Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q Yeah. Is there an example that comes to mind when, cause yeah, what's like in, what's a, what's a company or two that started very unambitious?
A I love the story of bolt.new that really blew up last year. I loved it so much. I cold mailed the founder cause I was just so impressed with, yeah. And you know, they, They toiled in obscurity on something that they were into, and then they open sourced it. I think they were barely able to keep going with commercial development. And then they had this realization one day of, wait a second, if we take these, uh, web stacks, this virtual machine that we've been making Work on the web, but we actually add that to an AI coding co-pilot. We now have something that's better than what anybody else has. And, and I, I think that was just a great story that he, they were passionate about one thing and you know, and they stuck with it.
AI assessment note: “I love the story of bolt.new that really blew up last year.”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.30
Q Zynga, they're not like, this is the product I want to build. You know, and there's a spectrum of, of products you guys have built. There's like, uh, Farmville and Cityville and all these things that I think people, Turn some people off. Then there's like poker, words with friends, mafia wars that I think people are like, oh, that's amazing. I love that. Can you just speak to that?
A Sure. I, I think if I'm unpacking that, when you say that, that the products turn people off, it's, it's funny you say that because Farmville and Cityville were our biggest hits in terms of installs, engagement, retention, revenues. Um, now Words with friends and poker were more enduring because they made the transition to mobile and the other games didn't. It was a whole other story. But, but I think the part that you're getting to is that Zynga was in a lot of ways, a victim of its own success, that it was, our games were so viral and took over the feeds on Facebook so much that the Your friend who was playing it started to bug you as a person not playing it, and, and that's, that's fair, but what I would say, I think what's misunderstood about Zynga from the beginning, and why we succeeded, and we created, uh, eight massive hits out of 10 mass, large game launches. We had a very high Hit rate. It wasn't that we were good at virality. It was that we were focused on two things that I think we did better than anybody else, and we had lots of competitors, lots, and copying, and we still managed to keep winning, and so couldn't be that we were just spammier or better at virality. First, we had this core mission and focus around connecting the world through games, and being Gordon and I Kept coming back to this idea that I love and I, and I want your founders, product makers watch…
AI assessment note: “our games were so viral and took over the feeds on Facebook so much”
