Founder & Former CEO of Zynga - Mark Pincus
The Bad Idea Killer
What a fantastic evening with the Founder and former CEO of Zynga - Mark Pincus at
! I flew across the country for this and would do it again in a heartbeat! Huge thanks to Mark for a fascinating and insightful discussion, some of which is summarized below:💡Winning Instincts vs. Winning Ideas: Your instinct is correct 95% of the time; your ideas - 25% of the time. Trust your instincts, not your ideas.
💪 Small Ideas - Big Ambitions: Start small with big ambitions.
🧩 Proven, Better, New: Each product is an aggregation of individual features where some features are ‘proven’, other features are ‘better’ than the existing ones, and there are ‘new’ features that did not exist before. It is about making the product, as a whole, better. Otherwise (reciting Steve Jobs), by trying to make every feature 10% better, you may make the product 50% worse.
🆕 All New Fails: Assume new fails, and you can find a way to work around it.
🏡 Death By a Thousand Compromises: If you make too many compromises as a founder, you may end up building a company you don’t want to work at. Build a house you want to live in. Decide how ambitious you really are. No judgment, just intellectual honesty. Identify things that matter to you, lines you would not cross, trade-offs you would be willing to make. “I’m a team player; if I’m running the team, I have to be CEO”
🎈 Taste & creativity: You have to constantly increase your bar, develop your taste, make it better. Care at a pixel level. Keep an eye out for true signals.
⚙️ Lessons Learned: Can’t be naïve to a new space; have to learn on the go. Proven, better, new – copy what works well. Allow yourself to be too early – it may be hard but it has to be done to discover a new planet. Understand what your ego is and how to avoid pitfalls that come with it.
✨ Happiness: Being and feeling useful to a community you care about.
Special thanks to Kevin Liang for all the help coordinating the event and for being so accommodating (and patient with all my emails!) 😊
Huge thanks to my amazing co-Host and Founder of - Georgi Koreli - I could not have done this without you! 🔥
