Mark Pincus

Founder & Executive Chairman, Zynga · 1 appearance on the record.

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founderinvestorexecutiveauthor@markpinc ↗LinkedIn ↗lifeatthespeedofplay.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Mark Pincus is the founder and former CEO of social gaming pioneer Zynga, creator of FarmVille and Words with Friends. An early investor in companies like Facebook and Twitter, he also co-founded Reinvent Capital.

15statements → 3claims → 0claims resolved → 4.13/5average certainty → 2.07/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 50said about them ↓

3 not checkable as stated how the 3 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 2 assertions · 5 insights · 7 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 3 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 are resolved, and 3 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Mark argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

How they sound: speaking style how? →

215 words/min while actually speaking · 0.3 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Mark Pincus: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews. Their coarse estimate from 13 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.5/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to 3,284 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Mark Pincus is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 3/10

pushed back at the host ▾ 2/10

setup questions received 55%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 5:56“I've had a lot of VCs on the show that suggest that we're in a fallow period for consumer due to the lack of available distribution channels with them being so expensive with incum…” ▶ 11:18“I had a startup founder on the show the other day. He said that startups are hard enough. We need everyone thinking in the same direction like me. How would you respond to that sor…” ▶ 14:52“how do you balance between vision for the product roadmap, for the kind of meta landscape that you're painting, and then also comparing that to stubbornness when something isn't wo…”

when Mark pushed back ▶ 6:13“That is a problem, but I wouldn't say that the problem is that there isn't distribution.” ▶ 11:28“Well, there's one part of it I love and one part I hate.”

What they said15 What others said50 Episodes1

Everything Mark Pincus said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Cryptocurrencies can enable a post-capital and post-corporation world

“Now I got involved with cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin early, and then I thought I was Too early, and maybe it wasn't going to happen, and now I'm completely drinking the Kool-Aid, and I'm completely enthralled by just the potential of cryptocurrencies to get us…”

Mark Pincus Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 21:20 20VC: Zynga's Mark Pincus on When To Ride Your Winners and Cut Your Losers, Why People With "Broken Resumes" Make The Best Hires & The 2 Biggest Lies Told In Silicon Valley By Founders and VCs

Insight

Mark Pincus prefers hiring humble, hungry candidates with 'broken resumes'

“I like to hire people who have what I call broken resumes. So someone who has seen greatness, touched greatness, come close to greatness, but then fallen because things just didn't work out. I find that those people are more humble and curious and more hungry.”

Mark Pincus Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 9:48 20VC: Zynga's Mark Pincus on When To Ride Your Winners and Cut Your Losers, Why People With "Broken Resumes" Make The Best Hires & The 2 Biggest Lies Told In Silicon Valley By Founders and VCs

Insight

Founders lying about valuation and VCs about control are fundraising's biggest lies

“The two biggest lies around startups are founders saying, I don't care about the valuation and investors saying, you know, we don't care about control.”

Mark Pincus Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 13:34 20VC: Zynga's Mark Pincus on When To Ride Your Winners and Cut Your Losers, Why People With "Broken Resumes" Make The Best Hires & The 2 Biggest Lies Told In Silicon Valley By Founders and VCs

Insight

Startup success requires testing more ideas weekly than competitors

“In four years, I can't think of how many more I could have tried, and that lesson was burned into me, and I think so much of success today is starting with a winning instinct, but then testing more good ideas, In a week than the rest of the industry does.”

Mark Pincus Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 17:28 20VC: Zynga's Mark Pincus on When To Ride Your Winners and Cut Your Losers, Why People With "Broken Resumes" Make The Best Hires & The 2 Biggest Lies Told In Silicon Valley By Founders and VCs

Disclosure

Mark Pincus and Reid Hoffman provided Friendster's initial funding

“Reid Hoffman and I got excited about that. We both kind of at the same time discovered Friendster and put up the original money for Friendster, and both started our own networks, LinkedIn and Tribe.”

Mark Pincus Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 3:52 20VC: Zynga's Mark Pincus on When To Ride Your Winners and Cut Your Losers, Why People With "Broken Resumes" Make The Best Hires & The 2 Biggest Lies Told In Silicon Valley By Founders and VCs

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Mobile distribution is bigger than ever, but lacks easy viral paths

“The distribution is there bigger than ever, but there are not easy proven paths that people can follow”

Mark Pincus Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 6:58 20VC: Zynga's Mark Pincus on When To Ride Your Winners and Cut Your Losers, Why People With "Broken Resumes" Make The Best Hires & The 2 Biggest Lies Told In Silicon Valley By Founders and VCs

Insight

Greater success causes leaders and teams to become risk-averse

“The more successful you get, the more risk averse everyone gets”

Mark Pincus Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 8:05 20VC: Zynga's Mark Pincus on When To Ride Your Winners and Cut Your Losers, Why People With "Broken Resumes" Make The Best Hires & The 2 Biggest Lies Told In Silicon Valley By Founders and VCs

Disclosure

Zynga purchased its corporate headquarters despite non-obvious deal economics

“The company bought our headquarters, and Bing has been a big proponent of that, and every time that we were making the purchase, the economics were not obvious.”

Mark Pincus Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 8:49 20VC: Zynga's Mark Pincus on When To Ride Your Winners and Cut Your Losers, Why People With "Broken Resumes" Make The Best Hires & The 2 Biggest Lies Told In Silicon Valley By Founders and VCs

Insight

Strict leadership profiles restrict company diversity and DNA

“As soon as you have a spec for who's the kind of leader person, you're kind of doomed because you're going to kind of be narrowing your DNA and not expanding your DNA.”

Mark Pincus Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 11:04 20VC: Zynga's Mark Pincus on When To Ride Your Winners and Cut Your Losers, Why People With "Broken Resumes" Make The Best Hires & The 2 Biggest Lies Told In Silicon Valley By Founders and VCs

Disclosure

Early Zynga succeeded by aligning investors around never selling

“One of the ingredients that I think was really key to making Zynga successful in the early days was alignment. And we had such powerful alignment between the investors, first the CEO and founder vision, and not just vision for the product or company, but the v…”

Mark Pincus Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 11:31 20VC: Zynga's Mark Pincus on When To Ride Your Winners and Cut Your Losers, Why People With "Broken Resumes" Make The Best Hires & The 2 Biggest Lies Told In Silicon Valley By Founders and VCs

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Mark Pincus pitched Zynga by listing ten reasons not to invest

“I started off by saying to investors, let me tell you the top 10 reasons you're not going to want to back us. And if you still want to talk after that, we will, but then we won't waste time. And 95% of investors thanked me and said, I don't want to meet.”

Mark Pincus Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 13:51 20VC: Zynga's Mark Pincus on When To Ride Your Winners and Cut Your Losers, Why People With "Broken Resumes" Make The Best Hires & The 2 Biggest Lies Told In Silicon Valley By Founders and VCs

Disclosure

Zynga withheld financial metrics from investors until late in fundraising

“I refused to share anything about our financials until kind of very, very late in the process, and I just said, you'll have surprise and delight at our financials, but I don't want you to invest because of them.”

Mark Pincus Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 14:23 20VC: Zynga's Mark Pincus on When To Ride Your Winners and Cut Your Losers, Why People With "Broken Resumes" Make The Best Hires & The 2 Biggest Lies Told In Silicon Valley By Founders and VCs

Disclosure

Mark Pincus missed investing in Square because he thought he was too busy

“I don't know that it was offered to me, but Square, when Jack Dorsey was walking out in the hallways at a conference with a dongle, and I thought I was too busy.”

Mark Pincus Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 18:41 20VC: Zynga's Mark Pincus on When To Ride Your Winners and Cut Your Losers, Why People With "Broken Resumes" Make The Best Hires & The 2 Biggest Lies Told In Silicon Valley By Founders and VCs

Disclosure

Mark Pincus was an early investor in Napster

“In 2002 and 2003, a few of us started getting together and really thinking about the potential for a people web, a web that was about people connections and not page connections and something that in really building off of Napster, which I was a first investor…”

Mark Pincus Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 3:25 20VC: Zynga's Mark Pincus on When To Ride Your Winners and Cut Your Losers, Why People With "Broken Resumes" Make The Best Hires & The 2 Biggest Lies Told In Silicon Valley By Founders and VCs

Disclosure

Mark Pincus spent four years stubbornly pursuing a failed iteration of Tribe

“The most failing idea was try. I stubbornly stuck with one iteration on a social network for four years, and I got it so wrong. It's so painful to me to think that I tried one iteration of this, and it was clearly wrong, and I just stuck with it, and I could h…”

Mark Pincus Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 17:12 20VC: Zynga's Mark Pincus on When To Ride Your Winners and Cut Your Losers, Why People With "Broken Resumes" Make The Best Hires & The 2 Biggest Lies Told In Silicon Valley By Founders and VCs

The other half of the tape: Mark Pincus's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 48 times in 15 episodes on 20VC. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Howard Lindzon 13 Harry Stebbings 10 Vaibhav Sahgal 9 Fabrice Grinda 4 Darian Shirazi 3 Brad Feld 3 Bing Gordon 3 Mo Koyfman 1

Statements about Mark Pincus, by other people (2)

Disclosure

Grinda: Passed on Zynga's $1M Pre-Money Seed Round

“I think I told Mark Pincus no to invest in Zynga at, like, 50 K out of one million pre.”

Fabrice Grinda May 9, 2022 ▶ 47:18 20VC: WTF Is Going On? 3 Outcomes for What Could Happen From Here; What Needs to Happen To Avoid Recession? Why Stagnation is Most Likely and What This Means for Startups and Venture & Why Catastrophe is More Likely Than Ever and Switzerland Could Be a "H

Assertion Supported

Mark Pincus and Reid Hoffman bought the Six Degrees patent in 2003

“Recognizing the importance of social networking, in 2003, Mark teamed up with his friend, Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, to purchase the fundamental six degrees patent, which broadly covers social networks, in order to keep it out of the hands of paten…”

Harry Stebbings Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 0:59 20VC: Zynga's Mark Pincus on When To Ride Your Winners and Cut Your Losers, Why People With "Broken Resumes" Make The Best Hires & The 2 Biggest Lies Told In Silicon Valley By Founders and VCs