mark pincus

Founder @zynga. Partner/Reinvent Capital. Passionate product maker, biker, surfer. Father of three amazing girls and two amazing boys! Pre order my book!

[mark pincus @markpinc]

I'm excited to share that my book, Life at the Speed of Play, will be out in June. I've spent the last 5 years writing so I can share my lessons and stories around building products and scaling companies.

[mark pincus @markpinc]

@garrytan @TheMarinaTimes Yesss!!

[mark pincus @markpinc]

@VCBrags @BragsVentures Ok. I forgive you. Promise to call you first next time

[mark pincus @markpinc]

In 2007 i pitched an enterprise vc firm on Zynga (bc no firm wanted to back us) and the partner fell asleep. I looked at my friend who set up the meeting and asked if i should keep presenting and she said yes. It was ‘weekend at bernies’ meets Silicon Valley.

[travis kalanick @travisk]

In 2001 I intercepted a partner at a VC who was trying to escape his office before our meeting was supposed to start. I ended up pitching him in his parked Lexus from the passenger seat.

At one point he grabbed my laptop placed on his large belly which was pressed against the steering wheel and rapidly flipped through the slides himself.

2001 fundraising hit different

[mark pincus @markpinc]

@AlexStLouis10 I hear you and good luck. There isnt a strong proven mkt for web games. 1.9b mkt out of 280b. Better would be 10 out of 10 existing users wanting this and new can be any novel idea. I just pulled the plug on our commercial dev for these reasons.

[mark pincus @markpinc]

@wolfejosh Thanks! Glad you liked it!

I aspired to write a book that at least was fun to read and not boring.

[mark pincus @markpinc]

@wolfejosh Thanks! Not sure what that means but it sounds positive!

[mark pincus @markpinc]

@LiNasha07 @shaneparrish Love to see that!

[mark pincus @markpinc]

Thanks @shaneparrish for coming to sf and hosting a fun convo on winning with best products.

[Shane Parrish @shaneparrish]

My conversation with @markpinc, founder of Zynga creator of Farmville, Words with Friends, and so much more.

00:00 The Principles of Great Products
12:04 The Book of Life
17:56 Good Instincts and Bad Ideas
22:29 Copying Your Competitors
24:05 Proven Better New
37:25 Pitching Zynga to Steve Jobs
41:24 The Peter Thiel and Sequoia Fight
54:03 Speed Beats Accuracy
58:50 Democratic Dictatorship
1:03:44 Jeff Bezos' Invaluable Management Trick

Includes paid partnerships.

[mark pincus @markpinc]

@PhiMarHal @_nitin_khanna can look

[mark pincus @markpinc]

@karri_tweets Thanks!

[mark pincus @markpinc]

PROVEN BETTER NEW

Too many founders fail for the wrong reasons.

They try to make every feature new and end up with most of them worse - instead of isolating their one innovation and copying everything else from what's already proven to work.

Proven Better New is a framework for failing for the RIGHT reasons. Fail fast on the one bet that matters. Don't lose time and users over stuff that already works.
I remember at Zynga having real fear when we heard Sid Meier was developing a social Civilization game. And then when EA announced SimCity Social. 

Both times our PMs called the games DOA within an hour of launch. Why?

They didn't copy our onboarding (FTUE), which was already proven to work. Instead, they used standard game industry tutorial flows.
Nobody ever saw their innovations. Our PMs knew that any hyper-casual busy adult audience would give up by the 3rd click. 

Shilling my new book, out June 23rd: https://t.co/a6OgyOIqsr

[mark pincus @markpinc]

@ComebackCap Added at 4,90 i think

[mark pincus @markpinc]

@Katsen One worked. Threads:)

[mark pincus @markpinc]

@dflieb I have a diff pov. If there was unlimited tokens we would find new ways to ‘squander’ intelligence in free apps. What do humans do that costs money that we could offer for free? Free apps can also become more human/intelligent. Could the weather app be a lot smarter? I think so.

[mark pincus @markpinc]

@ComebackCap Yes

[mark pincus @markpinc]

@AshConnell @Ademola_4life Thats coming this wk

[mark pincus @markpinc]

We’re open-sourcing Stem Studio, our 3JS game engine today.

This is a browser-based 3D multiplayer game engine and dev studio based on the idea that game dev should become more open, remixable, and web-native.

AI will make it easier to create games. But shared building blocks will make it easier for developers to build on top of each other.

Stem Studio is MIT licensed, JavaScript-based, and built for browser multiplayer 3D worlds.

Code is here: https://t.co/PRNy6sb7ji
Fork it, break it, remix it, and show us what you make.

[mark pincus @markpinc]

Over the next week @_nitin_khanna will be linking to games and experiences we and others have created.

[mark pincus @markpinc]

@AnneOnymusChoco @_nitin_khanna

[mark pincus @markpinc]

@jo1lyrancher True. Its built for proven better new!