Opinion
Pincus: Viral apps like BeReal are sinking speedboats outrunning churn
“Viral based companies, and there's been many, you know, be real. There's right. We've seen these, they're sinking speed boats. They're trying to drive faster than they're sinking, right?”
Insight
Pincus: Copying proven mechanics is a moral arbitrage for founders without ego
“In the Peter Thiel sense, it's almost a moral arbitrage because there's something in our gut as a product maker. You became a founder, an entrepreneur because you wanted to go be an innovator. And so it can feel like a beat down that your path to innovation st…”
Assertion Supported
Pincus: OMGPOP built Draw Something by copying Words with Friends
“They said, we're going to take this proven game and do everything about it that in as perfect students of what is already working and viral on mobile, and they perfectly copied our turn-based system from Words with Friends, and they made a massive hit.”
Insight
Pincus: Overly ambitious visions cause founders to miss product-market fit
“If we're too ambitious and we're at the outset and too ambitious and visionary about the product we want to build, then we will probably miss product market fit because we won't start at a small enough, humble enough place because it, it's, it might, Usually t…”
Insight
Pincus: First-time founders have an advantage over repeat founders
“It almost gives a new founder an advantage over a multi time successful founder because we have too much rope to hang ourselves. It's too easy to raise money and recruit teams against a big vision before we've gotten to product market fit, but the world doesn'…”
Insight
Pincus: True founder mode is telling teams when a product isn't working
“That's to me the real founder mode is, can you have the courage to tell your team and your investors that this isn't it?”
Insight
Pincus: Product teams should eliminate 'viability' from MVP frameworks
“The viable is the word we gotta kill along with hope. Because viable is where hope comes from. Right? If it's viable, it might make it.”
Insight
Pincus: People do not want to be creative, just feel creative
“People don't want to be creative, they want to feel creative.”
Insight
Pincus: If you are debating whether your product is exceptional, it is not
“If you're asking whether or not your product is an A, it's not an A.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Pincus: Today's AI token volume will be basically free in two years
“If we think that the amount of tokens that we're buying today, you know, that will basically be free in a year or two, that, that, that, that token, you know, supply is going to go up so much.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Pincus: Zynga held two-hour daily spreadsheet stand-ups up to 50 employees
“We had a stand-up call that would go on for two hours, and I had everyone's name in a spreadsheet, and I had what they were supposed to do yesterday and what they're gonna do today. And I go through name by name and say, okay, did you get that done? Can everyo…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Pincus: Sid Meier's Facebook game failed due to poor onboarding UX
“Sid Meyers, like, the, you know, godfather of game design, who's the most revered game designer, he came out with, I think, a social civilization on Facebook, and we thought, oh god, here comes, like, the ultimate game designer, and 10 minutes after the game c…”
Opinion
Pincus: Slack succeeded with proven and better features without anything new
“Slack was a great example because I think Slack might've just been proven and better and no new. And that's even better.”
Disclosure
Pincus: Erring on radical transparency burned out teams at Zynga
“I err on the side of transparency and honesty and, you know, being authentic to a fault. And I burn out people in that process. And I did it Zynga and I have since because It, you know, people will say the negative critique I'm working with me is, oh, working …”
Opinion
Pincus: AI is misapplied building single ideas rather than rapid testing
“I think AI is being used more to build one idea in three months than a hundred ideas, you know, in a day.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Pincus: The gaming industry will see massive growth by unlocking adult engagement
“I actually think there's another massive growth waiting in games because they're this big and it's this boring and adults aren't doing it”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Pincus: Quitting Facebook and Instagram plunges user Net Promoter Score to -35
“I, we looked at NPS, net promoter scores, and we saw That when people quit Facebook and quit Instagram, they went from a plus 35 to a -35.”
Opinion
Pincus: AI chat tools are not yet a true computing platform
“There's a one question we got to back up and really explore, which is, is AI a new platform? And I would argue that it is not yet a new platform. It is an important technology. We have a new kind of portal to that in GPT or whatever chat we use, AI chat, but i…”
Assertion Supported
Pincus: Zero of 40,000 new App Store games sustained top 50 ranks
“You know, there was something like 40,000 new games launched last year in the app store and zero, you know, became top 10 hits and zero even sustained top 25 or 50.”
Opinion
Pincus: Major LLMs differentiate on coding, not at the consumer level
“They're differentiating themselves right now on coding and there's real value and they're, that's an amazing business, but they're not differentiating themselves very much at the consumer level.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Pincus: Facebook absorbed all platform verticals except music and games
“With us, you know, we saw it on Facebook, you know, they, the two areas that they just didn't care about going into was music. Cause it was really painful with IP rights and games because they didn't want to like hire artists. But everything else they did abso…”
Insight
Pincus: Gut instincts are right 95% of the time, but specific ideas fail 75%
“We have these instincts like in our gut, these human level instincts that are pretty much always right. And then we put these ideas on top of the instincts that are usually wrong. And my rule of thumb is your instincts are right. 95% of the time, your ideas ar…”
Insight
Pincus: True 'better' product features require unanimous existing user approval
“Better is usually very small increments and innovations, and better is something that 10 out of 10 of your existing The existing users of that product would say, fuck yeah. 10 out of 10, not you. What you think is better is called new, right?”
Insight
Pincus: Product mechanics do not count as proven without platform-specific proof
“You, we have to be precise. We have to think at the pixel level of this experience proven is on this platform for this audience, for this experience. And you can look to what's been proven before. As great sources of new ideas, but it's not, if it's not on thi…”
Mark Pincus