Mark Pincus - Zynga Founder | What 10 Years of Failure Really Looks Like Before a $7B Exit

What if I told you, you're gonna toil in obscurity? You're gonna go a direction no one else went. And here's good news, I'm from the future. The good news is you were right. The bad news is it took 10 years. You toiled in obscurity, you were a nobody, you barely got listeners, and in the ninth year, you took off and you crushed Tim Ferriss. Before you hit it big, most founders spend years in the dark, unknown, doubted, and close to giving up. Mark Pincus, the founder of Zynga, and one of Silicon Valley's most battle-tested entrepreneurs, knows that abyss better than almost anyone. Here's what he learned about surviving it. You decide to kill something, sit in an abyss for a little bit longer than you want. You're talking about all the things that founders are going through, and they're hearing this saying, yes, I'm dealing with this right now. Is the journal one part of it? Is that like a small part of it? How do you actually deal with this? Once you go into this abyss, you don't know if you'll ever come out again. And that's terrifying. You still have the hope it might make it, even though you know it probably won't. But now you're in this place of nothing. When they get to the point they can't fail, they get ruthlessly focused on winning in a way that they weren't before. And that's when they will go and copy something. My fitness pal is a success story partner. Now I want to talk about something I do every single day that I almost never bring up on the show, how I actually keep my health from falling apart while I'm running everything else in my life. When I first started my own health and wellness journey, my fitness pal was like the first app I ever downloaded to help me figure out my nutrition, my calories, my macros, all of it. when you are moving at 100 miles a minute, your workouts get sloppy, your eating gets random. Don't even talk to me about when you're on the road. I mean, there's days where I look up at 4pm, and I realize all I've had is a coffee and whatever was sitting on the counter. And for years, I told myself, like many of you, that this was just the price of being ambitious. You're grinding, you're building, you don't have time to think about lunch. And that's a story that I kept telling myself, but it's not true. It's just being disorganized about the one thing that you can't actually replace, which is your food, which leads to your health. Food is a foundation for your energy, for your sleep, for your recovery, for your performance, for your life, basically. Food is the one input. You can have the best morning routine on Earth. You can meditate, you can journal, you can cold plunge, you can do whatever you want. If your nutrition is off, everything else suffers. I see it everywhere. It doesn't matter if you're optimizing for the perfect body, or you're optimizing to win the championship, or you're optimizing your brain to be at 150% and always be cognitively dialed in. Whatever it is you're trying to optimize for, it starts with food. If your nutrition is off, everything else suffers. Over the last week, Not only am I working with MyFitnessPal, but I've been back in the MyFitnessPal app on the premium plan. This is the app that started off my own health and wellness journey years, years, years ago. And the first step that I took towards getting my own health back was downloading MyFitnessPal. years and years and years ago, I scan a barcode, it pulls everything up, remembers my regular meals, it's done, there's no friction. And that matters because the second something is annoying, or there's a lot of friction, I stopped doing it. And that's just the truth with me. This one stuck because it doesn't feel like work. Now, the moment I started logging what I was really eating, not what I thought I was eating, and there's a big difference there. I was way under on protein and I was eating most of my food after 8 p.m. And I was telling myself that my nutrition was fine because I wasn't eating junk, but not eating junk and actually eating right are two very different things. And with premium, I can see all of this, right? I can see trends over the weeks. I can see the macro breakdowns by gram, by meal. I can see where my energy dips in the day. It lines up with what I ate. And I can set custom goals for different days, which is useful because my training days and my rest days obviously don't look the same. Turns out that I wasn't feeding myself properly. And it's embarrassing to say, but it's true. It's not about obsessing over a number. It's not about punishing yourself for eating a burger. It's about awareness. You cannot fix what you refuse to look at. The MyFitnessPal app just makes you look. I just want you to start with one week. Just log what you actually eat for seven days and look at it. And I promise it'll tell you something you didn't know. And whatever it's telling you is going to help you function better today, tomorrow, and most importantly, it's going to help you live a much longer and healthier life. So go to podcasts.myfitnesspal.com. That is podcasts.myfitnesspal.com and use code Scott. That is S-C-O-T-T, Scott in all uppercase letters. And you're gonna get 15% off MyFitnessPal premium. Again, this is so you can start living a healthier, happier, longer life. Go to podcasts.myfitnesspal.com, code Scott. Links in the show notes too. Check it out. You won't regret it. Mark, this is one of my favorite ideas that you have. You say the most dangerous place to be is almost great. Not failing, almost great. You call it B+. You've watched friends say in B+, businesses, B+, relationships, B+, lives for years. Why is this the biggest issue that people have, this B+, life? B+, is the enemy of the A on all those fronts. It's... We don't aspire to be B+. I mean, it kind of sucks. Because B+, is good enough to keep going, and it's not good enough to win. And so it's good enough, you're getting enough signal back that you might be on the right track, but never enough to actually... you know, break through and win. And so you're not going to, you're not, everyone says fail fast. You're not going to fail fast if, if you're getting a B plus and, and we aspire to have an A plus life, you know, I think that I, we should have an A plus life, but we get trapped in this B plus is almost good enough. And we start to believe that we're better than we are. Yeah, or I would reframe it. It's not we believe we better. We believe this thing is, this idea, this relationship is better than it is or it's as much as we deserve. And someone gave me this bracelet that says enough. You know, so like, am I enough? And you're like, well, do I deserve more than a B plus? And I think that's... take some soul searching. Why do we get trapped in that? Like, like I'm thinking about it now. Like, I'm just thinking, you know, we're talking about like different ways to even, I can do podcasting differently. Founders can create better product. So when we all start out, I'm just thinking like, I'll use myself as an example. When I started this podcast, I was never like, oh, I wanted to be a B plus podcast. Like, that's almost insulting to me. Like, why would I ever say that to myself? You work with so many founders. Why does anybody get stuck in this B plus life? Part of it is like, I think there's a mentality. Are we playing offense? Are we playing to win? Are we playing defense? Playing to not lose? And so if you're trying to break in as a podcaster and you weren't sure you could ever make it and you're this outsider, and we usually all start as an outsider, and now you've actually gotten somewhere, you've taken a little bit of a hill, you don't want to give it up. And you're like, I'm somebody. I'm not... I didn't, I'm not an A podcast or whatever, but I've got an audience and it's something. And it's confusing because maybe the B plus is on the path to an A or maybe it's the enemy of the A. And I was saying to you before we started that, that... I get that I have all these paradoxes that I put out. And if you try to follow all of them, it would never work. They're all contradictory. And yeah, you got to figure this out yourself. You said before, you do not have the right to change proven. You're not good enough to change proven. You've not taken enough time to change proven. And I think about, so again, just for myself, from a podcast perspective, I'm like, okay, so who am I copying? Am I copying like a Tim Ferriss or am I copying a Joe Rogan? Who are you copying? I think when I started, it was a Tim Ferriss for sure because that's who I listened to and now I've tried to evolve it and you try and change the structure and I try and change the way that I market it. But this is, if it was an A+, then it would be the Tim Ferriss or it would be the Joe Rogan or the Lex Friedman, right? So you're on, so I'm on the path and I'm using myself as a, I'm trying to be vulnerable as an example, but it's not an A+. So I guess, I'll ask for you to coach me as a way to teach the audience, right? I love it. Okay. So how do you know when it's a B plus and you should kill it? Or is it a couple iterations away from becoming that A plus? My first question is, how ambitious are you? Exceptionally. Okay, but everyone will say that answer. I know that. Ambition has a cost. The flip side of ambition is sacrifice. The flip side of ambition is how much failure and for how long are you willing to accept? Okay, so there's different paths to get to the A+. What if I told you you're going to toil in obscurity? You're going to go a direction no one else went. And you have an instinct. And here's good news. I'm from the future. And you were right. The good news is you were right. The bad news is it took 10 years. So you toiled in obscurity. You are nobody. You barely got listeners for nine years. And in the ninth year, you took off and you crushed Tim Ferriss. Are you taking that? I take that. Okay. I take that, but I'll tell you what's scary. But for nine years, you didn't know. Well, that's the scary part. Because what if after nine years, you still stay in obscurity? Yeah, that's the fear, right? That's the pain. And so the B plus is kind of security. Okay, I'm somebody, I took this. Yeah, I can't. And the question is, is the B plus on the way to the A? It could be if you're not, and it sounds like good news is, You have intellectual honesty. Most people don't call their B plus a B plus. They convince themselves it's better. So you're saying, hey, I'm being realistic. This pod where it is right now is a B plus. And so that gives you a chance for an A because you're not satisfied with it. But then the question is, how much risk are you willing to take with it? Are you willing to try totally different formats and lose the audience that you've got? in order to try to get to the A. So the more that I study, and I think that intellectual honesty, I think that's a very important trait. Even before we're talking about what are the things you want to talk about and we can talk about how to create a great product. These are very tactical ideas. I think some of the mindsets are important around how to create a great product, how to create a great business, but going a step deeper is, the personality traits that will allow you to adopt to the right mindsets, that will allow you to eventually be successful. So I think intellectual honesty, the way that you framed it, is one of the most important ones because then that allows you to take a good, hard look at yourself and see if what you're building is actually what you should be building. So just recently, now I'm trying different formats. I'm trying new styles. I'm looking at who was the live streaming business Twitter show that was just acquired by OpenAI. So who are you copying now? I don't know who I'm copying now. Now I'm not trying to copy anyone. That might be a problem. Or it might be the opportunity. That's what I don't understand. So I think that, and this is not my interview, I want you to teach. Okay, so if I was deconstructing your product, right? Here's where I would try to take you. First, I asked you before the show, like, what's the gestalt? Like, what is the thing that is driving you? What is the thing behind your podcast? What's your instinct? When you think of, like, what is... The thing that you want to add to the world that's not out there with your voice and the people you're bringing out, like, do you have an instinct that's driving this that is like, oh, yeah, my thing is X. People aren't. being real enough or they're not like what is there a thing behind it? I think that what I try and do is I bridge very complicated ideas. This is what I hope that I do well. I bridge complicated ideas from people that have figured out life and I take them to a level where people can, who are just starting out, can understand ideas. Very much so. Okay, great. You're going to take people with complex books and things and things like mine and make it accessible to more people. Great. Um, But if, so like that's your frame, I'll try to like write that down and say, and then be like, okay, well, what's proven in podcasts or related things around making these more accessible? And who do I admire? Who's doing that really well? Then deconstruct what is it about it, about the way they're doing it, that it's, is working that, And then you could try to copy that and see if it works for you. It's got to work with your style. And this idea of proven, if I was doing Proven Better New on your podcast, I'd say, okay, Proven is whoever you, who's the podcast that you think is most proven that you admire most right now? Right now, it would be the two that are the biggest would be Chris Williamson with Modern Wisdom or Diary of a CEO with Stephen Bartlett. Those are the proven ones now. Tim Ferriss is still there, but these ones have grown bigger, faster. Okay. They got more heat for you. Okay. So then what we do is we try to really deconstruct politics. what is it about their format, the content, who they're bringing on, and say, what are some smaller features of it or mechanics of how they're doing it that we can start to play with and test and copy? And then better, so my proven better note, the better it would be, what would 10 out of 10 of their listeners say fuck yeah to? Like, not what do you think is better, because that's new, which will fail. We'll get to that. But better would be it's too long. You're getting to the good stuff faster. You do a better job of giving the minute by minute. There's something that you'd... that you can find that's better about it. You get the same guess to be spicier. Oh. When Pincus is on this pod, I get him out more in the real deal. I don't know. But the better is 10 out of 10 people. And then the ideas that you think are better are what's called new. If the current audience doesn't say, fuck yeah, that's better, then it's a new idea. And you should keep trying these new novel ideas. It might get someone new listening to your show. But assume they're all going to fail. Yeah. And so you don't, you know, die on that hill. I like that. So emulate what's proven, make it better. But also don't just emulate it. So because people need a place to start. That's where they. But I don't mean emulate it. This maybe is a, this is contrarian to what's inside all of us as creators and founders. We all want to be original. We just do. The problem is that, I'm trying to think of the right way to say this, if you're really ambitious, you have to mute that desire. You have to compartmentalize that desire to be original. Because the question is, do you, well, it's... This is the challenge that artists have. Are they going to be commercial and sell out? And what is selling out? It's giving the public what they want, right? Or are they going to be original to their own art? And the masters, the best ones, are so good at copying and so good at the craft that you don't even know they're copying. But they are. But they're a much better version of something that you've already liked. And so if you're really ambitious, you're going to probably define your units of innovation in much smaller ways. pieces and you're going to be a much better student of copying of proven. You're going to spend way more time on the art of the proven and the science, the science of the proven before you try all your new ideas. Sorry, it's not, it's not a motivational talk. It's not meant to be a motivational talk. It's meant to be a useful talk. Well, and there's, and here's the thing why it's, actually not motivational, but it's the truth that a lot of people don't want to hear. How often have we heard the story of a startup that was on their last dollar and they made it? Is that coincidence? Is it what happens in that last dollar moment that didn't happen in the previous, you know, $10 million, right? There is a, they can't fail, right? When they get to the point they can't fail, right? They get ruthlessly focused on winning in a way that they weren't before. And that's when they will go and copy something because... They just know it works. Yeah, and they can't fail. And like when you don't have the luxury anymore of failing, and it's gotta work, you're like, okay, I'm gonna go start with what works. That sounds pretty smart. Why don't people, so, you know, again, you know the cardinal sin of podcasting is to have too much conversation before you press record because I keep referencing when we chatted about it, but that's fine. I think what you should do, all right, here's, I got an idea for you, and it's a new idea so it'll fail. we should do is just film, just film, just have the camera on before you start. And you don't even have to tell people like me. And then, but obviously afterwards, you're like, hey, I hope you don't mind. We're filming. You can see it. But I think I got some of my best stuff. And it would be really funny if you just filmed the before star. It would be, yeah. And then you didn't film the studio. And just see what that... You can call your podcast like the green room or something. I love it. That would be like a Big Brother style, just having a little camera in the green room before we press record. Yeah. I guess then the next guest would know it and they'd be like. Eventually they'd pick up and then they'd. But what I wanted to reference was something you said about people being too okay with failure. Yes. Okay. So what's happening right now with the entrepreneur or the creator that's being too okay with failure? Where did that idea come from? It's never good to be on either end of this barbell. And one end we talked about is that you are... Well, one end is that you are sticking with an idea for too long and you're stoically failing and you're not listening to anyone and you believe that it's... being a true founder and you, that you looking at, you're in the, you're in the company of Jeff Bezos and you're like, it's great to be misunderstood. And I'm misunderstood by everyone. I'm misunderstood by my customers, by my investors, my employees, but fuck it. I'm just going to keep going. Okay. That's not a good path. And then the other path is the new mentality of founders, especially here in the Bay Area who are like, yeah, I failed. Yeah. I'm on to a new thing. And and I've invested as an angel in people and they're coming back to me for more money, not for the same startup, but a new startup. I'm like, wait, what happened? I never heard from you on the first startup. And like, oh, that's gone. That failed. But don't worry, I learned a lot. And they might not even say that they're like that. I'm on the new startup. And I'm like, we got so comfortable with failure. And it's like such a badge of honor. Even past that, it's so normalized that you never went through the redemption. I still want someone to send me like a sad, sappy email. I'm sorry that I lost the money. I still want to pat them on the back and say, it's okay. I don't want to be like, hey, you just lost the money and now you're like, ask me for more. And it starts to feel entitled. So, And also, I don't think they're getting any learning from it. Not if they're normalizing it. Yeah, if it's just like, we're so okay with failure, they're like, oh, yeah, that didn't work. It doesn't tell me that you're going to prosecute this any better. So all these ideas, like you mentioned before, these are conflicting ideas based on who you're speaking to and where they're at in their journey. But if you could... You have this founder who's this like blank slate, and I don't want you to stay in something for too long. I also don't want you to just fail and pretend it didn't happen. What's the wisdom or the guidance to that person to properly understand when they should fail or when they shouldn't? First of all, I want to see that you are getting better at prosecuting ideas. You know, are you better at what I call the plan for the plan? Are you getting better at running the factory? Are you getting better at testing? Oh, I'm better at top of the funnel testing now. And I like to say, I'm building a failure machine. I now have a way, especially with AI, to test 100 ideas a day that I'm generating ad copy and whatever. And they better be some reason to think they're good ideas that you're testing, not just ideas. So I want to see that you're getting better at that. Number two, that's kind of the top of the funnel, what you're doing. Then there's what I call the factory. Like... How are you going about a shot on goal, building, testing, failing? Like not just like the link test or the ad test, but the actual product. And are you coming up with faster and faster ways to... get signal or, you know, or no signal, but, but to try to get a version of your product idea instantiated enough that you can see if, and, and Bing Gordon, who I've worked with for years, always would say like, is the team being creatively productive or are you and whoever you're working with getting somewhere significant every week? You know, are you, are you cycling every week on something, either a new product idea or a big new idea in your product, or are you in some like slow iteration? And so I, I'm looking for things like that. Did you, Are you learning? I think the best founders are learning machines. They're just absorbing. They're learning what other people are doing, what's happening in the market. They're learning what's working and not. And if you're not a learning machine, you're a building machine, but you don't know what to build yet, you failed and you're probably going to fail again. it's like building feedback loops into your, so you're a self-taught individual, you're always consuming, and then you're finding a way to take that and then build some feedback loop into your product or your business that can validate or invalidate your thesis. Just like cost an iteration. Yeah, and then combine that with how ambitious are you? Are you looking for the B plus, or are you trying to get to the A? And I'll say the other thing we talked about in the green, in the green room, the other room. So the other point that I really liked is that's also a paradox. And I love all these paradoxes. It gets back to how ambitious are you is – the more ambitious you are, in a lot of ways, the more humble you have to start. And I was thinking about it that this isn't in my book or anything. I think there's so much content that I've come up with afterwards that I'm like, oh, that's not in the book, is that I think my career has happened not randomly in these waves, that I've had big success and then I've had years of failure and toiling and getting nowhere. And I think it's because after the big success, you falsely think you can do anything. And then you're like, now I'm going to do something bigger. Elon might be the only person who seems to have big success and then does a bigger thing. But my experience has been like after I had all this success, now I did have... I had my company Freeloader, my company Support.com, like two in a row, but they were kind of like back-to-back parts of the same, two parts of the same business plan. Then I had all this failure and like also we went into like the .com crash and – nuclear winner. But, but I, I went into tribe, which was like this long failure state, my long stoic failure. And then I had Zynga. And I think that I was so hungry, uh, There's a difference between hunger and ambition. And they can go together, but you need hunger before ambition. And ambition without hunger is definitely a recipe for failure. And I was so humbled by my failure with Tribe because I was so early. I was so fucking right. It was impossible to fail. It was just a moment where everything worked. And so the fact that I managed to fail in that moment... It was so humbling that by the time I got to Zynga a couple years later, I started with such a teeny idea. Like a fucking poker game, a little app on top of Facebook. It really was embarrassing. I mean, like people felt sorry for me. Like that's when... You might be too young, but this is when people were making like apps that would like throw a drink at somebody or, you know, like like they were really dumb, worthless, useless apps. And here I am. And it's all like 22 year old kids. And I'm like 41 and we're in a classroom at Facebook with a 22 year old. fresh out of Harvard. It's like three months out of Harvard and she's Ruchi, who's wonderful, but she is like running this program. And I'm literally at a little kid, like a little school desk. We're all at little school desk. And I'm like, just like everyone else, trying to get details about like their APIs and their Canvas. But it was so... deeply, deeply humbling and not ambitious. And it was, you know, it turned out to be my most successful thing. And then after Zynga, I try to do really ambitious things and like go to higher heights and don't hit it, you know, and And now I think I'd like I hope to think that I've been like really, really humbled again. And it's because the world doesn't give a fuck what you've done. And and for anyone listening, like you have the exact same chance of creating like the next great consumer product that I do. I've I've the world doesn't care what either of us have done previously. Unfortunately, I wish I wish I got credit. Why did Zynga work when Tribe didn't? You mentioned that there was a little bit of humbleness in Tribe not working and you going back to rubbing sticks. But what was the thing that allowed it to be successful? So first of all, with Tribe, I was just like a kid in a candy store. Everything was working, and I was going to do everything. And it was the everything product. I mean, we were Friendster. We were a little bit of LinkedIn. We were Craigslist. And we were Reddit. We were like... tribes, we were kind of discord. You know, I like to say tribe had three winning instincts and one losing idea. And I stuck to that one losing idea. And the losing part of tribe was trust. And I just couldn't get it. And even after Zuckerberg walked in my door, he and Sean Parker showed me the Facebook. And I was like, fuck, they got this. They nailed this. Everything I'm doing wrong, they're doing right. They tried. We were struggling with because everyone could see and connect with everybody. It was like Burning Man. It was like it was a place for extroverts. And and then I looked at Facebook and Sean Parker pulled it up on Facebook. a laptop on a desktop in my office and I click and it'd be some girl at Stanford and it'd be like her cell phone number and her email address and all her music files. And I was like, oh my God, like nobody would share that on tribe. And I was like the level of trust because they had the.edu was so high. And And I saw it. This isn't even just that I stoically stuck with the losing idea. Somebody came in, and I also invested in the beginning of Friendster. It's shameful that I failed. I mean, it's shameful. It wasn't just that I didn't know what worked. People showed me what worked, and I still willfully ignored it. So Tribe is a lesson in just how stubbornly you can choose to fail, and I did. It's impressive. But by the time I got to Zynga, and I had been in what I call the abyss for a couple years, I got, in order for my VCs to keep funding Tribe, which they shouldn't have done, they replaced me as CEO, which they're right, probably was fine. Replacing me didn't change the outcome. I think I would have kept failing. Yeah. And they replaced me with this guy who's this born-again Christian. And I find VCs so often out of Dilbert Comics. And they got a CEO coach for me. And I love this, like, I'm totally fucking up on product, but what you think I need to do is run a better board meeting. That's so funny. It's just so funny. And then eventually they replaced me with this CEO who's this born-again Christian. And this site, Tribe, was spicy. And it was like, there was a lot of people posting, you know, naked pictures. And the guy spent all his time trying to mark the mature content. Oh, my God. Anyway, that's another story. But what did I get right with Zynga? I was so deeply humbled and hungry. And I just was like, I wanted so badly to just get traction. I just was like, I want something. I want something that sticks. I wanted the opposite of Tribe. Tribe was a sinking speedboat. We had huge virality. And we were much more viral than LinkedIn. We grew much faster, started at the same time, grew much faster, but we were a sinking speedboat. So we were trying to just drive faster and just bail water. But there's a big hole in the boat. So the boat's sinking. We're just trying to drive faster. Every viral app like that fails. And with Zynga, the thing that people didn't, people are like, oh, Zynga was really viral. It wasn't. We were filling the hole in the boat. I was like, I want something that retains. I want day 365 retention. Like, I want something that there's a chance people will be using this in a year. And I'm willing to grow more slowly at first. And I just want, and I'm going to just go very simple. that makes sense, that I like and other people like. And so it was the opposite of Tribe. Instead of being all these things from listings to social networking to community and tribes, it was humble. It was just a poker game. It was in Flash. It looked like every other poker game. The difference, though, was it was so little. Like our Proven Better New. Proven is we copied... the most popular real money gambling poker games. The better was no download. And the new was a picture of a real person. That was it. Amp is a success story partner. Now, most people don't fall off their fitness routine because they're lazy. They fall off because life gets in the way. The gym is a 30 minute drive. Equipment takes over your living room. Some days you've got 20 minutes, not two hours. Amp fixes that it is the smart home gym that actually looks good in your space. It's sleek. It's premium, barely takes up any room. Here's how it works. 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This is where your business meets AI. If I needed something like this for my business, I'd use NetSuite and you should too. Now, for the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to netsuite.ai slash scottclary. That is netsuite.ai slash scottclary. It's built for every industry. It's ready for every boardroom. netsuite.ai slash scottclary. My fitness pal is a success story partner and I've actually been using it myself for a while. Many of you don't know this, but it's one of the first apps that I've ever used on my own personal health, wellness, weight loss, nutrition journey years ago. Now on this show, we constantly speak about optimizing everything, right? But optimizing your sleep, your training, your mindset, your business. But the one thing that so many people skip right over is the thing that all of this is built on. It's your food. It's your nutrition. You can have everything else dialed in, but if your nutrition is off, your energy, your recovery, your mental clarity, they all take a hit. That's why I use MyFitnessPal. It makes tracking your food incredibly easy. I can log a meal in 10 seconds, and the database is so big that whatever I'm eating is already in there, and here's the thing that actually got me. When I started tracking, even though I'm pretty good about my diet, I realized that if I don't pay attention, I way under eat protein. And that explains every single afternoon crash that I will be blaming on everything else but my food. Again, MyFitnessPal is not about restriction. It's about awareness. And when you start using it, you start noticing patterns. It also connects with 40 plus apps and wearables. So it slots right into whatever it is you're already using. So if you actually care about your health as a founder, as an athlete, as someone who just wants to feel better, your nutrition has to be part of the plan. Go to podcast.myfitnesspal.com and use code SCOTT, all uppercase, for 15% off MyFitnessPal premium. Start tracking and see what you've been missing. Cash App is a success story partner. And honestly, this one's easy for me because I've been into Bitcoin for years and Cash App is the place you can go to buy Bitcoin. The number one question I get from people more than anything else when it comes to Bitcoin is how do I even start? They're curious. built it up in their head is this whole complicated thing. What is it? Where do I buy it? How do I hold on to it? And it really doesn't have to be that confusing. If you've been curious about Bitcoin, but you haven't made the jump yet, Cash App makes it so easy. You can set up automatic purchases with zero fees, or you can buy larger amounts also with zero fees. You can start small, you can go bigger. It is designed to be simple either way. And for a limited time, new customers can get $10 added to their balance. Just use code CashApp10.com. When you sign up and don't forget this part, send at least $5 to a friend in the first two weeks. Terms apply. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partners. Bitcoin services provided by Block Inc. brand. For additional information, see the Bitcoin disclosures at cash.app slash legal slash podcast. Content creators have to take a lesson from entrepreneurs who've already learned the hard way that virality doesn't necessarily build a good business. I think content creators, I think they're sort of like the newer wave of entrepreneurs. And for a while, they could tap into virality in organic reach and they could build a business. I said in air quotes, meaning they could build an audience through viral means, even podcasts. But I don't think that's the strategy. I don't think that's a winning strategy. I think that doing things that don't scale is always a smart strategy. Yes, yes. I totally agree. And it's, when we say, where does virality come from? It doesn't come from growth hacking. You know, virality doesn't come because you had a more clever share button or share incentive. It comes because you have something that somebody wants to share. Yeah, it always comes back to product. Is it a good product? Yeah, and that's why I love the Japanese ethos on quality for the sake of quality. with people's podcasts are like, I just went out and did what I was interested in and I had no audience. And then I started to get a few people. And, and I, I think that's it. I think if you do something, it's so basic. And the Paul Graham point is like true. It's like, do something that speaks to you first and then speaks to a few other people and then really tune to that. Yeah. Well, I mean, like for my content, you know, people think about like, people have asked me like, you know, how did you start it? Like, who are you targeting? Who was the avatar listener? For me, it was me 10 years ago. I want to create content that Scott 10 years ago were like listening to. And I'm sure I can find like a thousand other Scott somewhere. And those could be my thousand true fans. Right. And then I'll start with that and then I'll iterate from there. So maybe it's a mixture of creating something that you would use. But also, I know you don't like the word emulate, but you're finding something. This is like the. No, emulate is fine. I just think it's not strong enough. I'm like, emulate lets you off the hook. Like emulate. Explain. Because emulate is like, I can't tell you how often people have used my proven better new framework wrong in service of whatever the fuck they just want to do. I'm like, well, I emulated that. I'm like, well, what the fuck is emulate? It's such a weak word. It's so vague that it lets you off the hook of really copying. And so you might emulate this other podcast, but that lets you be this artiste and just kind of pick and choose. And then you're like... But, you know, mine is, I emulated them, but mine is, you know, all in 30 second clips. I'm like, well, that's not copying. You're very strict about copying. That's the first step. Well, I say you should be like a scientist in a white lab coat in a lab, and you're trying to do an isolated experience. In order to isolate what is your big idea, you have to take off the table all the pieces that are not your big idea. So if you are trying to... If you're trying to make a podcast that is the most accessible, you can't go and change all of the things in podcasts that work today. Like, you know what? They're long form. I'm not going to do long form anymore. Mine's going to be most accessible, but it's going to be all 30-second sound bites. No. No. Your idea now that you're testing is 30 second sound bites. It's not accessible content. Now you might say 30 second sound bites are more accessible. Fine. Test that. But, and I, it's not as easy to think about this. You know, we don't think of podcasts as like a product with mechanics, but if everyone right now, one of the categories people are talking about is making an AI camera. Okay. Let's take that. You want to make an AI camera. Great. What are all the things that are not your new idea? Is it still a camera that uses your phone as a camera and you're gonna take a picture? Do you still want to communicate to the user it's a camera through an icon that's a camera? What happens with inexperienced product makers is that they feel the need to change everything up, but they're not making everything better. No, so now there's too many variables. There's too many variables. Yeah. And what if you really had a good idea But now it failed for all the wrong reasons because you didn't have an icon that looked like a camera. You had an icon that looked like, you know, a goat because you thought that was cute. And now none of your users knew how to find your app because they didn't want a goat. They wanted a camera. I just is not a good example. No. OK, so there's an there's an example that I want to dive into. So you had a viral tweet about a hotel check in at the peninsula in Chicago and. By the way, this is a lazy web idea. I want somebody to fucking fix this. They will. They will. No, but I want you to deconstruct that. First of all, tell people what that tweet was about, but then deconstruct that experience with the proven better. I have a feeling, and you can... You're welcome. All the haters can say, oh, you're a tone-deaf rich guy. I don't think it's true. I think that my superpower, and this will... People can say it sounds tone deaf, but I can prove over time it's not. I think my superpower is I somehow seem to represent what all the dumb fucks in our country are going to do in 18 months. And I don't mean that disparaging. I'm saying I'm one of you. What I mean by dumb fucks, I mean that lovingly. I... don't care about any of this shit. I don't care about games. I don't care about apps. I don't care enough to click. I don't care enough to read instructions, to learn how to use your shit. And so... I represent what I have a need, but I am lacking care and curiosity. Okay. And so I have really low attention span and I don't try to solve it. And so I'm just saying, if I use something, that's a real signal because it means somehow I learned how to use it despite not because you taught me. So anyway, hold that over here. All right. Hotels. Why is it, I know you've all had this experience, I'm not alone, the more expensive and the fancier the hotel is, the longer it takes to check in. We can go to a roadside Motel 6. I've been on road trips with my partner, Hillary. And literally, I've booked the hotel online. They text me a lockbox code. We drive up and we type it in and we go to our room. We never see a human. I'd pay extra for that. I'd pay extra. Are you kidding? It's late. I just want to fucking go to my room and go to bed. I don't feel like having a conversation with even the nicest receptionist. You go to the peninsula, you go to a fancy hotel, and they are typing away like they didn't know you were coming. And I'm like, you knew I was coming. And then they're like, can I see a form of ID and a credit card? I'm like, why... Why is it that I could book a $50 a night hotel online and they don't need anything but my credit card? But now I come to a $500 a night or more hotel and you're typing away. And I'm like, I want to look at like, what are you typing? Did you, are you shocked that I came? Like you weren't sure. It's like you just. I know exactly what you mean. It's like they're typing away and they look a little nervous. And like, you don't have a room for me. And I'm nervous too. I'm like, oh shit. you don't have a room anymore and it's like an airline and you oversold it and you're like typing away or the room's not ready yet I'm like it's 8 o'clock at night there's still housekeeping's there, the other people didn't leave I'm like it's going through my head like why why are they typing? I want to know, I want some hotel worker to tell me but I guess they have so much complexity in their system that they're deciding last minute on my room. And I'm like, this is not luxury. This is a pain in my ass. I don't want to wait in line. I don't want to talk about my day. I don't want to wait while you're typing. I don't want to wait while you print my key. I don't want to give you my driver's license and... credit card again and maybe it didn't work or run and hear about, I don't want to hear you ask me if I want a tour of the hotel or your incidentals policy. None of that is luxury. That is fucking annoying shit. And I know other people feel this because it's like my second most viral tweet ever. I think Elon reposted it. Like, Other people, there's a lot of emotion around this. We're all annoyed as shit. And it's like solvable. And like you're supposed to be a luxury hotel owner. This is not luxury, okay? The peninsula at one point, I had a girlfriend in LA and I was going back and forth a lot to the peninsula in Beverly Hills. They got it, they, this was luxury. I'd drive up, they had 10 people who worked there milling around the entrance with nothing to do. That's luxury, all right? There was more people than there were guests coming. They would shake my hand. Oh, Mr. Pincus, we are expecting you. Let me, here's your key. Do you want me to take your bag? No, I want to keep it. Okay, we made your favorite smoothie. It's waiting for you in the room. My dog Zynga... was I'd walk. They would do. Do you want me to give her a walk right now? No, that's okay. I'm just tired. Okay. We go to the room. There was a monogram pillow that said Zynga on it and a bottle of Evian and a bottle. Sorry if this sounds terrible. I was like, this is the shit. And I'm like, you got it. And I don't know. how that happened, and then it stopped. Like, I wasn't going to the same hotel enough. I'm like, why isn't that my experience, you know, at every luxury hotel? Like, they were expecting me, and it's like I own the fucking hotel. I'm like, they could do that. They could do that. And worst case, they could be like, we texted you the code for your room or I don't know. The basics that are non-luxury. Tell me you don't fucking hate this. You get to your room. It's late at night. You want to go to bed. And the TV is on with the Barker channel. repeating, telling you the amenities and what's great about the city of Toronto. And you can't find the TV remote. It's in a drawer. It's somewhere not obvious. And you're like, where is it? I got to turn that off. I got to turn it off. And it's repeating and it's repeating. That is not luxury, right? So why does a legacy industry- I don't mean to use your whole podcast on this, but that is an instinct, okay? When you, that's an easy way to test, okay? I try to convince Obama to do shit like this. When you tweet about something and everyone picks it up and they don't stop commenting on it, right? And it goes viral like that. That is an instinct vein. That means there are other people out there that are feeling that same pain, that thing. And it doesn't have to do your tweet. Someone else could tweet and you see it blow up like that. Those are signs of instinct veins. Like that's a good place to start. So when you walk through this, it reminds me of the reason why Uber is a company and why Airbnb is a company. It's because the legacy industry did not listen to the signal. But they are vulnerable too, okay? This is another pet peeve of mine. Yes. So, I mean, yes, now they are. But, I mean, why does Blockbuster not exist? Because Netflix listened to the signal, right? Why does – okay, so, yes, there was this – This changing of the guard and these legacy industries, and I think even like hotels still haven't figured out that they're ripe for disruption because now this is a whole other. And they don't have to because it's real estate and it's really hard to just build another peninsula. It is very hard, but eventually someone will try and do it. And even Airbnb tried to do it, but now I think that Airbnb has actually fallen out of favor with a lot of people compared to what it used to be. Why do you think that is? Well, first of all, the main reason why people ever booked Airbnb was for a cheaper experience. Not cheaper in terms of quality, but it was like less expensive than the local hotel. So now when I book an Airbnb, it seems to be more expensive with less amenities and more responsibility for me. And now I have to worry about taking out the trash and cleaning up, which is I'm not against it. But if I'm paying more than the peninsula for a room in someone's house, I want that stuff taken care of. I agree. They lost the plot. They lost the plot. And I love and admire Brian Chesky and his pursuit of magic. And he's really thinking about... How does he bring magic into the experience and surprise and delight? I think, though, what happened to someone like Brian is that he's too successful and he's looking, he's too ambitious. And this happens, I see this in the game industry. You get one successful game and you falsely think that you can build five more. And your fans don't want you to build five other games. They want you to take the one game they love and just make it... 1% better, half a percent better. What we want as superfans, I like to say that, you know, we wanted an 11th season of Seinfeld. We didn't want the spinoff show. But the creators get bored of the creation in a bit and they want to do something new. And we don't just want an 11th season. We want it to be as good as the 10th season. And it's probably not. And I mean, the 11th season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, it was clear he was done because he was just grumpy and not funny anymore. So Larry David knew he was done. He should have. But Airbnb is a perfect example. You need to fall in love with your franchise. And you need to love it as much as your super fans do. And you need to innovate on the smallest things about your franchise. And your super fans will love that. But when you go lateral and you're like, now we're going to be experiences. Now we're going to have a rental car for you. And you convince yourself that. that there's this lateral opportunity because you underestimate the amount of growth that's in your franchise. And the reality that you're saying is you always want to go vertical, grow through vertical depth and quality, not horizontal features and adjacent businesses. And Airbnb and Uber are, would be bigger businesses today in my not so humble opinion, if they went deeper on the core service and not into Uber Eats and these other franchises, Airbnb is, like you're saying, how do we make an Airbnb experience, like how do we go deeper and deeper and deeper in the value we're delivering and the magic of it? And how do we make sure it's cheaper than a hotel room? But not, we're going to get you a chef and all this other stuff. And they just lose the plot and they get bored. And I'll say with Uber, this is my pet peeve, Uber, I tried to convince Dara when he came in. I tried to convince Travis for years that he left his whales. One of this also... will not sound, this will sound a little tone deaf, but I don't care, it's true. That I like to say like, there's rich people on the internet too, don't ignore them. And you're catching whales in your nets of a consumer business. And at Zynga, we said we wanted to give whales a chance, a way to be whales. Let whales be whales. And Uber has really... rich people who would be happy to pay Uber more money for more value and services and they ignore them. I like to say that a lot of times the only thing that's black about my Uber black is the color of the car. And I am so often disappointed with my Uber black and I find, oh, if I do Uber comfort, I get a Tesla for less money. And a better driver. And Uber Black is often just a big old suburban that I don't want to go around in San Francisco. And I try to convince Dara, I'm like, create an Uber Platinum, super luxe, and like cater to. The true chauffeur service. Yeah, and you don't want to chauffeur. What's great about Uber is it's on demand. You don't want to chauffeur like they're paying to sit and wait outside, who's driving in circles in traffic. But you'd like to know that there is a consistent quality car with a professional driver that's going to show up in five minutes or less. And you'd like to know five minutes is a real five minutes. Another thing I said to Dara is, No one trusts your brand. And I said, you need to rebuild trust through your product. And what I tried to convince them to do was show me a timer. After I order my Uber, show me an elapsed, a real clock. And it might be that I'm impatient and three minutes just felt like 10 minutes. Or it might be that you told me three minutes and it was six minutes. And I'd like you to tell me what percent of the time you've been on time or better today. Because I want to know, should I trust you? Because I like say, oh, Uber minutes are double human minutes. True. Right. It's true. I know this experience. This is actually so Uber is still marginally better than Lyft. I wouldn't even use Lyft. Lyft is nothing but lies. So there's no trust there. So, yes, that's why I don't use it for a variety of other reasons. I don't think the quality is even a percentage of what Uber can deliver. But with Lyft, you say, hey, I want a three-minute ride, and it'll be seven minutes. Yeah. And I'm like, well, this is now. Am I proven better new on Uber? Yeah. For the LazyWeb, it's probably a bad idea, but I would try it. It's not that hard. I think some people have. I would just cherry pick Uber's best markets, and I would just make a higher-end Uber, which is where they started. And it's just your guaranteed professional drivers and good cars, and we already know you don't need that much network coverage to be able to offer people... And maybe I'd start off getting people with airport rides or longer rides, which are better anyway. But I would just make it a more expensive service that is guaranteeing the quality and safety. I mean, like my daughters now more and more, they're in Waymo's, they're 15. And sometimes I have to put them in an Uber and it's scary because... Which founders, because you obviously, you know, you're living in the Bay Area. This is where all these big companies are coming out of. But some of them, as a consumer, and I guess you're sort of echoing my sentiment, some of them have really lost the plot and what made them great originally. Which founders do you look at and you're like, they've sort of stuck with what made them good at the beginning and they're still sticking with it now? I saw it in Jeff Bezos. I saw like he had such a commitment. He's not doing it or doing Amazon, but he had such a relentless commitment to bringing himself, holding himself accountable to the customer and the core value proposition. And he had – such a commitment to building a group of product leaders around him who were first principles product leaders, who started off as his tech assistant. So he's not a Bay Area, so I'm not really answering your question. But still a great entrepreneur. I mean, I love seeing Sergey coming back to Google and spending his time on what he was really good at and really thinking about. And I have to say, Sergey is a friend and I'll text him on things and not hear back. He's a busy guy. If I text him with feedback on Waymo as a consumer, he texts me back in five minutes. And I'm impressed. And Jeff Bezos, same thing. I would email him all the time on things and never hear from him. But if I sent him a message from my mom about a bad Amazon experience, he would message me back. I'm impressed with that. Daniel Eck, no forever Spotify. I would send him just user feedback. And he would always thank me and send my feedback to the whole company. So when I see people, I see founders who are so committed to wanting to be in first principles and get the consumer experience right, I'm just continually impressed. I see... I see Sam Altman wanting to keep coming back to focus on his product. And I messaged him recently about opportunities they had, and he responded immediately. It's all about like you see the best founders just being obsessed about feedback. They're being, yeah, they're really, really tuning to, I think they're obsessing about their core product working for people. And when they get, you know, I'm not saying my feedback is always useful and valuable, but I see them tuning to it and I'm impressed with that. And Brian Chesky is too. I mean, if I sent him something, if he heard this, I was thinking as we were talking, I'm like, oh, if Brian heard this, he would really listen to that. Odoo is a success story partner. Now, before I say anything else, just let me get the pronunciation right because they told me that like five times I need to get this right. It is Odoo. Odoo. Here's why I actually care about this one. A few years ago, I was running my company with a video editor, one city, a designer in another city. I had a VA overseas. Every Friday night, I was logging into three different platforms to pay them. It was different fees, different invoice formats, a Google sheet I was updating at midnight to track who got what. That was my payroll. Odoo is the platform I wish I'd had five years ago. It's not a tool. It's basically an operating system for a business. Accounting, invoicing, project management, inventory, HR. There are over 45 applications, all connected, all running on one platform. And here's the part that got me. The same platform that runs your books can also build your website, e-commerce, signatures, the whole stack. It's one login, one source of truth. And the kicker is that the first app is free for life. Unlimited users, hosting included. And after that, one subscription unlocks everything else. So if you are stitching six tabs together to run your company, like I think most of us are sometimes, just go look at this thing. Odoo.com, start with one free app. Huel is a success story partner. Now, I'll be honest with you. I am terrible at eating well when my schedule gets packed. I'll look up. It's two in the afternoon. I haven't even had a real meal. And then I'm just useless for the rest of the day because I'm hitting a wall. So I started keeping Huel around. It's been an absolute game changer. They just launched into Target stores nationwide, which is huge. You can walk right into your local Target right now, grab the Black Edition ready to drink and the Daily Greens ready to drink. The Black Edition, this is a full meal, 35 grams of protein, 27 essential vitamins and minerals, no artificial sweeteners, gluten-free, and it's under five bucks. I grab one of these in between recordings, done, I'm good for two hours. And the Daily Greens is more of a health thing. 42 vitamins, minerals, and superfoods in one bottle. It's developed by a registered nutritionist, 25 calories, four grams of fiber, and one gram of sugar. I'll have one first thing in the morning. It's the easiest win of my day. Now, 15% off for new customers. Use my code Scott at Huel.com slash Scott and do the post checkout survey. It helps to show. Go to Huel.com slash Scott, code Scott. HubSpot is a success story partner. Now, customers are using traditional search less and less to find the businesses they want to buy from. Now, when a buyer or a customer asks AI for a solution like yours, does your business come up? They're looking for a product, they're looking for a service, and they're going into some AI chat tool and they're saying, hey, help me find the best one. If your company isn't showing up, you're missing out. And most companies have no idea if their business is showing up or even how to show up. And by the time they figure it out, they've already lost a deal to somebody to figure it out. AI. This is what AEO is. Answer Engine Optimization. HubSpot AEO helps you show up in those moments with the right answers that your buyers and your customers are looking for. It could be before the first click, before the first form fill. That's the moment HubSpot AEO is built for. So check out HubSpot.com to learn more about AEO. HubSpot is the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Hostinger is a success story partner. And look, with entrepreneurs, I see this constantly. Someone's got a great idea, a real idea, and they just never start. And it's almost never the idea that stops them. It's the setup, right? You sit down, ready to finally build the thing. And then you're nine tabs deep trying to figure out which website builder, which domain, which what to do about email, and then three hours later, there's nothing live and you've lost a spark. Hostinger takes all of that off your plate. It's the affordable all-in-one place to actually get your idea online. You tell it what you want or you just show it a screenshot and the AI builds a real first version of your site in a couple minutes. Your domain, the site, your business email, all in one account so you're not duct taping five different tools together and hoping it works. And it's priced low enough, then money isn't the excuse anymore. So if you've got something sitting in your notes app right now, trust me, it's way easier to start than you think. Go to hostinger.com slash success and use code success for 20% off. That's hostinger.com slash success, code success. I love how all of your ideas, they do conflict. They conflict to a degree. Yeah. One of the ideas that I actually really want to just touch on, and we've danced around this idea, but I think it's an interesting way to phrase it, is your ideas around being dispassionate. So explain to me what dispassionate means and why it's so important for a founder to not be. Because when I think about this, I think about having too much of your identity wrapped up into a business. Like all of these things that to a degree... you have to have a little bit of your identity wrapped into it, but at the same time also not. So explain the idea of being dispassionate. I mean, there's, you know, there's spiritual traditions of killing our ego and Buddhist tradition and, and now modern self-help, you know, is getting into it. So, so there's the death of the ego, right? And, um, That's a whole other topic, but it actually comes into our journey as founders too, because our ego does get in the way of signal, of tuning to true signal. And it's warping it, and it's giving us narratives that are holding us back. And we have to be ruthless in our pursuit of... whatever the instinct is, this path we're on, ruthless in it, and at the same time be passionate about the process and the products. And it is a paradox. And I'll give you a real-life example from my life this week. I've had this instinct, the whale of all instincts, which Zuckerberg has had too, Since 2006, I've wanted to build my version of the metaverse. It also led to me building Zynga. It led to me building Farmville. And it's the name of my book, Life at the Speed of Play. That's my version of, you know, the metaverse. And my version of the metaverse is blurring the lines between the virtual and the real, between the online and the offline, you know, the digital and the analog. And I still believe in it. I know I'm right. I know that my instinct is right, but... I've tried so many different idea versions of getting there. And there's a product vision idea I've called Dot Earth that I've had since 2006. And I just pulled the plug on a version of it that I've been doing for four years, Earth AI, and... And it was really painful. And I probably have $25 million into this. And no outside money other than Reid Hoffman works with me on everything I do pretty much. I try to be a good steward of his money. So of the $25 million, $2 million was his and we have a million left. So I'm not going until there's no dollars in the bank. I'm stopping because I'm like, you know what? we lost the plot and we started building a, I won't bore you with it, but a three JS browser based game engine that works really well with AI. But we weren't in the Paul Graham tradition of, uh, maniacally focus on a user and a use case and the value. We went native. You know, we got really into the tech and what it could do. And we kept building it more and more broadly, but not more and more vertically deep against a single use case. And we're going to open source this. And I think it is the most sophisticated browser-based engine, and anyone can pick it up and use it. But... I'm still passionate about that instinct and I'm still looking for how to make that happen. But I had to kill this version of it because I realized it's holding me back. Because I found myself trying to make our product called STEM Studio. I was trying to make STEM Studio work. I was spending all my time... how do we get this into a usable use case that has value people? And we were just spending so much time on that. And it was holding me back from being open to more ideas and variants. And it was so painful. I was not following any of the principles in my own book. So how do you, how do you, because I know that you have a journaling ritual. I don't know if that probably helps with some of this. I know you have a journaling ritual. So between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, you've been journaling for the past 30 years. Yeah. Is that one of the things that helps you navigate some of these major life decisions? Like when you decide to kill something, sit in an abyss for a little bit longer than you want to. Does that journal like what's the process? Because you're talking about all the things that founders are going through and they're hearing this saying, yes, I'm dealing with this right now. Or yes, I'm in the abyss. But I also want you who's gone through multiple iterations of companies and just seasons of life. Is the journal one part of it? Is that like a small part of it, of navigating these situations? Like, how do you actually deal with this? I don't, I'm not sitting down this week in journaling. And I think it was funny. I think we're going through like an anti-journaling meme right now because I've heard on All In, they were like, that's ruminated. Oh, it came up because Brockman had a journal. It came out in the OpenAI trial. And they said, oh my God, that was so stupid. And why would you journal? And it's just ruminations. And... And I think you can take anything to an extreme. It's not useful or it's, you know, navel gazing. But here's what I find useful for me and everyone should have their own is – I find keeping this book of life that I write in, same book, or it's multiple books over 30 years, being able to, I only write it that one period of the year. I read what I've written in all the previous years. I find that it's an ongoing dialogue with myself over time. And it adds up over a lifetime. And it's hard to ignore over a lifetime, even over a couple years. because you see what your hopes and dreams were, and you know how it turned out. So it's a bit of a time machine. And what I find helpful about it is... The conversation myself is, it's like, oh yeah, I'm navigating towards this. My why, I want to build an internet treasure. I want to build one of these iconic services in people's lives, part of their digital life stack. They can't remember life before or imagine life without. And it's so ambitious. It's almost too ambitious to know where to start is the problem. But I know that's what I want to do. It's not... to keep up with anybody or because I need to make a certain amount of money or have achievement or success. I feel like I'm good at making products and I feel like not many of these have been built yet. So my iPhone is, the front of my iPhone is mostly empty or it has generic things on it like calendar. and clock and, you know, weather. And so it makes me think it's not full of, and people are wondering if we're even going to use an iPhone. Maybe these services will come in a different form factor in our head or talking to us, but that's my why. And that's what I've written about in this book for 30 years in one way or another. And I can come back to that and say, okay, okay, That's my ambition. That's the continent that I'm trying to navigate towards. Now, what are small steps I could take that are on the path in service of that? Partnering with my future self. What can I do? What's in my control that I can do this year? I don't know it's going to get me there, but I can look back and say, thank you, Mark, for doing that. And I think pulling the plug on STEM Studio... I think I'm going to thank myself. I may not because maybe someone else picks up my open source engine or maybe that game engine becomes the basis of the creation economy in the future. I don't think so. I don't think that's the way. And I think that I'll say thank you for creating space to work on. I know looking back before I started Zynga, I had a company called TagSense, which was a B+. And Peter Thiel was ready to fund it with $5 million. It made perfect sense. It was a user-directed ad network. So if you had blogs or small websites, you could direct the kind of ads you want. And we were able to perform as well and sometimes better than Google AdSense. AdSense partnered with us. It was all there. I had big... Big and small websites ready to be published. I was going to start an ad network. I was not passionate about it. I don't think it was an amazing idea. I didn't have like an amazing technology insight. But I was in the abyss and I was kind of desperate to get out of the abyss. And I was like, this is a way out. Like, take it. Like, that's a life raft. When you're drowning in the abyss, anything feels good. And so, but I was partnering with my future self by pulling the plug on TagSense when I had a great CTO, team, customer, team. Peter Thiel, great investor. You know, everything was there to create a company. And I pulled the plug with nothing else. Because I was like, you know, it's just not that good. And I'm more ambitious than this. And I don't want to be stuck in this. I'm not excited about it. And it's not going to be... I can't say how it's going to be that big or that good. So I'm thankful to Mark for pulling the plug because I created space to create Zynga. It's almost like... You have to have a practice. A lot of people know the principles and the rules that they should live their life by, but we get so caught up in the moment that we forget our own rules. Yeah. And I think that if I'm just listening to your story, I don't want to paraphrase, but it sounds like For you, that journaling practice helps you reframe the journey you've been on, but also the rules that you should live by. It's like an annual spiritual board meeting. It's like, I'm going to, I know this fall I'm going to hold myself accountable for what I did this year and whether it was in service of what my soul desires to do before I die and... And I will look at it and I will kind of judge and grade myself. And I'll be okay with it. But I'll hold myself accountable to whether or not I was making choices this year that were in service of the life goals that I am hoping to get to. And then I'll adjust. I'll forgive myself. And then I'll adjust. And some years I do better than other years. And I also want to give myself an easy win every year. And so I try to pick something that I sign up for that's 100% in my control and but that I wouldn't have done if I didn't sign up for it. And that was the very first time I did my book of life. I signed up to quit smoking because it was 100% of my control. And I knew in a year, if I achieved that, I would thank myself for it. And so I like, elective surgery is a great one. Like get your wisdom teeth out. You know, it's something that you wouldn't do this year. It's not like I'm trying to sell you on, you know, New Year's resolutions. It sounds like it, but it's a practice that, that lets you know you're in control of your life and you're not passively along for the ride, waiting for fate to save you. This is one of, by the way, this is one of my favorite ideas. So the idea of the internal versus external locus of control or the Marc Andreessen quote about if you put enough energy, I'm going to butcher the quote, but if you put enough energy and effort and time towards a thing, the world's very malleable and the world will conform to, Yes, 100%. I love that too. And it's such a weird paradox of starting things. Every time I've started something, I feel like the world says to me two impossible, two things that can't both be true. The world says it already exists and nobody needs it. And I'm always like, well, which is it? If it already exists, it exists because someone needs it. And that was true with my very first company, Freeloader. And the world's like... We don't need this. We don't want this. There's no room for this. And then you keep doing it. And now you don't do it out of stupid stoicism. You do it because there's something in you that says you want this. But if you want it and it doesn't exist, eventually the world makes room for it. It's my experience. And all of a sudden, and once they make room for it, they don't want it to die. I mean, I'll give you a dumb one that this is so City of San Francisco. Yeah. When we created the Zynga headquarters building on 8th and Townsend, we wanted, first I had this idea that there should be a digital skyline to San Francisco. And I said, any consumer internet company that gets over 100 million users should be offered digital sky rights. This is an idea for Daniel Lurie today. And you should say, there should have been a blue Twitter bird, and there should have been the red or white Zynga dog. The LinkedIn, whatever their logo thing, they're in or the IN. And I wanted the United Airlines pilot to point as you were landing at SFO and say, there's the internet. Look over if anyone on the left side of the plane can see the internet, right? It was like the Motor City. We are the Motor City of the internet. Anyway. Long story. But so San Francisco definitely wouldn't let me do that. They wouldn't even at first let us put a huge banner on the side of the building with the dog. And we needed like banner rights or something and we had to get a permit. And the ultimate irony is that I talked to Alex Wang. You know, he he took over the building at one point. Um, and, and I said, do you think I could get the gigantic white dog banner back? It's dirty. It's hanging there. And he got back to me eventually. He said, actually, the city won't let us take it down. So my point is the world doesn't want the change. And then once you make the change, they don't want to change from your change. The book is called life at the speed of play. Um, what does that title mean to you? But more importantly, what does play mean to you? Life is Speed of Play means so much to me, and it wasn't even the title of the book for a while. And then I finally said to my amazing editor, I was like, I know it's a weird name. I know it may not be memorable, but it is the essence of this book. And I just have to call it that because I won't forgive myself. Yeah. The reason I love that concept, Life is Speed of Play, it has so many levels of meaning. First of all, I think that's the way we all as founders and creators should be operating and want to operate. If you were in the flow state, when we were kids in play, we got to try on anything. And it had no consequence. And you could just say it, do it, be it, experience it. And there was no fail state. But I feel like life becomes this beat down. And it's what kills our ideas and makes them heavy and not fun. Oh, you want to start a coffee shop? I'm going to start this coffee shop, Pink Buck's. It's my Starbucks. Proven better or new of Starbucks. You know, it's all self-service and I don't know. But, okay, great, Mark. All right, we need a trademark lawyer. I think Starbucks is going to sue you. Oh, okay, okay. I'll change the name. All right. Now we need locations. Okay. Well, you know, we have to deal with a landlord and we have to like get leases and they need to see a balance sheet and they're like, okay, okay, okay. I mean, I, in fact, I've had a coffee shop idea. I mean, my, my best friend had an idea. I have a special needs son, Wyatt. This is a real world beat down. This is an example of how I want life as we to plan. I do not have it yet. Okay. So Wyatt, my son, is 11. He's special needs. And he loves serving coffee to people. He wants to make you coffee. And so my friend, Stephen Jenkins, he has a band, Third Eye Blind. He's an awesome guy. He has this vision. He's like, we're going to create a Wyatt's coffee. And it's going to be the best cup of coffee you've ever had served by special needs kids. I'm like, that's a fucking awesome idea. Wyatt would love that. I think people feel good about themselves. That's a great idea. Okay, let's do it. How are we going to do it? All right. Well, he doesn't have time. I don't have time. All right. We got to hire somebody to come up with a coffee concept, to find a place to like the number of steps is a fucking beat down. So what's the bold beat? How do we do it? We had a baby naming for my baby, who's now one and a half. We had baby naming service for her last year. We said, okay, we're going to have a one-day pop-up of Wyatt's coffee. And I call it a bold beat. We're going to design the cups. We're going to find a coffee vendor to work with us. And we're going to have, at the event, we're going to have a pop-up with Wyatt serving coffee. And we're going to try Wyatt's coffee. And we did it. That was fun. That was life is free to play. I didn't ask anyone for, you know, trademark rights or leases. But... And it built more energy around it. And in a game, I could create a Wyatt's Coffee. And this is why I want the metaverse, okay? Life at the Speed of Play is the metaverse. And I like to say Elon is the only one I can see who's actually already living in the metaverse. Elon can tweet something and then it's real three months later. Elon can make fart mode in his cars. He can make a fart perfume. He can, like, do these things, come up with an idea on a whim. and then see it happen and have fun with it. And avoid the beatdown of it. So I want us all to find ourselves in a state of creation and flow that is life of the speed of play. I want us to create the conditions for it. And it's good news. It's where the world is heading. With AI, with vibe coding, with so much, we are moving to closer and closer to a place that will have the conditions. And what life of the speed of play just means is... We're going to lower the cost and consequence of creation so low that you can have fun with your ideas and play with them and just go try them out without being attached to them or having to quit your job or Yeah. You know, do all these heavy. Don't don't make it heavy anymore. Yeah. It's it's what I want people to get is just that that is that is what it should feel like to. To build, to build. Yeah. You work with so many different founders. What would be the one takeaway from the book that you want to leave them with? I'd say the one takeaway, and I created a class at Stanford on product management. I realized how hard it is to teach. Because the only two things I tried to teach anyone in the class, and I had... variable degrees of success was if, if, if you can burn in that your instincts are almost always right and your ideas are usually wrong, if, and you can really go deep on what's an instinct. I have this idea for a new kind of podcast or better podcast. What is my instinct in my gut that I want to hang on to and chase that whale that, But what are all the ideas that I'm putting on top of it? And separate those two and be passionately attached to your instinct and dispassionate about your ideas. That's the biggest thing I'd like to give founders. And I'd say, I'll take a second one for extra credit. If you're going to go on this journey, build a house you want to live in, bet on yourself. Create the conditions to bet on yourself. Don't be a pleaser. Don't please your investors, your board, your team, your employees. The only people you have to please is your customers and yourself. But be selfish to your customers and to your own instincts. And don't compromise those things. in service of getting to the next... Very wise advice. Okay, so Life at the Speed of Play, launch products people love. That's available now when this drops everywhere. You can get books. Is there anywhere else you want to send people? Because I have one last question for you, but is there anywhere else you want to send people if they want to follow you anywhere, Twitter? Oh, Twitter. I mean, I want to have a website. I've been trying to turn one on for a few years. I love your Twitter, by the way. You're a good follow. Thank you. It's a funny thing about my Twitter. he gets really bothered when I say this, but my chief of staff used to protect me from myself. And I would put up tweets and he'd say, you need to delete that. Five friends have texted me, Mark, nobody wants to hear your point of view on SF politics or politics. They just want to hear your thoughts on investing and product state of your lane. I said, okay, okay, okay. He... after nine years moved on to, uh, other things was good growth for him and me. Um, and there was no one to protect me for myself. I just started tweeting about whatever the fuck I wanted. And you could see it. Right. It just got me in a little trouble sometimes, but, but mostly, and it, it, I think it might've changed who followed me, but, but I'm, I'm not trying to please my audience. And, and it's, And I believe that life is about nuance. And so my tweets are nuanced and they don't always please. I've attracted a bunch of Trump followers because I came out publicly pro-Trump. They don't like some of the things I say. Sometimes I'm pro-Fetterman or, you know, it's just not, I just think it's new. Or I denounced the ICE raids. They didn't like that, but some of them did. But I think I really enjoy just being nuanced and just stating your authentic truth and not, you know, not being on any team. I think that's super important. It's something like, listen, this is not a politics podcast by any means, but I'll just add on one point. I've noticed this being Canadian that too many people subscribe to a complete ideology and not pick it apart and understand what parts apply to them and what parts don't. Or have nuanced perspective on this idea versus that idea, which I think is that is actually an unhealthy society. Yes, yes, 100%. And it's unhealthy in pursuing startups, right? We want to get rid of our ego and our need to belong in a team and pursue the intellectual honesty. When I first started doing this, in the comments, people said, Mark is based. And I thought it was a typo and they meant biased. I was like, I am not freaking biased. And I finally Googled base and I was like, oh, base is good. I'm just stupid and old and not with it. And then I wanted to make an app called, I wanted to make a website that rated how based you are, you know, based on your tweets and like, cause we can see it, right? You can see politicians and people and like, When you see them promote the counterfactual to their team or their argument, you're like, that's based. You know, when you see them say things that are not obviously going to be popular with their audience or whatever, you're like, you're like, that's based. Right. Like, I'm like, yeah, I like I'm going to listen more to you. I like that. Last thing I want to ask, this is more from a personal perspective. You know, you have five children? Yeah. Five children. Okay, so if you could pass on the most important lesson that you've learned over your life to your kids, what would that be and why? I'd say I got from the book, The Courage to be Disliked, that we find happiness from feeling useful to a community that we care about. And I would tell them, really, really figure out what is it that you are great at to the point of being maybe only at that. And who can you deliver that to? And then go after that. And that's going to make you feel the most happy.