If I was 30 with $0, I'd build this - Mark Pincus (Farmville founder)

1. 0:00 – 3:00

   $0- $38M in 7 months

   1. SPSam Parr0:00

      You don't have a lot of money, but you have access to AI. Out loud, let's go through this framework

   2. MPMark Pincus0:05

      I almost wanna turn this to my whiteboards

   3. SPSam Parr0:07

      Awesome, great.

   4. SPShaan Puri0:08

      [laughs] This is like showing us nudes for, for My First Million.

   5. MPMark Pincus0:10

      [laughs]

   6. SPShaan Puri0:11

      This is like exactly what we like.

   7. SPSam Parr0:19

      So all right, you've done everything. You built a, a $10 billion company. You're, I, I think a seed investor in Facebook, or early investor in Facebook. One thing you haven't done is sitting still. I'm looking at your biography and your timeline. It seems like you start a company, it either sells or fails, and six months later you have a new company. And you've done that, like eight times it feels like. Do you ever sit still?

   8. MPMark Pincus0:41

      I'm working on sitting still. My partner Hillary, we said she's like a tree and I'm like a hummingbird. And so I'm, I'm trying to be more like, like a redwood tree.

   9. SPShaan Puri0:51

      Wh- why is that? Why not just embrace your nature of just being this extremely generative, creative guy? Well, who, who cares? Why, why be the tree? Be the bird.

   10. MPMark Pincus0:58

       Well, I think it's good to have a balance. I'm trying to... I'm not trying to sit still from a creative business work perspective, but in home life, I think it's more, it's good balance. You know, I've added like morning practice with breathing and meditation. So I definitely have extreme ADD, and so, but I, but I do better when I focus, but they both work really well together. You know, my daughter Carmen has dyslexia and ADD, and we tried Adderall and some of those things, and she liked it at first, and then I was like, "Wait, your brain is beautiful the way it is. I don't wanna sh- normalize your brain and standardize it. Let's figure out what works best for your brain," you know? So it's a little, I'm a little bit like that with myself of just saying the way I work, the w- I call my investment in Incubator, um, Work Play Ventures because I love this kind of triangulation between work, play, and usefulness to the world. And that's why this book took so long and was difficult because it took me a long time to find the, the fun kind of narrative and voice for the book.

   11. SPSam Parr2:12

       One of the cool parts is that you, uh, you're very transparent about money, and that was pretty cool. I think you were in your late 20s or so when you sold Freeloader. I think you said you made, like two or $3 million. You sold it for ei- 38 million. You walked away, I think, with three or five. You can correct me if I'm wrong.

   12. MPMark Pincus2:30

       Five after taxes.

   13. SPSam Parr2:32

       Five after taxes. And, and-

   14. MPMark Pincus2:33

       I had to pay short-term gains 'cause it was so fast

   15. SPSam Parr2:35

       ... it was like a 10-month or something like that acquisition-

   16. MPMark Pincus2:38

       Seven months, yeah

   17. SPSam Parr2:38

       ... which is crazy. And then you wrote a $38,000 check to Facebook. I think you said that that would be worth $6 billion now.

   18. SPShaan Puri2:46

       [laughs]

   19. SPSam Parr2:47

       How often are you doing the math as to how much that would be worth had you not sold? [laughs]

   20. SPShaan Puri2:52

       Is that part of your morning meditation-

   21. SPSam Parr2:54

       Yeah

   22. SPShaan Puri2:54

       ... you calculate what nine million shares of Facebook-

   23. SPSam Parr2:56

       $6 billion

   24. SPShaan Puri2:57

       ... is worth today?

   25. SPSam Parr2:57

       Mm.

   26. SPShaan Puri2:58

       [laughs]

2. 3:00 – 16:51

   if you pick the right body of water, you don't have to have the right boat

   1. MPMark Pincus3:00

      I... It's amazing. I, I say in the book that it is so true in this life, like some of the patterns that I recognize is if you pick the right body of water, it, you don't have to pick the right boat. But if you pick the wrong body of water, the best boat isn't gonna help you. And-

   2. SPSam Parr3:17

      Hmm

   3. MPMark Pincus3:17

      ... it's just been so true, and the internet obviously was the right body of water. Now it's like, it's like the whole thing. Um, you can't even call it a body of water. And you know, AI is like that now. And there's so many instances where I sold something that I was early and it became, it would've become worth a lot. I mean, but even in selling my first company, Freeloader, you know, we said no to Yahoo. They had, I think, 35 employees. They'd been public, like six weeks. They were worth 800 million. We would've had 5% of the company. I would've had 1.5%. I remember all these numbers for sure. But I, I wrote on the back of an envelope, like if I got fired in year one, which deal would be better, if I got fired in year two? I knew I'd get fired, and-

   4. SPShaan Puri4:05

      [laughs]

   5. MPMark Pincus4:05

      ... so I just was trying to figure out, well, at what point, how long would I have to make it before the Yahoo deal is better, you know? And I thought I'd have to make it at least, like two to three years, and that seemed unlikely. So, but I was wrong. Even one year would've been amazing. And-

   6. SPSam Parr4:24

      And, and that check, was that 10... So that was 10% of your net worth you put into Facebook seed round. Is that right? Is that math right?

   7. MPMark Pincus4:32

      No, no, no, no. 38,000.

   8. SPShaan Puri4:33

      No, no.

   9. MPMark Pincus4:34

      I, I will say-

   10. SPSam Parr4:34

       Oh, 38,000. Sorry.

   11. MPMark Pincus4:35

       No.

   12. SPSam Parr4:35

       I was thinking 500,000.

   13. MPMark Pincus4:37

       No, I, the, there's nothing brilliant about my Facebook investment, and I get kind of bugged when I see people on their investment resumes put that they were, you know, a seed in or early in... There were only three seed investors in Facebook. It was me, Reid, and Peter Thiel. But you would've, anyone listening to this would've made the same investment that I did if they could've. You know, it's probably more impressive that I was in a place that, you know, Zuckerberg and Sean Parker walked into my office than that I, you know, decided to invest.

   14. SPShaan Puri5:13

       So, so tell, tell the story of how that happened because I feel like the, P- Peter Thiel gets a lot of, uh, recognition for that, and even Reid kind of, I think, introduced or facilitated the meeting. I feel like you're not l- put included in that story as much. So as a historian of Silicon Valley, I wanna know, what, what was going on then? So can you take us back? How did that investment happen? What was the, what was going on? I think Sean Parker was your intern at one point-

   15. MPMark Pincus5:34

       Yeah

   16. SPShaan Puri5:34

       ... and he was a teenager.

   17. MPMark Pincus5:35

       Yeah, Sean has this amazing nose for viral consumer hits and, and he found Freeloader really early and wrote me this whole long email and said he was a Unix programmer and he'd come work for free for the summer. He, I think he was 16. And I said, "Sure."

   18. SPShaan Puri5:54

       Wow.

   19. MPMark Pincus5:54

       And he came, and he was awesome. I don't know if he actually knew how to program Unix or not. I still haven't actually ever gone back and asked him. But, but he, you know, he was- A force even then, and, and then he started Napster with the other Shawn Fanning, and emailed me about Napster and just said, "We turn on these couple servers, this music sharing, and it's every server is full and we need more money, and we need $100,000," and I just mailed them a check for 100,000 'cause again, that was just a no-brainer. You always send that check. But, you know, and Napster could've been gigantic, and I think that was the beginning of the whole social media, you know, wave and revolution, but just a bunch of years, a few years earlier. And then [upbeat music]

   20. SPShaan Puri6:45

       Hey, I wanna tell you about something pretty cool. We have a database of all of the business ideas that have been discussed on this podcast. So hundreds of episodes the team at HubSpot went through, they pulled out all the simple, relatable, interesting, profitable, uh, ideas that we have brainstormed, and they're all available for download for free. Just click the link in the description below. Thank you to our friends at HubSpot for sponsoring this podcast and putting together this free resource for you guys. Back to the show. [upbeat music]

   21. MPMark Pincus7:11

       And Reid and I had met while he was at PayPal around politics, and then we both kind of came back to consumer internet in oh, 2002. It was a small number of people. We both wrote the first checks into Friendster, which we just thought was, like, a useful experiment. And then, uh, it started to blow up in February of '03, like a month after it launched. And I guess it was in '04 that Sean walked Zuckerberg into my office at Tribe and said, "You gotta see this. I just joined this company." And, and I'd heard about the Facebook, you know? I'd heard they were in a couple of schools. He said, "We have a wait list for all the rest of the schools or, that wanna be, want us to launch," and, you know, but we launch a school. It sounded just like Napster, but he's like, "We launch a school. We get 80% the first week. The next week we get the other 20%." And Zuckerberg was just sitting here, this... He really looked like he was, like, 15 or 16. I think he was 19. And he was in, like, basketball shorts, you know, Hawaiian flip-flops, had his feet up on my table, and gave me a card-

   22. SPShaan Puri8:25

       [laughs]

   23. MPMark Pincus8:25

       ... that said, you know, "I'm CEO, bitch." And-

   24. SPShaan Puri8:28

       [laughs]

   25. MPMark Pincus8:29

       ... and it just... He was just from another world. He was just so unapologetic, and it just didn't matter because his metrics were amazing. Like, between 60 and 80% of his users logged on every day or just stayed logged on. He had nailed trust. You know, every single person, when I looked at their profile, had their cell phone, and at the time, it connected to their computer. They had this product called Wirehog, I think, that would, was like Napster that would upload every file and music and things from your computer. And, and I was, I was failing so miserably with Tribe that-

   26. SPShaan Puri9:07

       Well, T- Tribe was also a social network product, right?

   27. MPMark Pincus9:08

       Yeah, no, Tribe was before Facebook. It was, it was one of the first three social networks, and, and I like to say that a part of the, the deep, painful scars and learning that went into Zynga and went into this book, and I'm hoping to save other founders from doing, 'cause it's, it really is like a friend who's just in a bad relationship, and you're like, "He's just not that into you." Like-

   28. SPShaan Puri9:35

       [laughs]

   29. MPMark Pincus9:35

       ... "Stop it." Like, "Just have some dignity." [laughs] Like, you could go back and shake me when I was doing Tribe and say, "Mark, you're, there's so much, like, in this. Stop just sticking heroically to this one idea that's too complicated, got trust wrong, and, and it's not working." And there were probably 10 social networks that launched in that era, and eight were successful. Like, you know Bebo was around that time, you know, Michael Birch. He was, he sold for a lot of money to AOL, as you know. Um, Tagged, later MySpace. And I managed to fail with Tribe, like, 'cause I just stuck to one idea when, when everything was working. And so by the time Zuckerberg and Sean walked in my office, I knew enough to invest. I should have copied them. I mean, I should have said, "Okay, they've nailed trust. I don't necessarily have to do the .edu," although it was brilliant and I could have done it. But I think, like so many founders, I was stuck in this pride and, and, and didn't do... You know, Peter Thiel would call that immoral arbitrage, right? That we don't feel good about that, right? But someone's gonna copy it, and, and did, and will, and, and now that's, you know, unapologetically part of Zuckerberg's playbook, and we see them coming out with their own Calci or, you know. And that's, it's, it's just the efficiency of the market and the internet that somebody is, is going to do it, and it's actually how we get more innovation because if they just exactly copied it, it will probably fail, but if they did proven, better, new, like I write about in the book, they might get to something that, that's an innovation.

   30. SPShaan Puri11:23

       Hey, when he, uh, when a young guy like that does what he did, you know, he's got that audacious business card, he's got his feet on your desk or whatever, are you turned off by that? You're like, "This cocky, arrogant prick," or are you like, "I love this chutzpah. This is awesome"?
3. 16:51 – 23:17

   pattern matching

   1. SPShaan Puri16:51

      to Zuck, right? Like, I think one of the cool things that you've been in the game for so long, and you've been early into a bunch of the right, uh, what'd you call it, the right oceans or whatever the right-

   2. MPMark Pincus16:58

      Bodies of water

   3. SPShaan Puri16:58

      ... uh, bodies of water.

   4. MPMark Pincus17:00

      Yeah.

   5. SPShaan Puri17:00

      But I, I wonder, do you pa- uh, can you pattern match now when somebody is, sort of has, has that, that extra gear or that X factor or whatever it is, or do you think it was a lot more of luck and there was 1,000 other people just like them that just didn't happen to catch a winning, winning train ride? Like, I guess, what's your conclusion?

   6. MPMark Pincus17:20

      I, I talk about this in the book, that there's pattern matching around lightning in a bottle, and it's every metric and anecdote comes back to this. The reason why we don't pattern match that is because we usually haven't seen it, and, and this is where B plus is the enemy of an A. If, if you have to ask somebody, "Do you think this is lightning in a bottle?" It ain't lightning in a bottle, you know?

   7. SPShaan Puri17:46

      [laughs]

   8. MPMark Pincus17:46

      When you've got it, you don't have to ask anybody.

   9. SPShaan Puri17:49

      It's obvious.

   10. MPMark Pincus17:49

       It, it's like true love.

   11. SPShaan Puri17:51

       Right.

   12. MPMark Pincus17:51

       I mean, it's like, I hope you guys, you know, have experienced that kind of love, that you didn't have to ask anybody else if they thought this was the one. And there's so many things. I mean, Napster didn't have to ask anyone. Friendster didn't have to ask. And it's, Friendster was, like... I thought it was the most unlikely thing when we funded it. But then I was sitting at a blackjack table at the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas, and there were these two girls from, they were, like, uh- Kind of maybe post-college from Ohio and sitting next to me as one finds themself in Vegas, and one turned to the other and said, "Oh, can you..." I think she said, "Can you Friendster me?" Or this is a month after it launched, and she said, you know, "Can you..." It was invite only, and she said, "Can you invite me to Friendster?" And my head, like, spun around. I was like, "What did you just say? Friendster?" And, and that's these kind of shocking moments. And so it can be a one anecdote like that. It could be, I mean, the first time I played Restaurant City, uh, which was for our competitor, Playfish, I was like, "Holy [beep] " I was so addicted to that game. In fact, I just tweeted back and forth with a guy who was the product manager on it, just huge respect. I mean, I was so addicted to the game. I just think there are patterns that you can just see. There are metrics. Like, every time you see sixty percent DAU to MAU, just invest. That was Facebook. That was Friendster. When, when sixty percent of the people who, you know, try this come back every day, then you get that kind of engagement. That's just lightning in a bottle.

   13. SPSam Parr19:39

       What about for personalities?

   14. MPMark Pincus19:41

       I can't say that there is one pattern, but there are a lot of similarities. But there's, there is a certain swagger that I see. It's, it's not even a personality, it's more of an energy that they have. When, when someone's got the nuts, like when they have it, there's a way that they don't give any [beep] if you care that is deeply authentic. Now, you can fake it, like we saw in the show Silicon Valley [chuckles] . People can try to be a derivative fake of that, and that might work for a little while. But there's things like, uh, I've invested in the last few rounds in this private, um, company that has an online... the biggest online bank in Europe called Revolut. Okay, I've never met the founder. I'm deeply in admiration of him. But I started admiring him from afar just because I saw every six months they'd do another round and beat the projections they'd given us six months earlier. That's what we were doing at Zynga, and when you see that, you also just invest without asking what the price is. That's-- This is not investment advice. I'm sorry. This is what I've done. You know, when, when I see a company that's just beating its own numbers, and yes, in the public markets, there used to be Cisco trying to manage us with... They very carefully managed, you know, beat and raise. That we've started a pattern, recognized it's not real. But when it's real and you're like, they give you numbers that sound like hockey stick, and then they beat those, just invest.

   15. SPSam Parr21:19

       Who else have you seen that with? It, it's pretty cool to hear that. So Revolut, which we don't, we don't use. It's, it's European.

   16. SPShaan Puri21:25

       Like obviously now, Anthropic.

   17. SPSam Parr21:27

       Yeah.

   18. MPMark Pincus21:28

       Yes, Anthropic.

   19. SPShaan Puri21:29

       They've got that right now.

   20. MPMark Pincus21:30

       Anthropic, I, I did the same. I stupidly skipped the first two rounds. Well, I wouldn't say it's even that stupid. You know, I skipped the five billion valuation in the '18, and it was 'cause at the time, nobody believed there was gonna be room for a second LLM, and I worried they wouldn't be able to raise enough capital to compete. Then Amazon led that third round at, like, twenty billion, and then it changed everything 'cause they had clear access to capital. Then the next round that I saw, I think, was a hundred and eighty billion, and I just invested. I was like, "Okay, I was wrong. I'm just gonna invest. I don't-- not gonna worry about the fact that I could've invested like 10X ago."

   21. SPShaan Puri22:17

       And how, how do you th- how, how do you think about upside here? Like I invested [chuckles] what was that, what, for eight hundred billion or something crazy, and I'm almost laughing at myself like, "Oh yeah, let me just... Yeah, eight hundred billion." There's clear upside from here. But then you sort of have to break your brain and be like, I th- if, if these w- work, how big are these gonna be? How do you think about the case for how big these big AI companies are gonna be?

   22. MPMark Pincus22:37

       My pattern that I've learned in the last couple of gigantic platform shifts in the internet is that whatever we think, we will underestimate how big and profound and impactful it's gonna be. I don't think anyone even believed really ten years ago that we would have multi-trillion dollar companies today. I remember when all-

   23. SPShaan Puri22:58

       Right

   24. MPMark Pincus22:58

       ... these companies were three hundred billion, and that seemed like the cap. Microsoft, Facebook or Meta, Tencent, and the company Alibaba, and I would've theoretically believed they could 10X, but I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have believed, I wouldn't have bet my money on it.

   25. SPSam Parr23:16

       Yeah.

4. 23:17 – 25:00

   there's always a new freak

   1. SPSam Parr23:17

      Do you still struggle with that? Like, just under, like we all know this pattern. We all know this pattern. Like for example, I like track and field, and I always think, "Oh, this record is unbreakable," and obviously every record, every record gets broken, or there's always a new freak. Same with companies. There's always a new freak. So even though I know that, it's still shocking when you see it, and it's still like, "I can't believe that."

   2. MPMark Pincus23:37

      You just have to get comfortable with this, this kind of emotional intellectual dissonance and separation. And yeah, it's, it's just, it is hard to grasp, like, on the one hand, but then, you know, yeah, if, if basically this AI kind of centralized computing becomes part of the stack of the way everything gets done, it, it just... it makes sense that it'll 10X. So I, I believe these companies will get to at least ten trillion, and that means they'll probably get to, like, twenty or thirty trillion. And so- And it, I'm not to, I'm not saying they won't crash before then and there won't be despair. You know, who knows if in Q... A lot of people are betting that in Q1 of next year, you know, this, these infrastructure bets aren't going to re-up, but that's what they bet this year, and that's why, you know, the memory stocks have been on this wild ride, and it's exciting.

   3. SPShaan Puri24:47

      Do you play the stock market? Do you, do you just like kind of the game of investing, whether it's Angel, it's stock market? Are you pretty active everywhere-

   4. MPMark Pincus24:54

      Yeah, I am

   5. SPShaan Puri24:55

      ... with your portfolio, or how do you do it?

   6. MPMark Pincus24:56

      I, I do like it, and I, I am, like, more active probably than

5. 25:00 – 27:48

   picking macros

   1. MPMark Pincus25:00

      I should be.

   2. SPSam Parr25:01

      Can you give us a, an understanding of what your portfolio looks like as a pie?

   3. MPMark Pincus25:05

      Sure. Um, it's... Well, I'd say, I'd say 50% is probably in privates of some kind.

   4. SPSam Parr25:17

      Does that include the m- is that the markup?

   5. MPMark Pincus25:19

      That's probably with, I mean, some markup, and then 50% is liquid. And I've been managing my liquid portfolio for about eight years. I, I got out of all the hedge funds and different kinds of funds, and I, I just decided that they were protecting me from some amount of volatility, and that if I could withstand the volatility, I'd rather have control. And, and a- it just, it wasn't obvious... I actually, I mean, I'd looked. In the previous 10 years, I had averaged 2.2% annual returns on my whole liquid portfolio, um, with wealth managers and funds and everything, 'cause I'd massively underperformed the market.

   6. SPShaan Puri26:02

      Thanks, thanks, experts. [laughs]

   7. MPMark Pincus26:03

      Yeah. Oh, thanks, experts, for keeping me safe, safe and low.

   8. SPShaan Puri26:07

      [laughs]

   9. MPMark Pincus26:08

      You know, it was very consistent 2.2 though. They nailed that 2.2 every year. No volatility.

   10. SPShaan Puri26:13

       [laughs]

   11. MPMark Pincus26:14

       And I just, I stopped any fixed income, 'cause I just, I just believe that the governments of the world have no choice but to print money. And so I, I, I really like macro. Like, I've connected with Peter Thiel on macro investing for, like, 25 or 30 years, and so he's better than me, but similar, you know?

   12. SPSam Parr26:33

       C- can you explain, what, what does that mean? I, I, I don't know, I don't, I only, I only buy index funds. I don't know anything.

   13. SPShaan Puri26:39

       Well, it's sorta like, you know, Peter Thiel has this talk on YouTube when, I don't know, it's like 20 years ago, and he's basically describing Bitcoin before Bitcoin, and he's describing, like, the macro plo- problem of fiat currencies and printing and all this stuff. And he's like, "If you understood that, then it's no surprise when something like Bitcoin shows up." Give us an example of some of your ideas. What were the big ideas-

   14. MPMark Pincus26:57

       Okay, well, last year-

   15. SPShaan Puri26:58

       ... that you got excited about, whether they're right or wrong?

   16. MPMark Pincus27:00

       All right, last year, I found myself in late February, like, almost fully invested in equities, and my liquid portfolio was very bullish. I was very bullish on what Trump would mean for tech and the economy. And then I started looking at the, how bad the dislocations were gonna be from the tariffs, and I was like, okay, my read on Trump is he's somewhere between he's a good poker player and he's gonna bluff. He's gonna have some cards, but bluff, but he's gonna have to keep making his hand stronger, so he can't... If people don't come to the table right away, he's gonna have to, like, show them some, show them some cards and do some damage. So I was like, this is gonna get a lot worse before it gets better, and the markets are gonna overreact.

6. 27:48 – 39:50

   a case for gold

   1. MPMark Pincus27:48

      So I put most of my portfolio in gold, and then around April when these deals started coming in, these tariff deals, and the market wasn't gi- coming back and giving much credit, I was like, okay, Trump is gonna, like, land this plane before the end of the year. And so then I moved hugely [laughs] back into the market, and it's the most volatility and change, you know, I've ever... And this is not meant to be a brag, 'cause I've had bad years, but, but I was up, like, 35% on my whole liquid portfolio last year because of these trades, because of gold, and because of going in and out of the market. This year, not nearly as good. I've gotten... I, I'm a huge long-term believer in Snapchat, and I've been crushed. So this year I've been crushed in Snapchat, crushed in Bitcoin.

   2. SPSam Parr28:39

      Trading is stressful. Why are you even trading in the first place? Is it just s- sh- just because you love it?

   3. MPMark Pincus28:44

      That's why I said I shouldn't be. I mean, I should be in some place where I'm kinda set it and forget it. Um, I enjoy it and, and sometimes it feels like because there is no fund manager, there's some things I need to do just to be responsible. For instance, this AI infrastructure trade, I don't... It's a belief trade right now. Like, I don't know whether or not all these hyperscalers are gonna re-up in Q1 of next year or, or take a pause. And I love these companies, and I love the trade almost too much, because it looks generational that you could buy these companies at PEG ratios that are, like, .3 or .25, where Nvidia, Micron, so many of these companies are trading. Their trade, their PE rate is a fraction of their growth rate. That's called a PEG ratio. So on the one hand, that looks generational, but it's because every, the market is worried that the buying, the CapEx rate isn't gonna keep up with this. And so I collared all of it, just 'cause I don't wanna worry about it. But that made me be like a day trader, 'cause I had to put all these collars on, like, 10 or 15 different positions. But now I can set it and forget it, because they're, like, down 15, up 50, uh, for the next year. Okay, I, I don't have to worry about it.

   4. SPShaan Puri30:07

      One thing I really like just listening to you is that I like that you are kind of unabashedly willing to just have fun and, like you said, blur the lines between work and play. I actually wanna read you this. I think you'll, you'll appreciate this. I, I screenshotted this From Blake Mycoskie, who started TOMS Shoes.

   5. MPMark Pincus30:24

      Mm-hmm.

   6. SPShaan Puri30:24

      He put this on the wall of every office he's had. He said, "A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pur- pur- pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To him, he always appears to be doing both."

   7. MPMark Pincus30:47

      I, yeah, I love that. I really do believe that there's, like, a singularity of ideation and building, which is that we all will feel like Elon. You know, that we're all... I kind of... That's why I started the book saying that we're so close to this future point where we'll all live like Elon, and we'll just put our intention in the world and won't need to go through all of the painful steps of raising venture capital and hiring lawyers and all of the beat down of life, and we'll just turn our idea into something in days that other people are using. And we're, in some ways we're there already, but I think at a business creation level, I think, I think that's the very near future. And, and, and it's awesome.

   8. SPSam Parr31:34

      You have this cowboy gunslinger attitude that I love. I admire it. I would not say that's how I roll, um, and I'm, and, and but I'm, and I'm envious of you.

   9. SPShaan Puri31:44

      It's like when I see a guy with great style and fashion. It's like I appreciate it-

   10. SPSam Parr31:48

       Yeah

   11. SPShaan Puri31:48

       ... couldn't be more different-

   12. SPSam Parr31:48

       Yeah, it's like-

   13. SPShaan Puri31:48

       [laughs] But I, but I appreciate it

   14. SPSam Parr31:50

       ... the way that you in- the way that you view life, it's, it's not exactly how I do things, and I'm envious of you for it. Are there downsides to this sort of like, like you have this very stereotypical Silicon Valley energy that I love. Do you think that you feel stress the same as the normal person?

   15. MPMark Pincus32:07

       I don't think there is, like, a constant state of Mark. You know? Like, I'm not like... I lo- what's the name of the guy, um, the music guy who wrote the creation, the create- creativity book from Hollywood?

   16. SPShaan Puri32:23

       Rick Rubin?

   17. MPMark Pincus32:23

       Rick Rubin. Like, I wish I was, like, more like [laughs] I admire Rick Rubin, right? He's so zen. I'm not, I'm not, uh, not that level. Um, and the... Here's what's so weird, Sam. Maybe you guys can relate to this, and, and I guess it is funny to hear that I'm kinda stereotypical Silicon Valley, because I, I've, I spent so much of my career feeling like such an outsider to Silicon Valley culture that now I'm like, "Okay, I don't know what that means now to be in the middle of the whole thing. I'll have to think about that." But this whole idea of work-life balance relates to this because I find that when people say, like, "How are you doing? Are you, are you stressed or relaxed?" I say, "I'm not stressed enough." I miss the level of intensity that I was, the storm I was in the middle of at Zynga, and because it was such, it was such a high to be in this creative loop, that I could be working with amazing product teams and, and making these huge leaps every week and come up with ideas, get them out, see users love it, see metrics move, see our financials move weekly. That's a high that I miss, and when I'm in, like, the abyss, which is what I call any time in between those, I have a different kind of stress and anxiety. It's, it's not... Like, my Oura Ring is happy, and now the most stress it shows is, is around my family and my five kids. [laughs] And I'm like, "I wanna, I want my work stress in some way to, to trump my family stress," and it's not. It's too, it's too calm. And I wanna crowd out the time for investing or anything else. I wanna be in the middle of this, like, just creative storm, you know? And, and I'm not, and so that's where I feel kind of antsy. It's like, I think it's like the cavemen, like we were designed to get restless and that makes us go out and hunt, you know?

   18. SPShaan Puri34:29

       I, I definitely resonate with that. And, and you, when you had the Zynga thriller, you, you know, in some ways you can always be chasing that feeling again, right? Because it's, it's such a entrepreneurial thrill ride that you caught, you caught one of those waves-

   19. MPMark Pincus34:43

       Yeah

   20. SPShaan Puri34:43

       ... and you were surfing it. And you may, you may be out there paddling in the ocean for d- for another decade.

   21. MPMark Pincus34:47

       Yeah.

   22. SPShaan Puri34:47

       You may never get another wave like that, but you, you want it, and you, you found yourself thriving in it, so I-

   23. MPMark Pincus34:50

       And it's, and it's a bad addiction. I, in some ways my life would be so much easier if I didn't have that addiction, because I could just go be a venture capitalist full time or, I don't know, a professor or something. [laughs]

   24. SPShaan Puri35:03

       Yeah. I, I wanna ask you a different question. Uh, I, I kinda wanna brainstorm with you actually. You're a creative guy, and you talked about being in the right body of water. Right now, AI might be the right body of water. Maybe you have a different definition. Where do you see the opportunities? Where do you get excited? Where do you brainstorm with a, with an entrepreneur right now of what sort of products to build, what sort of experiences to build, what sort of problems to go try to solve? Where do you, what do you think the moment is now for?

   25. MPMark Pincus35:29

       I did a podcast with Gary Tan, and we started brainstorming like this about can we close our eyes and imagine two years from now where the tokens that we use today are free. We, there might be an overall spend on tokens that's higher, but the per token spend per kind of unit of intelligence is going to, what we look at today will probably be close to free. It'll be like water. And then I think we already passed the singularity and, or, you know, I, or, uh, the, sorry. I, I don't know if I can say the singularity, but I'd say we already passed AGI, but the way it was defined. And so if you could have a, a human on the, that was available twenty-four/seven live for anything you wanted, I think most of the time we would take that if, if they were available and knew the context. And so, so I get back to, like, you know, that's why I kind of showed my The front of my iPhone in the book, I don't know if you can see it there.

   26. SPSam Parr36:35

       Yeah.

   27. MPMark Pincus36:35

       And I said, "This is what makes me so optimistic about the consumer future," because, you know, I-

   28. SPSam Parr36:41

       Well, your Nana a- uh, your Nana one was missing there. In the book, you had Nana. [laughs]

   29. MPMark Pincus36:45

       Oh, yeah. Well, I... That was like-

   30. SPSam Parr36:46

       [laughs]
7. 39:50 – 49:12

   How to know what to chase

   1. SPSam Parr39:50

      So the, I like the, the proven better new bit from the book. I mean, that's the one, that's, like, one of the biggest pieces of the book. Can you kinda, like, close your eyes and put yourself in the position of, like, a 25- or 30-year-old, a young person, you know, just like Mark was when he started Freeloader.

   2. MPMark Pincus40:06

      Mm-hmm.

   3. SPSam Parr40:06

      You don't have a lotta money, but you have access to AI. Out loud, let's go through this framework of what you're gonna do to figure out what you're gonna work on in the next couple weeks.

   4. MPMark Pincus40:16

      I almost wanna turn this to my whiteboards. [laughs]

   5. SPSam Parr40:19

      Awesome. Great. Great, great, great. This is-

   6. MPMark Pincus40:21

      Yeah

   7. SPSam Parr40:21

      ... fantastic.

   8. MPMark Pincus40:22

      Okay.

   9. SPSam Parr40:22

      Just-

   10. SPShaan Puri40:23

       This is like showing us nudes for, for My First Million.

   11. MPMark Pincus40:25

       Okay.

   12. SPShaan Puri40:25

       This is, like, exactly what we like.

   13. MPMark Pincus40:26

       Okay. Okay. Whiteboard number one is what are we passionate about? Doesn't matter. Do not worry. Give zero [beep] about business or anything. Just... I mean, I'm passionate about surfing, being a dad. Um, I am passionate about, like, cocktail parties, connecting people. Uh, we call this swerging people together, like merging people. I love connecting disparate people, and they form, like, interesting... I, I introduced two friends, and they made the movie The Dissident. Like, that turns me on. I, I just love doing that. So here's your passion board. So then, then we wanna write, like, what is a real business? Let's not forget about real businesses. What, what is on the internet, or what are industries, they might be mature, that are, that are making a lotta money? Like, you know, like that guy, uh, who started the peptide company. Okay, peptides. They're making a lotta money. Um, but then you could put, like, you know, online dating, you know, jobs, um, video games. Like, it doesn't matter. Just what are just things that are addressable, that are real businesses, okay? And then on your third board, you kind of Frankenstein these things and, and you say, "Well, okay, if I connected these boards, um, okay, uh, you know, I don't know, being a dad plus jobs or dating," you know?

   14. SPShaan Puri42:19

       Y- you're looking for the intersection of proven business-

   15. MPMark Pincus42:21

       Well, okay, then-

   16. SPShaan Puri42:22

       ... with things-

   17. MPMark Pincus42:22

       All right

   18. SPShaan Puri42:22

       ... you give a shit about.

   19. MPMark Pincus42:23

       We're not at even the proven better new part yet, which is you, you come up with any mashup idea, okay, that kinda turns you on. And it could be, like, you're into agents, or you're into club bot, or what- You know, I, I'll give you, like, an example. Here's, here's a real-life example for me, okay? I invested in Raya, and I found them 'cause I was single. They were 60% DAUs to MAUs. And-

   20. SPSam Parr42:49

       Raya is a, a dating... It's like Tinder, but for high-profile people?

   21. MPMark Pincus42:53

       It's, it's human-curated online dating, okay? So you have to apply. It's like the really high-end social club that has facilities in each-

   22. SPSam Parr43:05

       It's like Soho House?

   23. SPShaan Puri43:06

       Like Soho House.

   24. MPMark Pincus43:06

       Soho House, thanks.

   25. SPShaan Puri43:07

       Yeah.

   26. MPMark Pincus43:07

       So it's like Soho House in a way. So it's curated. Um, you have to have an Instagram account, and they have committees in each market, and they're like-

   27. SPSam Parr43:16

       Just famous, hot, rich, cool people only. [laughs]

   28. MPMark Pincus43:19

       That's the reputation, okay?

   29. SPSam Parr43:21

       Okay. [laughs]

   30. MPMark Pincus43:21

       It has grown beyond that. What it really is is I like to say that, that online dating feels like a 1 out of 10 experience, and Raya feels like a 3 out of 10. Like, it's, it's still not great. I mean, I, I don't wanna diss it 'cause I, I'm an investor. I, I think we're one of the biggest, uh, equity [laughs] investors, and I think Raya is amazing, but the difference from the 1 to the 3 is that I found with just using these online dating apps, there was the same odds of second date if I went on the date or didn't go on the date, so it was, like, 0%. So I was like-
8. 49:12 – 59:59

   create a book of life

   1. SPSam Parr49:12

      But also, I know that you're big on goal setting. You have this, I forget what you call this. Do you call it, uh, I have it written down here

   2. MPMark Pincus49:17

      A book of life

   3. SPSam Parr49:17

      Book of life, yeah, which I want you, you have to explain that. That's pretty cool. But you have this, like, cool thing of, like goal setting. So when you're ideating new companies, one of the things that kills ideas amongst successful entrepreneurs and new entrepreneurs is asking like, "Well, how big can this really get?" And like, and like that's always the challenge. People always ask that question. And like you said earlier, and we all know this to be true, you never really know. And whatever things can get big oftentimes shock you. No one really knows entirely. So do you set goals early on? And how do you deal with that thing in your head or with, uh, entrepreneurs you work with of like this constant like question of, "Well, how big can this get?"

   4. MPMark Pincus49:54

      Yeah. Yeah. It's so hard and, and, and s- part of this book of life practice and part of this painful journey is killing our ego, and, and our ego wanting... Our, our ego is where the hope comes from, that we, we fall in love with the idea, we fall in love with the potential of it, and that works against us-

   5. SPSam Parr50:20

      Mm

   6. MPMark Pincus50:20

      ... because the, we, we've gotta get to a very, very small, small use case that really works before we can do anything else. And I'm guilty of this, too, and we tend to skip it, and, and we get so excited about the bigger macro, the bigger idea, the bigger body of water, and we get so committed to this. And it's part of the danger of AI and vibe coding that we can build something in three months instead of a year or two. And so we do, and we skip testing it, and we don't set real objectives for ourself, like absolute objectives and goals that we hold ourself accountable to. And the next thing you know, you're just kinda in this B+ relationship, um, and you don't love it, and y- y- all these things are paradoxes. On the one hand, I start the book talking about this book of life practice of, that I've been doing since 1994, of really trying to have a conversation with yourself over time and writing in this book for one period of time every year about the same things so that you can go back and see, like, did you, what were your hopes and dreams, and have you done anything about them? And, and the real point that's come to me over all these years is not do you achieve these goals, but are you attuning to these goals, and are you in alignment? Are you living in alignment with your goals? That, I've found, is more important to my well-being and happiness than achieving. So if my goal for 20 years has been to launch Dot Earth and create my version of the Metaverse, which is different than Zuck's version, okay, cool. I- it's okay that I haven't done it, but have I gone for it, or have I just talked about it? And that's, I say these, these ideas and things haunt us and over time weigh on us, 'cause like, oh, I've had this idea, but why I haven't ever done it, or I've always wished I could do this. And the point of the book of life is, let's stop time. Let's stop time right now, and let's go to an absolute place and have a real honest conversation with ourselves and say, you know, "Sam, are you, are you serious about this desire, or are you just [beep] around? And if you're serious about it, well, what's wrong with you? Like, you're, you're capable. You're f- a free human, and why in the last year have you... Let's be honest. You've, you haven't done shit about it. Mark, every year you say you wanna learn guitar. You know you could do it, but you don't. So why don't we just stop putting that down as a goal because you're not serious about it?" Let's, I'm not gonna, like beat myself up, or I'm not gonna beat, you know, Mark 2025 up. And Mark 2025 did go for it and launch Dot Earth, and the version I launched wasn't right, and I pulled the plug on it. I'm good with that. You know? Like, it doesn't have to win for me to feel like I'm living a full life. I have to at least know I went for it, and that's, that's the point of the book of life.

   7. SPSam Parr53:32

      When, when did you start doing it?

   8. MPMark Pincus53:33

      I started doing it in 1994, and I start the book off talking about this, that I had made a series of terrible career decisions, and I was being pushed out of this kind of fledgling venture capital firm, and there was nowhere to go to. Like, there wasn't, like a next job, and so I'd kind of, kind of messed up my resume. I had nothing to lose when I started, a year later, started my first company. But in 1994, I went to temple. I hadn't been to temple for the h- Jewish High Holidays, Jewish New Year's for, since I was a kid. Someone invited me. I was in DC, and I sat there, didn't understand what anyone was saying or doing, and I just wrote in a notebook about how shitty my life was and all the hopes and dreams that I hadn't pursued. And the thing that I came back to I hated most about myself that represented just how little control I had over my life was that I smoked cigarettes, and I was... Part of my book of life practice is what can we do this year that would make this a seminal year in our life? Like, what could the three of us do that you would remember this year for the rest of your life and thank you? 'Cause so many of our years, and I can tell you at age 60, that there are years- I can't write anything down for her.

   9. SPShaan Puri54:54

      Most years are like that, I feel.

   10. MPMark Pincus54:55

       It's sad to not have something seminal, not one thing that's memorable about that year. And so I was like, "Okay, at least if I quit smoking, if I do a lifetime quit, I'll remember this year, and I think I'll be happier later that I did it. So I'm partnering with my future self. It's important enough, but it's, it's easy and in my control." And for me, that was, that was my path to changing my life.

   11. SPSam Parr55:23

       Hey, are, are you still doing, like, you know, I- you, you, you said it's sad that you don't have, like, a seminal year, or you don't have this thing. And like, uh, you know, Shaan and I both have young kids. You have young kids, too. I don't know how old your oldest is, but you have at least one young kid. I'm in the phase now of my life where I feel like a little bit treading water, and that's okay. Like, I'm like, I don't think that's sad. Like, you know, a kid being born is seminal, but I didn't-

   12. MPMark Pincus55:46

       Yes

   13. SPSam Parr55:46

       ... achieve anything. It's not like I did that.

   14. MPMark Pincus55:48

       No, it counts.

   15. SPSam Parr55:49

       Uh, but I'm enjoying it.

   16. MPMark Pincus55:50

       Yeah.

   17. SPSam Parr55:50

       Are you still achieving great stuff? And are you still a dog even after you've had kids?

   18. MPMark Pincus55:57

       Yes, but, but you also have to be realistic because now you've, you've committed to be in service of raising these, these great humans, and that's, and that feels great, too. And I think the best thing I've ever done in life is be a dad. And I think the greatest achievement in my life is my five kids. So every year that I've had a kid, that's been the seminal thing that year. And to your first question, yes, you can still achieve. It's just different than some of your friends that made different decisions, and you gotta stop comparing. But you can-- I built Zynga while raising, you know, Carmen, Georgia, Wyatt, my third kid.

   19. SPSam Parr56:43

       Hey, what was your schedule then to accommodate them? Taking a company public while still trying to be... It sounds like you've mentioned being a father many times. It sounds like that's super important to you. How did you balance the schedule?

   20. MPMark Pincus56:54

       You- if you treat the things in your life like these are non-movable rocks, everything else becomes the river that moves around it. And, and it turns out that it's great modeling for your company to show that you are prioritizing your family. And like, if you ever walked into Zynga, you saw kids and dogs everywhere. And so people loved it. We, we worked really hard, and we played hard, and we familied hard. And, and we integrated our kids and our pets. You know, we brought them to work, or we brought work to home. So the way I did is my, my friend and coach, Bing Gordon, he said, "The most important thing is that you're there for the first and last fifteen minutes of their day, and they're always gonna remember that." And I, I made that, like, my religion. I was like, "I'm never gonna miss-"

   21. SPShaan Puri57:42

       Sacred, yeah

   22. MPMark Pincus57:43

       ... the first or last fifteen minutes of their day. I'm never gonna miss breakfast with them. Hopefully not dinner, but I'll always do bedtime, bath and bedtime. And, and I did.

   23. SPShaan Puri57:54

       It's so funny. So many of the things you say, uh, are echoed by other guests, but they came up with on their own, in their own way, with their own words. But it's just, you know, we'd have to be dummies at this point either listening to this podcast or d- doing this podcast to not pick up on some of these. You know, Ryan Smith, who, who did Qualtrics, and he owns the Jazz now, when I, we- I went out and visited him for the podcast and hung out at his house and stuff, and he goes, "Hey, let me just..." He's like, "I just gotta do one thing. It's gonna take me three minutes." And I was like, "That's a weird number."

   24. MPMark Pincus58:21

       [laughs]

   25. SPShaan Puri58:21

       Uh, I've never heard anyone say, like, you know, you're going to the... He's not going to the bathroom. He's got a task to do that's gonna take three minutes. What's... And he basically said, "I have these three three-minute interval, like, three-minute moments. I just make sure I'm fully present with my kids."

   26. MPMark Pincus58:33

       Yeah.

   27. SPShaan Puri58:33

       "And it's basically right before I drop, you know, dropping them off at school. Like I, you know, I'm not like half here, half in my mind somewhere else. Like, I'm fully there. Three minutes right when they get home and three minutes right before bed." He goes, "It's the most important nine minutes of the day 'cause you could be a busy guy, but you always got nine minutes. And if you could be fully, fully present..." Um, he's like, it's not like he's only doing nine minutes, but he's just make sure that's sacred.

   28. MPMark Pincus58:54

       Yes.

   29. SPShaan Puri58:54

       Like-

   30. MPMark Pincus58:55

       My kids know, like my fifteen-year-olds know I will always answer when they call. Like, I'll be in the middle of this podcast, and they might call, and I might be like, "Guys, I gotta take this." So they just know they can always reach Dad, and there, there's like a, a priority that they get. You know, they, they feel that. And some of the stuff carries over, I think, to, like, management principles. Like I, my policy at Zynga was I will always read and respond to your email to everyone in the company. We got to, I don't know, thirty-five hundred, four thousand employees globally, and it was a lot. But I said, "I'm always gonna read and respond to your email." And, and now I kinda try to... I come close to pretty much do that on, on X, that anyone listening, if they go to my X, @markpinc, I'll, I'll pretty much reply to everybody. I, I probably don't hit it hundred percent of the time, but I'm probably, like, ninety-five percent of the time. And so there's, there's an availability that we can prioritize that's important in life. So yeah, I'm, I'm,

9. 59:59 – 1:09:00

   Frameworks vs instincts

   1. MPMark Pincus59:59

      I'm on that.

   2. SPShaan Puri59:59

      Can I ask you a question? You know, I- I'm a framework guy, so when you, whenever you have these frameworks, I love it. At the same time, some of my friends who are much better entrepreneurs than me don't use any of these frameworks. They just sort of operate on pure-

   3. MPMark Pincus1:00:12

      Yeah

   4. SPShaan Puri1:00:12

      ... raw instinct and sort of following their nose. Did you start Z- Zynga by doing all this stuff, mapping out your passions and then cross-referencing it with proven models or, you know, existing business models? Or did you just now you think about it this way, or did you create your biggest hits doing this?

   5. MPMark Pincus1:00:28

      Like most people, this was all going on, but it wasn't written down. So I didn't just set out to s- show that I could make a poker app on the Facebook. Like, I was forty-one. You know, I think my friends, peers thought I had no dignity then. It was... This was not, like, impressive. I mean, I did it because I had... I, my ego had been so beaten down at Tribe that I had to do something small that worked. I just like, "I need to do something that worked." But I wasn't gonna just- Make, like at the time, the obvious apps to make were these wall apps and these throw a drink, these pokes. I wasn't gonna do that. I wasn't gonna-- That's what was working, okay? Poker was not working. Games were not working on the Facebook ecosystem. I did it because I, I saw this ocean. I saw two oceans, you know, two bodies of water, social networking and video games. So I was thinking, okay, if this works, it, it opens a little crack into mass market casual gaming, and I had this belief, one of the things I talk about in the book that I just [beep] love, and I, and I will encourage your listeners to consider this is available to all of us all the time. Find a mature market that's over, that's done, that's dead, that's been played out. Online dating, you know, eBay with listings or analog businesses that are not attractive. They're almost not investable. Like VCs won't like them. They're, they're red oceans. They're not growth markets. Find a market like that, but it has a lot of money in it, and it has a proven behavior in it, and that's video gaming. By the way, here's a gift. Here's an Easter egg. Take video gaming. In two thousand and seven, it was a twenty-three billion dollar industry. It was barely growing. There was no-- It wasn't a top ten behavior on the consumer web, and it was stupid to go into. People-- Nobody-- It was not fundable, okay? Here we are nineteen years later. It's a two hundred and eighty-three billion dollar industry that's not fundable, okay? It's not growing. It's mature. You'd have a really tough time getting a VC to fund it. Perfect place to try to do something innovative because if you can find a new dimension to this that sparks people, you, you don't have to prove that anyone's gonna do it or wants it or is gonna spend money on it. It's unlimited, right? And that was search when Google showed up. So I do love that, and I was thinking like that when I started Zynga because the year or two before, I was trying to buy CNET. They were a public company, and I said, "I need a gigantic captive consumer audience to test ideas like gaming. I need to solve distribution." Consumer was not investable because of distribution. Today, consumer is not investable because of distribution. It's a perfect parallel. The new thing then was social networking. The new thing today is AI and agents. This is like a mirror, you know, in time. So we are living today in two thousand and seven. Go for it. Consumer's not investable. Do consumer.

   6. SPSam Parr1:03:45

      You, you, you've made these bold claims multiple times, and I love that. You've-- Like you did it with investing. You said like, "I believe this." You have a point of view, which I like, and I think people who have points of view where they're confident, they're either stupid or they're like well-read and educated, and that has shaped it, uh, their point of view, and that's why they're confident. You seem in that category. Do you have any good like honeypots of information that you consume on a regular basis that aren't well known that you could fill us in on? Like people you follow on Twitter, people you follow on Substack, books, newspapers, anything that shapes how you think?

   7. MPMark Pincus1:04:24

      Yeah. Um, yeah. There's, they're, they're really wide-ranging and, and disparate. I am grav-- I gravitate towards people that have, you know, non-mainstream, more contrarian views. I love everything Peter Thiel says. Like, it's like catnip for me. I just heard him talk, and he's, he's saying that we've lived in this fifty years of stagnation even though the economy, GDP, stock market's up so much. When we think about how people live and how our parents l-- the gap in how our parents live versus their parents, we didn't see that gap again from our parents to us and now the next generation. Like the, the, the kids of the nineties and the early two thousands, they don't look at their life and opportunity. You know, if, if our parents were in the nineteen-- or my parents, you know, in the nineteen sixties and seventies, their parents were in the nineteen thirties and forties, and you think about that difference and it's just-- it w-- the middle class was formed and so much. And so Peter's kinda coming at this thing from the, the same problem but the opposite side of like the Democratic socialists and the far left progressive Democrats, and he's saying the only solution is growth. We've got to grow the economy and grow the opportunity base for the middle class and for people in order to save capitalism and democracy. Um, and I thought I hadn't thought about it in that way 'cause I think of the last fifty years as unbelievable growth in, in, in the worldwide standards of living and in technology and, you know, stock markets and all these things, but, but I thought that was really brilliant insight that's got me thinking. But I, I'd say that who I follow, I, I love Pirate Wires, you know, Mike Solano, and the-- there's, there's so many insights that they've had early that were not mainstream, you know, that have changed my thinking.

   8. SPSam Parr1:06:32

      Do you read a lot of books? What, what genre of books do you like?

   9. MPMark Pincus1:06:35

      I, I have a lot of trouble reading books. I do books on tape. I, I'll tell you that I listen to a lot of podcasts while I'm walking or driving, but I, I get a lot, and I, I connect with a lot of friends around social political issues first, where we have, you know, non-mainstream views. I mean, like I came out for Trump, you know, a few days before the election. That was not a mainstream or popular thing in my community to do. But I guess I, I pay a lot of attention to people that break through in any way in consumer. That's probably something that I pay more attention to, and I, I think it was announced, like, two weeks ago or something, I invest in this company FOMO. That's, I... What I find, the resume for me in consumer is traction. I have no idea who or why, I mean, but when I, I cold mailed, um, Shane at PolyMarket on Twitter when they broke through. So, you know, I, I would pay a lot of attention to anyone who's getting heat in consumer because it's so broken and it's so rare. So, you know, the, I think those are good leads. Um, and I, and I do, I get a lot of macro and stock investment ideas on X.

   10. SPSam Parr1:07:52

       Have you outperformed the index over the last 10 years, do you think?

   11. MPMark Pincus1:07:56

       Last year, I, I definitely did. But, but no, I, I can't say... I don't, I gotta look at the last 10 years. I don't know if I've outperformed the index. I probably, I haven't this year. [laughs] I'm like-

   12. SPShaan Puri1:08:08

       We've had more fun and memories, and that's what counts.

   13. SPSam Parr1:08:11

       You beat, you probably beat the two- y- you beat 2%, maybe.

   14. MPMark Pincus1:08:14

       I'm, I'm way behind. I, I think this year I'm up, like, 4.5%, not incl- I was at, I, I got a big distribution of SpaceX. I don't include that in my returns 'cause that was a private investment, you know, so not including SpaceX, I think I'm up, like, 4 and change, and I think that the market's up probably, like, I don't know, three ti- two or three times that. So I'm not... You don't wanna follow me this year. [laughs]

   15. SPShaan Puri1:08:42

       One thing I really like about you is, um, you're very, so you're insightful. That's great. Uh, the second thing is I like some of the kinda life wisdom, like the book of life practice and having an honest conversation with yourself. I think ultimately that's actually the most useful thing that any of us could go do. And then the other thing I like is that you are,

10. 1:09:00 – 1:11:13

    being hated and misunderstood

    1. SPShaan Puri1:09:00

       you're not one of these people who makes everyone feel bad 'cause you're so disciplined. I like that you're a little not disciplined and you do some stuff you shouldn't do, or you're doing things for other reasons than just, like, what's purely utilitarian and optimal. And, um, and I like that 'cause a lot of times people come on this podcast and I'm like, "I should be doing this, should be," we should all over ourselves.

    2. SPSam Parr1:09:18

       You're, you, you're like this-

    3. SPShaan Puri1:09:18

       And I don't, I don't like doing that

    4. SPSam Parr1:09:19

       ... you're like this strange amalgamation of, like, investor, punk rock, consumer, good dad. Like, there's, it's a very rare-

    5. SPShaan Puri1:09:27

       Yeah

    6. SPSam Parr1:09:27

       ... you have this very weird, uh, uh-

    7. MPMark Pincus1:09:29

       That's why I was, like, so misunderstood by the media. You know, when, when Reid Hoffman said to me, "Mark, what's your narrative? What, what's your three bullets?" And I'm like, "I don't know. I don't have one." He said, "Well, either you make that up or they're gonna for you." And I think you said before we started that, that when you, when Zynga was big, you, you saw me as this villain. I think that I'm authentic and nuanced, and people will meet me in person or hear me talk and they'll say, "Wow, I, I really connected with you. I really like you." And I'm like, "Thank you," but it feels like this backhanded compliment 'cause they, they really mean, like-

    8. SPShaan Puri1:10:05

       "Oh, I'd hate you." [laughs]

    9. MPMark Pincus1:10:06

       Yeah, what I Googled about you was so bad. When I first started dating my partner Hillary, I said, "Just do both of us a favor. Just don't Google me 'cause you're not gonna like anything you read," 'cause it was-

    10. SPSam Parr1:10:17

        Yeah, I'm trying to understand why people hated you. I'm trying to, like, or not hated you, but by villain, but, like, did you wear a lot of black? I don't know. Like, what, what, what does villain-

    11. MPMark Pincus1:10:23

        I don't even think I found my black T-shirt yet. I, no, I, it's, I, I was telling you this before that all I cared about was winning. All I cared about... And winning was in the eyes of, like, a teenage girl or a middle-aged woman, you know, who wanted to play one of our games, and they weren't gonna read this. They're not reading The Wall Street Journal. I hired a PR firm to keep us out of the press, and when we were in the press, to, to dampen down the story 'cause I just, we had figured something out with user pay, and I didn't wanna, like, go announce it to the world, and we were just trying to win as many sprints as we could before inviting a lot of competition and venture and every... We were buying a company every month. You know, a lot of the companies we bought, you know, no one else was bidding on them.

11. 1:11:13 – 1:15:00

    the story of farmville

    1. SPShaan Puri1:11:13

       You bought the company that became Farmville, right?

    2. MPMark Pincus1:11:15

       Well, not really. I, the real story is that I couldn't get anyone in Zynga to build Farmville 'cause they thought it wasn't cool. They wanted to build, like, Coasterville, Cafe World, and nobody in video gaming wanted to make a farm simulation game. That was not, there was nothing less cool.

    3. SPShaan Puri1:11:35

       Why, why did you wanna make it?

    4. MPMark Pincus1:11:36

       I wasn't from video gaming. I wanted, I had a farm fantasy. I wanted to create Pincus Valley Ranch-

    5. SPShaan Puri1:11:41

       [laughs]

    6. MPMark Pincus1:11:42

       ... and, you know, have our vegetables served to Chez Panisse, you know. So I had that fantasy, and I have four sisters, and I feel like I really connect with middle-aged women. I'm like, I don't want Twitch, you know, fast-moving games. I want something I don't have to pay any attention to. I don't have to pay any attention to a farm, you know? I just, I wanted that game, and I thought that would be the game that could appeal to anyone in the world because nobody needed instructions on how to play. Bing won't admit it, but he tried to convince me not to build it, even from a business standpoint. He's like, "Farm simulations never do well, Mark." And, and I, I finally bought this little failed flash gaming company because they had four flash engineers, and then I put them and, like, four or five other people in an alcove outside my office and checked in with them every day, and we built Farmville together in six weeks.

    7. SPSam Parr1:12:39

       Did it come out the gate hot? What was day one, day two?

    8. MPMark Pincus1:12:42

       You know, we were gonna buy this company that made Farm Town, and the guy was, to be honest, kind of a jerk, and he had the right to be a jerk. He was, he was winning. I think he doubled the price he wanted from, like, 40 million to 80 million, and he had the right, but we were building our own version, and we took out some of the things we didn't like in his game. So ours was not- Proven better new is proven better less. So our crops were better than his, our art and math were better, and we, we had more polish, but that was it. And we took out the stranger danger part. He had ways to meet other community members, and we just thought our users didn't want that. So we turned it on... I said, on a Friday, I had this tough call with him. I said, "You know, I don't think this is gonna work. We're, we're not gonna buy you." And in our game, our team was like, "Mark, this is ready to go." And so then on Sunday, we turned on Farmville, and it was one of those lightning in a bottle things that for some reason, so many things with Zynga just worked. And which isn't great to hear, 'cause that, how do you repeat that? But we turned on Farmville and I think it did, like, 171,000 installs the first day with no marketing. It was just viral. It just was viral. And, and we were doing, like, a million installs a day by the end of the first week with no marketing. And, you know, we passed Farm Town within, like, three or four weeks. They were at, like, four million DAUs.

    9. SPShaan Puri1:14:14

       What, what was the peak, the absolute peak of Farmville? What was it doing?

    10. MPMark Pincus1:14:17

        I think it peaked at, like, 30 or 32 million DAUs, and at its peak, I think, like, 15 or 20% of people on Facebook were using it or had used it.

    11. SPShaan Puri1:14:29

        And what did it make in terms of revenue at that game?

    12. MPMark Pincus1:14:32

        Farmville 2 came out with a lot more lessons and mechanics and made more revenues. You know, I know Farmville 2 did over a billion in revenues. Now, no one at that time thought a video game, you know, definitely not a casual video game, could do over a billion in revenues, and I remember trying to explain that to Fidelity. I'm like, "That's gonna be a normal thing. Like, 3 million a day, baby. That's [laughs] gonna be the new benchmark for a good game."

12. 1:15:00 – 1:19:49

    avoiding the fur coat moment

    1. MPMark Pincus1:15:00

       But you had a question I really liked that was, like, the beginning of this whole thread. So I hired this PR firm 'cause I said, "I don't wanna have my fur coat moment. I don't wanna be on the cover of Fortune." And the fur coat moment came from that movie, American Gangster-

    2. SPShaan Puri1:15:15

       Yeah

    3. MPMark Pincus1:15:15

       ... when he's in the front row at the boxing match in the fur coat. He's on the front page of the New York Times and his... Everything goes downhill from there. Like, "I don't wanna be on the front page of anything."

    4. SPShaan Puri1:15:24

       And the police are like, "This young Black guy wearing a fur coat in the front row, this, he must be something."

    5. MPMark Pincus1:15:28

       Yeah.

    6. SPShaan Puri1:15:28

       "What's his, what's his situation?"

    7. MPMark Pincus1:15:30

       I was the equivalent of that. This 41-year-old retired guy that's not supposed to be doing anything important. That's when people were writing articles saying, "Can you back a founder under, you know, over 30 in consumer?" And so I just didn't fit the narrative. I was a counterfactual, and consumer wasn't supposed to be working. And so our financial performance was a trade secret. I wouldn't tell investors. I said, "You, I'm gonna tell you a price. You decide if you wanna invest. Afterwards, I'll show you our financials and if you don't like it, you can get out. But if, if they're not better than you think," which obviously made people even wanna invest more-

    8. SPShaan Puri1:16:12

       [laughs]

    9. MPMark Pincus1:16:12

       ... when you say that, you know? But-

    10. SPShaan Puri1:16:14

        Wait, what was your, what was your first five years revenue and profit?

    11. MPMark Pincus1:16:17

        I mean, we went public. We were forced to go public after four years. I mean, we had over a billion dollars in cash on our balance sheet when we went public. We had never spent a dollar that we raised in capital from... I didn't know we wouldn't spend it, but... And, and I think that the year before we went public, I think we did, like, 450 million in free cashflow.

    12. SPShaan Puri1:16:41

        Oh my gosh. So in year three, you're doing 450 million in free c- free cashflow. Is that what you just said?

    13. MPMark Pincus1:16:46

        That might've been year four, yeah. I mean, we started in mid-July of '07, so '07 wasn't, like, a full year. You know, we did, like, maybe a million and a half in '07.

    14. SPShaan Puri1:16:57

        Of cashflow or revenue?

    15. MPMark Pincus1:16:58

        Revenue, revenue. I mean, we were cash flowing. Maybe I did more than that revenue, 'cause by October, November, we were making, like, 200,000 a month in cashflow. We, in '08, we did, like, 38 million in revenues, and we probably made, like, I don't know, 12 or 15 million in cashflow. But, but we were, we were putting all that money, we were putting it into big data and then data centers, and then we were raising more and more money 'cause I didn't wanna ever slow down. But, but my point is, I let our story be told by our competitors and by press I didn't talk to, and I'm kinda nuanced, and Zynga was nuanced. And so it, I let the story go out that we're making all our money from advertising, but it was really user pay, and I was fine with that. I didn't wanna say, "No, you're wrong." And then Michael-

    16. SPShaan Puri1:17:51

        Mm

    17. MPMark Pincus1:17:51

        ... Arrington wrote for TechCrunch a whole series called Scamville, and he said, "They must be making all their money from these really scammy ads they're showing." And they were no different than the ads on Google, but we also were not... All of our money was user pay. And I didn't wanna come out and say, "No, you idiot, we're making money from our whales."

    18. SPShaan Puri1:18:09

        [laughs]

    19. MPMark Pincus1:18:10

        You know? And, and then Arrington, who I'm friends with, I'm an investor in his fund now, he used CityVille. He played CityVille. He spent $550 in the game, and then he said, "I'm so sorry. I was wrong. I get it why adults would spend money on your games now." 'Cause remember, there was no in-app purchase yet, and so all of the adults were like, "There's no way adults are paying money for art." But we had, you know, a nurse in Indiana spending a couple thousand dollars a month in Farmville, and this was her hobby, and maybe her husband was spending more than that, you know, to go fishing and skiing and hunting. This was her hobby, and so we reframed this as we are helping to nurture a hobby somebody has, and this is a small amount to spend on a hobby, whereas, you know, for a video game it was a lot.

    20. SPShaan Puri1:19:00

        Right.

    21. MPMark Pincus1:19:00

        And I did not do myself any favors. I did not go on press tours. I didn't talk to investors. I said, "I'm going to be selfish to our users and our employees. I'm not gonna talk to anybody else ever. My kids- My players, my employees. And so my, everyone else told the story, and it was... And, uh, and we fired a lot of people, and they were out telling our story, 'cause I had a meritocracy, a force curve. We forced you to rate 10% of your team as a low performer every quarter, and if you were two quarters in a row, you were fired without question or exception.

    22. SPShaan Puri1:19:37

        Wow, that's... Uh, you also have, I, I have one other theory for that, which is you have the Nickelback problem. Like, uh, if you've ever heard of, like, a Veblen good, it's, like, a good where the demand goes up the more the price goes up.

    23. MPMark Pincus1:19:47

        Yes.

    24. SPShaan Puri1:19:47

        Uh, there's, like, a, the Nickelback problem

13. 1:19:49 – 1:22:02

    the nickelback problem

    1. SPShaan Puri1:19:49

       is basically, um, everybody hates Nickelback and wants to shit on it. It's, like, a easy, it's a easy thing to look down on. You look cool for looking down on it, but yet somehow they'll sell millions of records. You know, nobody knows them, but somehow they're selling millions and millions of records. Like, it was never cool to say, "I love Farmville."

    2. MPMark Pincus1:20:05

       No.

    3. SPShaan Puri1:20:05

       Uh, yeah, I pl- I love to play Farmville, and, but, but somehow everybody's playing, but nobody wanted to say it was cool, so you, you had a little bit of a problem there.

    4. MPMark Pincus1:20:11

       Well, and the video game, video game industry hated me. I was like the Darth Vader, so it didn't help either.

    5. SPShaan Puri1:20:17

       Exactly.

    6. MPMark Pincus1:20:17

       They said, "You're not real games. We're never gonna give you an award or invite you to GDC." I was like, "That's cool. They, none of my users go to GDC." [laughs]

    7. SPSam Parr1:20:26

       There's this, uh, article, I'm looking at old articles of you. There's one from 2011, and it says, "Old Mark Pincus had a farm," and it's a picture of you. You look like a motorcycle-

    8. MPMark Pincus1:20:35

       [laughs]

    9. SPSam Parr1:20:35

       ... a guy, like, with your boots up, like, overlooking the city. Like, you're, you had, you had that swag that you talked about with Zuck. I mean, you had swag, and you looked pretty cool, and you kinda had, like, a, " [censored] you, I'm gonna win," like, smile on your face, and I think that's kinda cool. But also that will be, that'll rub some people the wrong way.

    10. MPMark Pincus1:20:54

        Yeah, and the, there was a great, uh, tweet [laughs] that I loved by this guy yesterday. He, he has some company called, like, TinyCo or something.

    11. SPShaan Puri1:21:03

        Yeah, Andrew Wilkinson. That's our, that's our good friend.

    12. MPMark Pincus1:21:05

        All right. I loved his tweet, and he referenced The Courage To Be Disliked, and he said, he said it was a huge turning point for him when he stopped trying to be liked, and he stopped trying to be like Warren Buffett and worry about his reputation, basically his resume. I'm like, "Yes, that's, that's my career, and that's what I advise people." I'm like, "Burn your resume. Don't look for respect from your peers." I say, "If you're truly ambitious, do not look for respect from the people around you, 'cause you will not get it [laughs] if you're doing things differently than them, 'cause they don't like that." I mean, you're supposed to, like, stick to this one mold, and, and if you do something different, like, just like you were saying, Sam, and it works, it makes them question themselves, so they don't, they kinda don't wanna see you succeed do it. It's like, it's like, "But I paid all these dues, and I don't want you to make it without paying the same dues, 'cause I'm in a job I hate. You're supposed to be in a job you hate, or else

14. 1:22:02 – 1:25:13

    introspection vs rumination

    1. MPMark Pincus1:22:02

       I didn't have to do this."

    2. SPSam Parr1:22:04

       A lot of people made fun of Marc Andreessen because he had that thing where he says, like, "No one successful is introspective," which I thought was, uh, I disagree with him. I think that's kinda silly. Uh, it, that was a very introspective thing of him to say. But you are, you are an example of someone who, uh, I think you live life fairly intentional and fairly introspective, and trying to, like, live, like, a full, good life, while also you have this, like, swag about you, but also bull in a china shop. Like, this, like, really cool dichotomy that I think is, like, very admirable and really exciting.

    3. SPShaan Puri1:22:33

       Yeah, you're, you got, like, the California woo woo, and then Zynga, and your stuff is so, was so metrics driven. You were, like, the most metrics-

    4. MPMark Pincus1:22:39

       Yeah

    5. SPShaan Puri1:22:39

       ... driven company of anyone. If I ever wanted to hire somebody who I knew would be, like, super metrics driven on the product side, Zynga was the, the perfect pool to go hire from, because you guys had, like, a Navy SEAL training for, for PMs. It was unbelievable.

    6. MPMark Pincus1:22:52

       They still do it, I'm happy to say. I do wanna th- say it was, just what you were saying, Sam, that it felt a little, like, funny and bad to come out with my book, like, pretty much the same week that Andreessen and the All In guys, they all started saying how it's a waste of time to be introspective, and-

    7. SPShaan Puri1:23:11

       Hey, shout out your book, man. Uh, sh- can you show it? Show your, show your book and shout it out.

    8. MPMark Pincus1:23:15

       Oh, okay. I ha- I do have one copy. Uh, Life At The Speed Of-

    9. SPShaan Puri1:23:19

       There you go

    10. MPMark Pincus1:23:19

        ... Life At The Speed of Play. There, there was something on the All In where they were talking about how, I forget the word. They, they said contemplation is, is a total-

    11. SPShaan Puri1:23:28

        Rumination, yeah

    12. MPMark Pincus1:23:29

        ... waste of time.

    13. SPSam Parr1:23:30

        This is obviously an example of smart people saying dumb things. That's just a really stupid thing to do. [laughs]

    14. MPMark Pincus1:23:34

        Well, or it's right for them. I mean, it's, I don't think there is-

    15. SPSam Parr1:23:36

        But that's not what they do. I just saw a thing about Chamath say, talk, refle- r- being retroactive, looking at his time doing SPACs.

    16. MPMark Pincus1:23:43

        Oh, yes, yes. Well, Chamath is, is a lot of things, but he has no problem whatsoever contradicting himself. I mean, I heard them all talk about how AI was gonna put everyone out of work, and now they're proudly saying, like, I think just yesterday I saw something from them saying, "That's bullshit. Look, the facts don't support it. AI's not putting anyone out of work." I'm like, "But you guys [laughs] were the ones saying it." And I kinda love-

    17. SPShaan Puri1:24:09

        Yeah

    18. MPMark Pincus1:24:10

        ... that they don't care. They'll just contradict themselves-

    19. SPShaan Puri1:24:14

        [laughs]

    20. MPMark Pincus1:24:14

        ... you know, a few months later, and they don't, they're not self-referential.

    21. SPShaan Puri1:24:17

        Easy.

    22. MPMark Pincus1:24:17

        So in that sense, y- there's a freedom to it. I'm not tied to what I said three months ago. I'm, I'm pounding the table now on the opposite point of view, and-

    23. SPShaan Puri1:24:27

        Unless I'm right, then I'll show a clip.

    24. MPMark Pincus1:24:28

        Yeah, yeah.

    25. SPShaan Puri1:24:29

        [laughs]

    26. MPMark Pincus1:24:30

        So yeah, I, I, I, I do think there's a mix of all of it. I, I think holding yourself accountable to real things in the world is useful tool used in the right way, um, and sometimes used to just [censored] go do stuff.

    27. SPShaan Puri1:24:47

        All right, well, we should leave it at that.

    28. SPSam Parr1:24:49

        You're awesome, man.

    29. MPMark Pincus1:24:50

        I really like talking to you guys.

    30. SPSam Parr1:24:51

        You didn't try to earn our respect, but you certainly have it. We'll wrap up here. That's it. That's the pod. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 1:25:14