 Uh he first did this and then we all did we'd start to change the rules if we thought the games weren't Made right. The best one was in Scrabble. It kinda sucks that there's this luck of the draw on your letters.

3:31 And my dad made this rule that You could Take a letter from your your little And change it out with letter on the board as long as it's still made a word.

3:44 Right. So you could put an O for an A and then you had to reuse that letter in the same turn. And so my dad Sometimes it would take a half an hour for a turn and all these intricate things. But it made it more you had more demen I like to talk about what's the dimensionality, you know, to games and

4:00 It added a whole dimension. You had a falling out with your dad, and that seemed to be one of the pivotal early moments in your life. What happened? My dad We all kind of played a role in his movie. And

4:13 He Loved. being in a fraternity in college and was like defining for him and he wanted me to do that. I wasn't into fraternity and they weren't into me either. It was like mutual. And and I initially went to this big ten school, University of Michigan.

4:29 And I was just not in the right place in any way. And I just was not On lots of fronts becoming the kind of man that my dad wanted me to be. He wanted me to be just like him. It this got more and more tense.

4:42 And Our family was on a sailboat. Uh In the Caribbean. In the Virgin Islands and we bare boating, so it's just

4:49 Us screwing and Might we grown up sailing and My dad was The worst Sailboat.

4:56 Captain. Ever. I mean just famously like epically bad captain. Like we would get stuck. on a sandbar'cause he didn't read the tides right, you know. We were in this harbour

5:08 And uh This island Virgin Gorda. And The keel got stuck. We always had something go wrong. And

5:16 The boat was going circles and headed. eventually for this like Rock. Barrier. And I got in the dinghy and I turned on the engine and grabbed the rope and I pulled the boat.

5:27 Into the slip and save the day. And my dad was furious and he said. You could have killed us all and And you know, I think it was also

5:37 Well Humiliated. And That escalated to this bigger fight and he said Wait until after this trip.

5:45 But I've decided to take you out of college. to finish raising you And I said. Fuck you. Bye. And I

5:53 Left. Right there. I Went and rent at a sea plane and Flew away and

6:00 And I also Had transferred been accepted to transfer to Wharton University p University of Pennsylvania.

6:08 from Michigan. And so then I just Uh, packed up my car and left and drove to Pen. So after school, you had some formative experiences at sort of Bain and you worked with John Malone. I'd love to spend a few beats on those. Sure. I had all these great experiences in my twenties.

6:26 Um Really? Amazing. But They were all kind of despite myself because I I had these kind of fatal flaws as an employee. One is

6:39 I'm terrible at interviewing. Because of this like Over indexing desire to be honest. More than to please the interviewer. Even though

6:49 I wanted to get these, you know, high paying jobs. Um So getting out of college I was the only kid in my section to graduate without a job. And Then I got

7:00 Was lucky enough. To get A fifteen minute. Interview with T C I. John Malone's company.

7:08 the biggest cable company in the country and I interviewed with Brandon Cluson, who was the president and And he said, Why do we need a second MBA here? There's twenty thousand employees and they had one other MBA they'd hired ten years earlier. And I said, because I

7:21 Read this book by this guy George Gilder. Called microcosm. And I think that Your company Is positioned for this coming

7:31 you know, information super highway. There's no internet yet. And I said there must be all these deals. Other things you could do besides cable. And I can go do that.

7:42 And he said well It's funny you say that. We're having dinner with George Gilder tonight. So it's like a direct hit. And then they called down to their head of corporate development and he had a cardboard box called non cable.

7:56 And they gave me the box. That was my job. But then I had a I had a few career limiting meetings with Malone where I was so proud that at one point

8:07 T CI was gonna buy a third of prodigy. It was The biggest Yeah. online provider. At the time.

8:15 It was terrible. Wasn't it AOL around this? Yes. And AOL had just gone public. And was worth a hundred and ten million. Prodigy. This deal was paid four hundred million for a third of Prodigy, which Sears and IBM owned. And I came back and I said,

8:29 Why don't we just buy this company AOL? They're public, they're way better, it was a hundred and ten million. And Nobody's Like that. And then they had another deal.

8:40 other public company they were gonna put a bunch of money in and I said, Not only should we not invest or take take equity in this company. We should short their stock'cause they're just gonna go straight down. They have no capital. And Malone said, I don't need some wet behind the ears MBA.

8:55 Telling me what's a good deal. You know, and my boss Is that a corporate development was just like shrinking in the corner, so And then you had Bane. I got This great deal for a summer job at Bain when I was at

9:06 HBS that they'll pay for your whole next semester is twenty five thousand dollars. Like I'm in. And they said we wanna Bring in entrepreneurial banking people.

9:15 I said, Great, that's me. And And it was like the movie Stripes'cause my boss left after like the first couple of weeks and they said We think you can do this project on your own.

9:27 And it A long story, but they they had this graph. In the company that Mitt Romney had first made. That said. They probably still have it. This says if your relative market share is high enough, your return on sales, your margin will be high, which is basically saying you can have like

9:41 more monopolistic pricing or oligopolistic. I proved that in the snack industry Breaks. So I presented

9:51 No one had checked my work. And I presented near the end of the summer to like the partners and all the summer associates. And I'm so proud. I thought they'd make me a partner. This is like, you know, nineteen ninety one, and I figured out like the Pown animation and I showed their graph with a flashing X in it. I said the the graph is wrong. This doesn't work. It's like going to church and being like I don't believe in God. Yeah, look, Jesus never existed.

10:15 Look, I can prove it. I should be head of this religion. So most people had walked out by the time I was done with my presentation and uh And then they just Stop talking to me for the rest of the summer. And I was

10:27 I was really proud that I was one of two summer associates in the history of the firm that they Asked not to come back, you know, but part way through the summer. So lot of evidence was building up that I was not employable. at twenty eight, you realize you're not getting the results you want.

10:42 Things aren't working out. You find yourself in a synagogue again. Walk me through what was going on. Paint the picture for me. I just felt like I'd made a lot of bad career decisions and

10:54 I was washed up early. There was nothing. There's no next thing this was headed towards. And

11:01 I don't know why, but I just maybe I wanted a place to think and I and I just sat there in this temple. I didn't know anybody I didn't understand anything. It was just a good place to sit and think and I just started writing in a notebook about Why my life?

11:15 Sucked so badly. And I just ended on like this one thing that I smoked cigarettes. I don't even know smoke smoke. I smoked like one or two a day, a pack a night if I was at a bar on weekends.

11:29 But I hated it. I my clothes smelled like it. And it just and I didn't want to do it, but I kept doing it. So it it feels this sense of like My life is a little out of control. And

11:40 And I just like If I could do one thing. T like No that I'm making some positive change in my life.

11:49 I'm gonna quit smoking. So on October nineteenth um nineteen ninety four. I Did a lifetime quit on

11:56 Cigarettes. And then every day for that year after that that I didn't smoke. Uh it was I could f something I could feel good about. Well at this point you had like

12:06 Huge ambitions. that weren't being realized. And you're you're evaluating your life effectively. Yeah. With honesty. And it wasn't coming up good. And so you you reflect, you have that one year, you don't smoke, you stop smoking, you prove to yourself every day that you're sort of in control of your circumstances in a lot of ways. And then you do it again. You call this your book of life. Yeah.

12:30 Uh and you've done it every year. Sense. Yeah. I think that a practice like the book of life What It's done for me and I think it could do for a lot of people.

12:40 Is Just Be strategic about your life. Like B

12:48 thoughtful about like I like say what would your future self thank you for doing this year. We can be strategic. Hold ourselves accountable. And and force ourselves to make some tougher decisions now.

13:03 because you know you'll thank yourself later and right around the time That was Brainstorming on the side with this guy Sunil Paul. Seneal was The only

13:14 Internet product manager, the only internet employed at AOL. to turn out the one good thing about being in D C is there was this company AOL there. And they had one guy Who was focused on the internet. And had the same kind of crazy bug I did.

13:29 And So we start talking and we Came up with this kind of uh Yeah. peanut butter and jelly idea that like

13:38 He wanted to build hardware. I wanted to build software But we both want to make the internet easier for people. And so we were like, Okay. Can we start with

13:50 software and then eventually get to hardware. And he said, Okay. Sunil and I Got the company going. Each put in.

13:59 sixty thousand. This is free loader, right? Thirty thousand. Yeah, thirty thousand. Sixty total yeah, it's called free loader. And you guys sold that company for thirty. Eight million was it? Yeah. And then um Everything

14:12 Possibly. Could have gone right, went right. Do you feel like you were lucky? Uh yes, I d I definitely think I'm so aware of the fine line. between success and failure, especially on your first company and

14:27 And And it's so It pains me how much founders and especially I see it in men. Not all men. I've four sisters and a bunch of daughters, but I would say

14:40 I see it in A lot of men and and friends, college friends, people I grown up with that If they had an initial failure. If they had failures

14:51 they get attached to it and they start feeling defined by it. And And it would have been me too. But It wasn't. Do you have any advice for people in that position? Where there's sort of maybe attached to it. We've got to be in a mental state.

15:06 Where we're playing offense and not defense. And I don't know how you're gonna get yourself there. But you've gotta be in this place that you're thinking You you're also thinking what if everything goes right?

15:18 What does right look like? How am I ready for everything going right? If we're starting with what if everything goes wrong. You're playing defense and you've lost before you're even out of the gates. The sponsor of this show is Coinchars.

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16:51 That's granola dot AI slash shame. Skip a few beats after free loader for a second and come to Tribe.net. So you have the right instinct for a social network. And then you meet Zoc. And he's got the right idea for a social network.

17:12 Talk to me about that tension and you didn't change course after meeting that even though you realized it. I think we all No fo we've all seen founders like this that are just There's so attached to this idea that they're gonna go down with the ship. It's We've also seen people in bad relationships like this, right? So it is like a bad relationship.

17:32 And you're you have a friend And they're coming to you for the umpteenth time. with this another version of the same thing. And you're just like uh This is not gonna end well, right?

17:45 And we've And that's so many of us with our stars. You can't see it because you're in it in a way. But you almost do know it, yeah. I like to say that with tribe I had three winning instincts and one losing idea. We learn over time, hopefully As founders.

18:00 That our instincts are almost always right and our ideas are usually wrong. And so That is a really powerful. That's a powerful philosophy and and tool. if we can hang on to that and really use that.

18:15 So I had this instinct I call a cocktail party. And it started with Napster. And Sean Parker worked for me. a free loader when he was sixteen.

18:24 Amazingly, and sent me an email when he started Napster. with Sean Fanning. And I was the first check. In Tanapsir because he said. We have like two servers and they're full and we need money for more servers. And you always just send money when someone says that.

18:41 And consumer. That's rare. But Napster was this cocktail party where We could connect with each other with nobody in between.

18:49 And to me That was the beginning of this social web. of Were the nodes. We're connecting this peer to peer.

18:59 Web. And And then Reed and I Reed Hoffman and I Wor During this nuclear winter for consumer internet

19:09 After the dot com crash, we were There's like Six of us who are still excited about consumer internet. And we would get together.

19:17 And read coined the term web two dot oh. And It was this idea that Like anything on the internet that can be free will be free, starting with data. And we gotta set the data free.

19:28 But so we both came to Friendster at the same time and we just thought it was the perfect science experiment. We didn't think it was a real business. And we both put in the first money because We thought it was such an important

19:42 Experiment Friendster In a month started to Really work. And at the same time We were working on our own

19:50 social networking ideas and Reed was Close to launching. LinkedIn. But French show was The first thing I saw work.

19:58 And Didn't copy it, didn't fast follow it. And Jonathan Abrams was very paranoid about any of us as investors doing anything close. In fact, He doesn't speak to me to this day.

20:11 He feels like Tribe. Kind of usurped and stole his idea for social networking. by doing what we're doing. And it's not like I learned

20:22 Anything. In particular from Frenster. Yeah. Everyone didn't see within

20:31 You know. Months that it was working, it was really successful. And so I thought Tribe

20:36 It's Craigslist. You know, Craigslist meets Frenster. I got trust completely wrong. I mean Like

20:46 So wrong. It's unbelievable. But for some people it wasn't. Extroverts for burning man people. Uh They loved it.

20:55 But for most of mainstream people it was wrong. Zuck came through my office with Sean Parker. Um About a year after I

21:04 Started tribe, but I was already I think struggling'cause I had Amazing virality. And I had Amazing user growth.

21:13 And I had terrible retention. And Should have told me something. But it didn't. It was like a sinking speed boat.

21:22 Which a lot of viral apps. the came, you know, that We kept putting new users in at amazing rates. And we'd lose them at amazing rates. And

21:30 The real answer to sinking speedboat is to fix the hole in the bottom. Yeah, not Go faster, more people. So Zuck and Sean Parker came through and I

21:40 Saw they got it right. And And I think it was my ego and And the kind of morality at the time that's still there.

21:49 Not as much. around the culture of startups and internet that you don't Copy people. Um

21:57 And so I wasn't going to go do the exact thing. But they had done. I wasn't even gonna take the insight It was so clear to me that I'd gotten trust wrong. Which at this point Friendster, LinkedIn

22:11 Facebook all were proving The trust thing. Yeah. Just wasn't gonna do it. And so

22:18 I just Stuck with The same. Losing Double down on the losing strategy. Yeah. Double click on copying and sort of How do you think about that?

22:29 Copying Sounds bad. You don't wanna copy someone's homework, you don't wanna copy someone's work. It's Like stealing sounds bad. But then

22:39 We juxtapose that with like Steve Jobs, he has famous quote like You know, great artists. Copy and the master's steal. Right. Like the the best artist steel.

22:50 And so In the context of Steve Jobs or the best designers who say I was inspired by We're okay with it. But But then we can see other people copy something and it's there's something icky about it, right?

23:06 And I think it comes down to There's a certain aesthetic. that we feel of Is it just copying and blatant copying, or did you add something to the conversation? Have you innovated on some important front?

23:20 Have you moved the world ahead on some front? From This concept and and the failure of tribe. I ended up getting to this uh framework at Zinga that I call proven better new. And

23:33 And it's based on My philosophy that you have winning instincts and losing ideas. And The problem is

23:42 That I see with so many products and founders. Is that they're losing for the wrong reason. So They're losing because They didn't just stick to their one isolate their one area of innovation.

23:55 They tried to Reinvent every single part of their product, and You don't have enough time to make every single part of your product Better. And

24:03 And what does better even mean? So So the concept of proven better new. Was It was much easier to implement in games where you have lots of features and functions and mechanics and components.

24:16 But it's true in any product. Consumer Enterprise business to business. I mean Slack is a great example of proven better new. It's the idea is take something proven. For this audience.

24:29 And this function and this platform. So before Slack there was a product we used at Zinga and other enterprises called Hip Chat. Which was A an enterprise chat product.

24:40 With channels and stuff like that. And So so proven means These things are proven and what's proven

24:49 you should legally copy. Like you should Don't Mess with Anything That's

24:56 proven. You may not even understand why that works. Better is Is there something about that product that ten out of ten Users Would say you could do better.

25:07 Okay, so for Zinga Poker R proven was Poker games. We didn't mess with the rules of poker. We didn't we copied

25:16 What the best You know, real money gambling and other poker games looked like the table, the dealer, the cards, the sounds. Copied it and you can move much faster. Legally copied it. You don't take someone's art or

25:29 But Better for Zingapoker was No download. Okay. Why do we have no download?

25:35 Because we had no security issue. We had no security issue'cause there was no real money. Real money gambling needed you to download something for security. So How do I know ten out of ten?

25:48 Users want no download. They vote with their clicks. You lose at least half your users every click. Every time you say click here. Half people don't click.

25:58 And You lose eighty percent when you say download this. At least. probably ninety or more, ninety percent or more in the app store. And so I knew that was better.

26:07 Like statistically proven Better. But better is usually half price or free or no dollar. It's It's something

26:17 Very Mundane and basic usually. What was Tinger Poker part of the better was you put images on too around the table. Oh, that was new, sorry. Yeah, okay. So what you I like to say to people what you think is better Is actually new. The new in Zinga Poker was pictures of

26:36 Real people, often your friends. And My philosophy Which may sound anti innovation. But it's actually in service of innovation is all new fails.

26:47 Until it finally does it. And at Zinga today, the mantra inside the company is still all new fails. If you assume all new fills. you probably won't be let down. Okay.

26:57 It doesn't mean you don't do new. Course not. It means you take a different approach to new, which is You can't try one new idea because it's going to fail. You can't try one new version of your new idea. You have to try

27:13 Many, many. Variants. Of each new idea and many new ideas. And look. And and look

27:20 in much smaller atomic units of innovation for new. Um And the best The masters of consumer products Know this.

27:31 Like With their eyes closed. proven better and new than is being able to deconstruct what's proven and what works. Cause it's not always obvious. Yes. What's the process for deconstructing something? Before you have the right To do Better new

27:46 You need to be A PhD in what's already proven. I remember it at Zinga having a roadmap meeting. With the poker team and a newly minted product manager

27:57 Proudly showed me. The new poker profile that he was going to launch. And I said, Okay. Show me.

28:05 Your PhD and profiles. Show me. What are the best? game profiles ever done and and tell me why. He's like, I don't know.

28:15 And I'm like, Well You haven't earned the right. To change The profile if you're not an expert You can't

28:23 You need to be the world's leading expert in Profiles. Poker profiles, mobile profiles, game profiles. I wanna see a war room full of profiles. you need to care at at the t at the pixel level

28:35 Before you Have the right and That's what I mean. by proven and and deconstructing and it's Deconstructing is an art form and a science and it's and we should all get better and better at it.

28:50 If you wanna be A great product maker. You Nідo The Commit to a career of deconstructing.

28:58 And just Anytime a new product comes out, like be a student of yourself in that experience and like what is it? That feels great or doesn't and We have a responsibility to our users.

29:11 Like it's sacred. And The more we take that Really Like hold that up as our

29:19 as our most important Purpose in this. the more we're gonna treat this with the level of respect and care that That it deserves. And the more they're gonna feel that care and intention in our product.

29:33 I wanna talk about the abyss a little bit. So after Tribe and before Zinga. You went into this This whole thing Can you describe How you felt, what was going on. Yeah.

29:45 At some point I started calling this place the Abyss. The way I think of the Abyss is It's this place that we go to as founders and entrepreneurs After our thing. After it dies or it's bought.

30:00 Or it's over for whatever reason. It's this Amorphous place that we are in our life that has

30:10 No structure. It's Wait. We've been On this

30:15 Hamster wheel. That of our career. Plus it's your identity, right? You're a founder, you're running this company, you're you have My dad used to call this In between successes.

30:26 He's like, You're not unemployed, you're in between successes. And But for Us as founders it's so hard this abyss is this Usually dark place because

30:36 At first it feels great. Maybe freedom. Oh my God. I've been working so hard and now I can just sleep in and I can I can do all the things I've wanted to do and couldn't. And about a week or two later, maybe a month later, it starts to dawn on you that

30:51 I may never Find gainful employment again. I mean mu gainful meaning something I want to do. I'm not gonna ever go work for anyone else. So

31:00 I'm not employable anyway. So I don't know if I'll ever come out of this abyss. I've been in this abyss sometimes for multiple years. And it doesn't mean you're not working on projects and things.

31:12 But you haven't found your thing. You haven't found the thing. And it's Maybe not the level of You're you're not working on something with as much passion and conviction as

31:23 The thing that you built that worked. Or went public or Didn't work, but you loved it. And you don't know if you'll ever find that again. Do you think these periods like this abyss is necessary for what comes next in life? I'd like to think it's not because they're long and painful.

31:41 And I'd love to just have a short break and then dive into the next thing and have it work. But I don't know. I personally don't know how to avoid it.

31:50 I think that The future state of all this is that we all get to live in some way like Elon. The the ultimate vibe coding is life of speed of play and it's that You get to have an idea. And bring it to life in some way.

32:03 For Almost no capital. And get to instantiate your idea. Not with billions of capital. So

32:11 I do think that There are going to be more and more outs. from this abyss and it's gonna be easier in a lot of ways. But I think the abyss Is For sure there for me, and I think it will be for most

32:23 Founders. And so All we can do is Embrace it. And

32:30 have more process. That's where my book of life is helpful. I find Finding lots of small things to work on that Or Uh baby

32:40 Going to unlock The passion thing. I I got to zinga, I was in the abyss. And I was I had just

32:48 Side projects. That One of which was a poker game. I was dabbling. I was

32:54 Doing them all wrong. I was not intense. I have a terrible work ethic. Until I don't. You're either all in or kinda like dabbling. Yes, I just dabble and I'm terrible. I just

33:06 I'm like I know I should be putting time on this, but I'm not. I'm not drawn to it. What does it look like when you're all in? It's Fierce. I think that that my all in has always been underestimated. So

33:19 We'll get to like When I life when I started Zinga, but The VCs didn't believe Like I'd already been successful and made all this money and they just were like

33:29 This is a lifestyle thing. I don't buy that you're gonna really work hard like a twenty five year old or a thirty year old. Because you were forty when you started zinga. When I was all in with Zinga I was a maniac. I mean I just I didn't want to stop, I didn't want to sleep.

33:46 I it's all I wanted to do all the time. And it was the ultimate high because There was always something more I could do. So you are in the abyss and you come out of it and you have I mean by all objective standards, all this money and success. And you want to go do it again.

34:02 Why did you do that with Singer? Part of what I deeply realized in that abyss. As founders. We may or may not

34:13 be faced with having to answer our why. So My why they got to is like What I can offer the world is Building

34:23 Products that move people. And And I'm going to be the most happy doing that. And I don't know if I'll ever get to do it again.

34:32 But I'm going to Try to get there. And I I was looking for this way to get back. To building again. Um, even though tribe was an abject failure.

34:43 And I got there, um With this little Poker game. And it was really fun and it it started to take off. in ways right away.

34:53 And it was one of these like lightning in a bottle things that It just worked and everything about it. Worked. I think I've gone through this like success beatdown, success beatdown.

35:05 And I think I had to be so beat down. With tribe. to B so unambitious. to start Zinga. What was the big idea with Zinga?

35:16 Well I love these markets. And they're all around us where We think they're mature. And over

35:24 And they haven't even started yet. And that was search before Google You know, Google was the fifty sixth search engine. It was a mature slow growth business. Google made us reimagine what search could be in our lives.

35:37 And obviously Turned it into a trillion dollar Company value. And games was the same thing in two thousand seven. The whole video game industry worldwide was like twenty three billion dollars.

35:51 It was mature. Not interesting. And yet There was I believe this latent demand because people like me, I I would have played games if they were made

36:03 accessible for me and I didn't have to go be on someone's couch or whatever it required. And so I thought games. Had this This

36:13 opportunity to be Some one of the most important activities on the web. I started cle saying play. Could be this. one of the core things that we do in our digital life stack or every day.

36:26 And And I think That what we got right with social gaming. Was

36:34 Make it for the mass market, not for gamers. And give you enough value in it that an adult would give themselves permission to play. And the value came from Asking very little of you.

36:47 So we're gonna ask very little time from you. And then giving you something of value in your life, not just entertainment. So not just being dead empty calories. But actually You're here for this cocktail party to do social networking.

37:01 What if In our game. We give you a new dimension. to your social networking. that can improve a relationship in your life.

37:10 We're not gonna hit that every day, every session. But what if we get there once a week or once a month? Or once ever. And that became how we thought of our innovation. And and then the second thing that came into play for social gaming with us was virtual goods, user pay.

37:26 I remember actually When I got to pitch. Our poker game to Steve Jobs. When they're just opening up the app store. And I showed him the demo of our poker game.

37:37 And He yelled it. his number two guy Scott Forestall and said, I told you I don't want to see fake demo where And Scott.

37:46 You're not supposed to show anything fake or You know, this is supposed to be live. I like Steve. These these are real users from MySpace from Facebook.

37:56 Type something in the chat if you dare. But I have no Fucking idea what they're gonna say to you. And then he was like,

38:02 Oh, that's cool. And And then I thought, okay, maybe I could like Pitch him on user pay. They didn't have user pay when they launched the app store.

38:11 There was no in app purchase. There was a paid app store and a free app store and you'd have to buy A version of our poker with chips. And so I tried to pitch him on in that purchase.

38:22 We were One of the first companies in the Western world to do this in a purchase thing, this virtual goods thing. And so that was the other part of the rocket ship that we got to mass market. We made this Something useful for

38:36 Adults And we had this user pay model. That could monetize your engagement instead of trying to show you an ad and getting you to leave the game to go somewhere else.

38:47 It actually the more engaged you were, the more likely you were to, you know, spend money. We were cash flow positive. Right away. I I've never had that before. I put up three hundred and fifty K.

38:58 To start the company. And at that point to be like forty one and starting a consumer app company and doing it on Facebook It's like there was no dignity in it. Like I think people were embarrassed for me. It was like Mark, really? Like

39:13 So much you could do in the world, like Go be a venture capitalist, you know, like all my friends had done, or You've already been successful. You don't have anything you don't have to prove anything. Why are you doing this? But you have a chip on your shoulder. Yeah, yes, I I'd say that

39:27 I did and and have and I chip on my shoulder that I knew I could make these world class apps. I knew I could make What I call an internet treasure. What what

39:41 John Dore called an internet treasure, and that was my why. Soon after I started Zinga, John Dore and Bing said to me, the greatest thing you could do is build an internet treasure. Okay, and that's what they call it Google and eventually like the iPhone. And And what I attached the tagline I attached was it's a service you can't remember life before. Or imagine life without.

40:01 And I love that vision. I said, Yes, yes, yes, that's what that's what I wanna do. And But I said. Okay. This time I had a chip on my shoulder.

40:09 I had like the multiple bad experiences with VCs. I made this way harder for myself. When it should have been easy at this point to raise money for Zinga. It was cash flow positive. I was a multi-time You know, I was a two for three founder. Like one sold, one public, one failed, right?

40:27 And I made it so much harder on myself. But for For a reason,'cause I said I'm going to make sure everyone's aligned On this Chip, this road trip.

40:36 And I think that's one mistake we make as founders and Another uh Quote I like to say. Uh is Know your goal or suffer a death by a thousand compromises.

40:48 Because What I had done my whole career and most of us do is compromise to get that next engineer, CTO. Investor.

40:57 You put a jerk on your board because you impressed with their firm name. and the valuation and all your friends are gonna be impressed and it's gonna be so much easier. We make all these compromises and contort ourselves And eventually wake up.

41:11 And it's a company we don't want to work at. You're like, Well I guess I did what was right for the company, but now it's not the right place for me. And you leave. I'm like no. You're the most valuable player. If it's not the right place for you, we've got to be.

41:22 Fa you failed. The first round I raised Was Impossibly hard. And and I got caught in between a fight.

41:31 In a fight in between Peter Thiel and Sequoia. And he had just started Founders Fun and Sequoia didn't like that and They were mad at each other. And Peter.

41:43 had said, I'm gonna fund I want five million. He's like, I'll fund it. And I said great and And then I went And I had this meeting of Sequoia. And it was really funny meeting because

41:54 I was asking for twenty million pre and we were doing two hundred thousand a month in Free cash flow. And they said, How do you justify that valuation? Which at that time was a lot. And I said, If you care about this valuation, this isn't the right deal for you because this is either gonna be a multi billion dollar company or nothing.

42:11 And It w just won't matter. And now that everyone thinks that way, call options, but I was like If you're worried about

42:19 Whether it's fifteen pre or twenty pre Don't play because you're looking for an outcome that you're never gonna see. That we're never selling this company for two hundred million. is either like zero or multi billion. And

42:33 They like that. But Then there was this fight between them and Peter. And then they both ended up Not investing.

42:41 Or and then we were damaged goods. And then it was like out of a scene from Silicon Valley, the show and I started meeting with all these second tier VCs. And eventually Fred Wilson Uh fun to me, but terrible terms like fifteen million pre and But

42:56 But I love Fred and He negotiated a hard deal'cause he could, but And the funniest thing is I never used the dollar I raised the whole time zing it. Was Farnville the first product that really just instantly took off like crazy.

43:10 Well, there was like rocket boosters. Okay. And each one. Went into a bigger you know, outer orbit. So it started with Zinga Poker and then Yeah Mafia Wars poker. They were They were big.

43:23 But nothing like what we saw with Farmville. Farmville was the first time That we hit this like cons mass market consumer tipping point where Lots of people knew about mafia wars, but with Farmville

43:37 We hit this density on the social network and the feed with Facebook that Something I think like twenty percent of Facebook users were playing the game and so it felt like a hundred percent were. And that then made it like

43:52 What everybody He was in the Zeitgeist. And That's when social gaming and zinga kind of

43:59 Left Left orbit. I wanted to see if an AI version of me could actually hold its own. So I built one with Heygen. Let's see if it was paying attention. Hi, Shane.

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44:25 Thinking in bets. resulting. A good decision can have a bad outcome. A bad decision can get lucky. Judge the process, not the result. You taught me that one.

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44:51 Already used by thirty million people, including eighty five percent of the Fortune one hundred. Your first three videos are free at heygen.com. That's H E G E N dot com. Ever hit three PM and feel like your brain just quit? For a lot of people, that's not caffeine or sleep. It's electrolytes, and water alone won't fix it. That's why I drink Element every day after lunch. Zero sugar, no dodgy ingredients, just a real dose of sodium, potassium, and magnesium.

45:23 I know you're all thinking electrolytes are for athletes, but you don't have to be an athlete to benefit from it. And it tastes great. Stay sharp in the afternoon and grab a free eight count sample pack with any purchase at drinkelement.com slash tkp. That's drinkelmnt.com slash tkp. You had a near death experience with Facebook and Zinga. Can you walk me through what happened there and how you navigated then? The entire Facebook experience for Zinga was a near death experience.

45:59 And Not just us, for everyone in their app ecosystem. It was the least stable app ecosystem ever imagined or invented. And many companies Did die in it.

46:11 Most Um There's only two companies. that ever actually survived out of it and was Spotify and Zinga. Um

46:19 And I'd say my experience in building Zinga and the reason I kept raising money even though we're profitable was I felt like I was on A five story high unicycle.

46:31 And I kept adding another story. And it was like Whoa. It's And we didn't have

46:39 Any stable there was not a stable platform. We didn't have a stable agreement between the companies. They Could And would Change their platform.

46:48 all the time. And some low level product manager Who wants to promote events The whole left rail of their homepage where all the apps were. Like

46:59 They'd be in a m behind a more button. And like Oh my God, nobody can find us anymore. You know, or It just always be moving. They had to move fast and break things.

47:09 Most of what they broke was all of their app ecosystem. I would walk their hallways every week trying to convince them that games and apps were this great business for them and they didn't believe it. They didn't think that was What their platform was for. And then eventually they did.

47:26 And it wasn't even the thirty percent of revenues That was the problem. It was They They walked in and handed us terms.

47:35 That we couldn't Except we would have been a captive company. If we had accepted these terms that they And they threatened you too. Yeah, and they said uh you have till They gave it on Friday and they said you have till Monday to sign this agreement. Or we're gonna

47:50 Take down your apps. Which was They're right. Um, and that could have happened The whole way through.

47:57 And who knows what would happen because You know, at this point we were huge on their platform. And at the point that they went public a year later, Um they had to put in their risk factors like the zynga dependency'cause

48:11 We were like twenty percent of their page views and ten percent of their revenues. And a huge portion of the time spent on the app. Yes, yes. Huge. Yeah. And I don't know if they'd shut us down and

48:23 People had to navigate to, you know, zinga dot com. Uh We didn't want to find out. Well, It's really terrifying. And they probably didn't want to find out if you left, right? Like it was like so you had this sort of weird situation. Yeah.

48:36 He said the fastest way to get to a winning idea is to sort of build a failure machine. So how do you determine whether your ideas are winning or not? And course correct, because you might have the right instinct, but like how do we touch reality and get feedback from the world? I got to failure machines through a lot of failure. Painful slow failure.

48:58 I'd say When I when I came back to Zinga as CEO for the second time and I had to move fast to make this turnaround happen. I was Going to start my fight with our core franchises.

49:11 And the CEO before me had bet on all these new games and this whole slate of games. Fail. And our franchises had been neglected. And I said, I'm gonna go back to words with friends. People love that.

49:25 I want them to fall in love with that game. Again. The game when I came back was projected to do Uh

49:34 From a hundred and twenty million in revenues to seventy nine million in revenues. Um in the next twelve. And everyone's saying let's pull resources off, let's send the game to our team in India to shutter it. I said no, we're gonna This is the beginning of the turnaround.

49:49 We're going to turn around this game and then the whole company. So I started meeting with that team. every week. We started going through there App reviews and ratings.

50:00 It's amazing how dumb this shit is. But The ratings had fallen to like the mid threes from the high fours. So we would read the ratings. I

50:09 started and ended every meeting with What will our players thank us for? And the team thought that was like an unfair question. Eventually we put a neon sign in the lobby that said, What will our players thank us for? And

50:23 That might sound like a weird place to get to to say, How did I get to a failure machine, but It's the right place to start is that What's the intuition, what's the instinct? What what I know anecdotally is is broken. Then how do I get to my ideas and rank them? I don't just do anything. The team had been working on this

50:41 Fast play. Now the problem was that this team was Um a bunch of Mostly twenty something dudes. making game a game for middle aged women.

50:52 That's the first problem, right? So they wanted fast play. They said this game is too slow. We want more adrenaline. That's not why middle aged women were playing Words of friends or can he crush saga they actually wanted a Zen moment, a me moment. They wanted escape.

51:07 They'd spent six months on this. Hundreds of engineering days. And they never really tested the top of the funnel and I said. Mm. What percent of our players clicked on this?

51:18 And I used to say we need like twenty five percent minimum. And they said well We think we think we can get to five percent. Like so The best you can get to is five percent.

51:30 What did you get in your click test? And they said, Well, we're currently at about one percent. So Ninety nine percent of Words of Friends players Say no fucking way when you show them this game and you're building this game. I'm like That's

51:44 A crime. That's That's a crime to our players. So I said We need to start at the top of the funnel. We need to go to like

51:52 What will they click on? What do they want? What are they gonna hug us for? And it's probably much smaller things. They don't want a different game. They came here for this game. And the team to their credit, and V, who ran the team. Who ran on to become a terrific

52:07 Uh product maker and he ran Product for Reddit. He shifted gears. And they did.

52:14 Start. Test click testing. Every day hundreds of ideas starting with What will our core audience thank us for? And they got to

52:25 one idea which was uh weekly achievements. And they realize that These people playing want to feel like they're getting better every week and

52:35 A huge percentage of players Clicked on it, engaged with it. And because of V and the team And committing to this failure machine, this testing machine first.

52:47 Game did a hundred and eighty million in revenues. Did a hundred million in So it did more Dollars in contribution.

52:55 than they were projecting with doing revenues. And and that was the beginning of the whole turnaround. So I believe in failure machines. And and I would say.

53:04 How does that play out today? I see too many founders get stuck. In what I call the MVP trap. And and I love Eric Reese. And he gave us this whole body of work around the lean startup.

53:16 And And he and I have talked about this. And I know by MVP. That he meant He meant

53:23 We have to move fast. And it was a mantra to move fast. But unfortunately Too many teams waste time getting to a minimum viable product that they can put out in the market.

53:36 And we don't have time anymore for that. We need a failure machine at the top of the funnel. We need to get to A minimum idea state. That gets vibe coded.

53:46 However the fuck you get to something That gets the idea across. So that people say nah. It's the worst thing people can say is nah. No is better.

53:57 Nah, is like ah. It's a seven. Yeah, it's a it's a five to seven. Exactly. And so

54:04 We've got to We gotta get to a new standard, and I think we are with AI. Where we We can Get to

54:15 the gist of this and and I like to say build it wrong before we don't have time to build it right. Don't fucking build it right. Build it fucking wrong. And build it fast. And don't make it viable.

54:27 Viable is the bad word. Let's take viable off the table. Because we gotta Because it's probably wrong. So we have time to build viable.

54:35 Let's build wrong. And see if it proves right. Then let's build right. What does founder mode mean to you? Founder mode is Why we became

54:45 Founders in the first place. We were all expert witnesses. We were all In one way or another in these jobs where we are closest to the answer and furthest from the decision. We're all suffering under the adults. And now we get to be

54:59 The founder. And hopefully you've positioned yourself to be a complete founder and have total agency. And not be now under a new boss. Your VCs, your board.

55:11 Your employees that you're now Like working for in some false democracy. And I I like to say to founders You've gone through so much to be here. You owe it to yourself to bet on your instinct.

55:24 You owe it yourself to lose because of yourself. It's your right. To be wrong. You as a founder owe it to yourself. To control your own destiny.

55:33 And Take half the valuation if it's all of the control. And it means You have the right. to do it your way doesn't mean you have the right to be a jerk.

55:44 And if you are, people will Leave. You've earned this right to Have your own style. And not a not have a CEO coach that's gonna like

55:55 chop your balls off or homogenise you. To be like What You're supposed to be

56:03 quirkiness and style in you. And you have your own Betha Company moments. And the more You have that rope. probably the more you're going to want to learn because you're gonna be like, Holy shit.

56:15 I could fuck this up. And no one's gonna stop me. And that's awesome. In retrospect, you know, going through my own founder mode the whole way and I th thought I was clear From the beginning with Zinga.

56:26 And then I gave it up. I there was a moment where I gave up my voting control. Even no Even before that. there was a moment in in the fall of twenty twelve After we were public

56:39 And We were like a two dollar stock, we were being sued. We had made this one acquisition of Uh the company that made uh draw something which was the hottest

56:51 Game in the app store. Until it wasn't That was like the two hundred million dollar acquisition OK Pop or whatever it was. OMG Pop. O M G Pop, yeah. And And it failed.

57:02 Right at the time Supercell came out and they had Heyday There was like a top. game not making a lot of money yet and they had Clash of clans. That was like number twenty five or eighteen and it but it was

57:14 Amazing. And I had a handshake with Ilka the founder and CEO to buy the company for four hundred million in cash. And I went back to m we easily had the money. And I went back to my board.

57:26 And they said, Until you show us you can manage what you've got You can't buy anything else. So it was very patronizing. The board had gone from like You walk on water to allow like

57:38 Question everything you do. And I had voting control. They went to The lawyer who was

57:45 Actually I learned later, not my lawyer, he was the lawyer to the company. And I said, Can't I just Override them, I have voting control. And he said

57:55 Technically yes, really no. He said you could fire all the board members and put in place who you want. And they might vote for your deal. And then you'll for sure be sued personally. For

58:09 I don't know why. But he said I'd be sued personally for that. you'd be personally liable. And I was like okay, okay. I won't do it.

58:16 Yeah, and Supercell made five hundred million in profit the next year. Um And that was like our Instagram moment, like when Facebook bought Instagram. And It would have just been a different trajectory.

58:27 And if I had Had the conviction, Elon would have just said Fine, sue me. Um I didn't have Elon's balls. There was moments along the way that I didn't I didn't really, really stick to my founder mode. I

58:39 But But I I love the concept and It's my My own coaching and myself to

58:46 To have even more Belief in myself. What does false democracy mean? It's false to believe that a company is a democracy.

58:55 Where I ran The company was what I called a democratic dictatorship. And I said I want everyone Everyone's voice to be heard and then I'll be the single vote. And I think that's the way a company should be run.

59:07 I think There's one CEO, there's one chef. I think a good CEO is going to seek out Honesty the truths from everywhere. And

59:18 Hear from everybody. And then they're going to make the decision. And they're not going to make the decision because it's most popular in the company. What would you say, like when I talk to people who work in organizations, a lot of them hate their bosses. Do you think that comes from

59:35 Unclear objectives or where do you think that comes from? Mm, so many places. I don't really believe in management, but I believe in these That we can have some Principles or hacks or things we do that

59:48 are kind of in place of having to manage. I don't like as every day I manage the day of work. And I think no one should really have to manage or or feel managed. But

59:58 Two things I'll say. early on when I was building my second company, support.com I I didn't know how to scale. Past. We were thirty five people.

1:00:10 I wrote I put a sticky note on the wall. I wrote everyone's names. And I said, By the end of the week, write down what your CEO of And it should be something Everyone else understands and believes important.

1:00:21 I said everyone's gonna be a CEO. Everyone here needs to own something that That matters. And that way we all know what you're doing and We can all

1:00:31 Get more done. And it really worked and people liked it. So I learned this idea like oh If I give people way more responsibility Than they think they deserve.

1:00:41 They're going to Be a little scared. And they're gonna fill some adrenaline and they're gonna probably really like their job. And not like it because of the title or the money or the accolades, but actually

1:00:53 Be challenged. And so I learned that people like that. That was one lesson that I carried on and it Zinga we had this. Uh

1:01:01 value on the wall be a CEO own outcomes. The other thing I learned early on But The way engineers hate their jobs and and hate their bosses. Is

1:01:12 What I call the moral contract. And when I first started working with engineers These guys Scott and Kadir. I saw how much the engineers get screwed in these companies. They're the ones who Maybe it'll change, but I don't think so. They're the ones who have to work the most hours.

1:01:27 And They constantly get screwed because They build this whole product. And then The COVID.

1:01:35 Doesn't the salesperson doesn't sell it. The CEO says You know what? I know I asked you for that, but that was wrong. Now we need something else. But they just took this hill, they think, they kill themselves to do this.

1:01:47 You owe it to them. The same w way we Oh, our you we have responsibility to our users. We have a responsibility to our engineers or our builders in the factory building.

1:01:58 And And I said there's there should be a moral contract. If you're going To take that hill. I'm gonna show you that I am going to work just as hard Two

1:02:09 unlock value out of the work you did. And that stuck with me. And I said, If I can show you that I'm in the trenches with you And I'm really

1:02:18 valuing your work and doing something I think you're gonna feel better and you're going to do More work the next time. How do you separate people who We're along for the ride. 'Cause you know, out of the first hundred people a company hires

1:02:33 They're gonna have some mishires. So how do you separate people who were along for the ride and then take credit for it versus people who actually contributed it, made it happen? I think that you owe it to in that moral contract to your good employees To fire. The weak people.

1:02:49 And they're not bad people. They may be Really smart. They are not effective. in your organization. They are not taking hills.

1:02:58 They I don't care if they're working more or less hours. harder, less But You have

1:03:03 There's backbone people That are Making this thing work? And the more that you act like socialism, communism False democracies.

1:03:14 The more you're You're crushing the culture of meritocracy. I don't believe in paying your dues. And the more that you See people in organization Who are getting

1:03:26 promotions and title and pay That it's not obvious to everybody else. They deserve the more. I think you're eroding You know, the the real culture. Do you think one of the byproducts of that is the politics start to take over internally too? So many things, yeah, that lead to politics. And

1:03:44 One lesson I learned. That really I I hate Management. So I don't do one on ones.

1:03:50 told me that Jeff Bezos wouldn't ever do one on ones. Because it created politics. And it was a huge waste of his time. I was like, I love that. No one on ones.

1:04:01 And the whole point. in style and politics in a company is as long as you're consistent Everyone shapes around it and they don't care. They're like, Oh Mark doesn't do one on ones. Don't take it personally.

1:04:13 So I was like, I'm never doing one on ones. And if anyone did finally get my ear and complain about someone else. You stop, you call the other person, and you say, Hey Shane's complaining about you.

1:04:25 I think you should come up and talk to him. And you walk away. And then Everyone knows There's no politics. They stopped complaining to you. Yeah, they stopped doing it to me. I do with my kids too. Double click on how you learned about that though, like because that sounds counterintuitive. And a lot of people are doing it now.

1:04:42 Um Jensen's doing it. Jeff did it. Like what did you learn about it? How did it start? I was lucky enough. to meet Bing Gordon, who What's

1:04:53 at EA they were like our arch enemy in the beginning. He was part of the founding team there. And he became uh an advisor, board member

1:05:03 Uh coach Godfather to my kids. And And he was on the board of Amazon for like twenty years, wasn't he? Yeah. Yeah. And he

1:05:13 gave me all this brilliant wisdom indirectly from Jeff Bezos. So he's like Let me tell you what Jeff does. And I was like, Oh, I'd love that. I'd be taking notes of It was like

1:05:23 What did you learn? Well, one of the best things I got was And eventually I got to sit down with Jeff and he took like he generously spent two hours explaining to me his concept of tech assistance, which Originally Andy Grove

1:05:37 was the first one to have a tech assistant and then Bill Gates and then Jeff Bezos. And I learned about it and I loved it. And it's this non scalable way to scale your organization.

1:05:48 And it's through like passing your vampire. That's what Inside Zynga they called it Pincus's vampire blood. What he did that I started to do is You Pick someone.

1:05:58 From the organization who's promising. I usually pick the people who didn't fit in. The smart misfits. And They become your tech assistants.

1:06:08 Which is not your chief of staff. Not your executive assistant. They are like Working They're your shadow. They go to every meeting you go to.

1:06:18 And they are working on just At least the way I interpret it, they're working on just product stuff for you. So if there's things. But you wanna double click on side projects, things you want to research more.

1:06:29 They work on that. And they mainly just go to every meeting with you and they absorb. You're doing these meetings anyway. It becomes this really efficient way To train up a Mini Me.

1:06:40 And in fact I believe every C staff member And Amazon was at one point Jeff Bezos' tech assistant. And Andy Jassy was And the CEO.

1:06:50 So it over time was actually an efficient way big leaders, you know, product leaders. And

1:07:00 So I started doing that. And And all my tech assistants. were great and went on to be very successful as entrepreneurs and

1:07:11 This kid Ian Cinnamon Who Was like I fought I personally fought with Meta to hire him, he was like the star recruit from MIT.

1:07:20 And I said, I'm gonna personally manage your career at Zinga. And he joined I put'em in poker. And within a year poker was trying to Fire am from the company.

1:07:30 And I met with them and It was organ rejection'cause he was too entrepreneurial. It was like me at Bain. Right. And I said fine. plucking out you're gonna just work for me. And

1:07:40 And he worked for me and then I left eventually and did an incubator. He worked for me at that. Uh then he went off on his own and now he has Um I wish I had invested in it. He has a really successful like multi billion dollar satellite launch company.

1:07:53 What do you think we're gonna look back on and say is obvious today that we don't quite see in real time or something that you think differently about? Anything that can be free on the internet will be free. Anything that Can be less clicks. Less friction. will be less friction.

1:08:07 I think voice is one of those places. And I know Read Hoffman had a great Post about being voice pilled. About

1:08:17 I don't know, beginning of last year and voice became a meme. really hot beginning last year and then it died down. But And and I think a lot of these new devices that people are working on are all based on a voice

1:08:29 Interface. But I do think That voice Will be that The biggest thing that'll feel obvious that

1:08:37 We wasted so much time. Typing and texting. And reading And I think we're going to turn on our our ears and our voices a lot more. We always end

1:08:50 these interviews with the same question, which is what is success for you? Success for me is I don't think it's A point in time or an achievement. I would like to be spend my time building

1:09:04 Products that I'm addicted to I find meaning in And That Millions of other people.

1:09:12 find meaning and and and surrounded by Um great. talented people who are Bringing their best.

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