Mark Pincus unpacks his "Proven, Better, New" framework (with Reid Hoffman) | Masters of Scale

0:00 The best masters of the craft are the best at copying. >> Yes. >> And and they have the least ego around it. >> So, proven better new is this what 10 out of 10 of the existing users of that product would say, "Yeah." So, better is usually very simple and basic things like it's now free. No download. >> Yeah. >> You know, it's clearly something that they really care about is like 1 in better. >> Well, you already have the consumer experience of what this thing is and what would be obvious >> >> like it would be immediate like yes, this is better.

0:36 >> This is Masters of Scale. This week on the show, Reid Hoffman sits down with Mark Pincus. You should know Mark, but if you don't, he's a serial tech entrepreneur and investor best known as the founder of Zynga. Thanks to games like FarmVille, Zynga blitz scaled to 300 million monthly active users on Facebook at its peak. They were also huge on MySpace, but we don't remember MySpace so much these days. Now, Mark has a new book out, Life at the Speed of Play. The Godfather of mobile gaming talks with Reid about how to build products people love, how to learn fast from your mistakes, and much much more.

1:23 >> >> Mark, it's always an honor and a pleasure. Welcome back to Masters of Scale. Part of the reason why we decided to do this, you have a new book coming up. And I wrote the forward to the book. I am a huge fan of the book. Start with a little bit of like, "Okay, internet boy, why did you write a book? What led you to writing a book? Very old school media." >> Well, coming from someone who's been prolific with his books, >> internet boy.

1:51 >> Yes. >> I would say that not the playbook you've been on, but after writing the book, I think everyone should write a book once. I think it's one of those things that's such a labor of love, but I I wanted to capture a few things in the book. Like one part book of life motivation, one part stories, one part, you know, product management Bible, and we'll see if they all work. Originally, you may remember when the first few years I was writing this book, I called it Proven Better New because I was like, "That's the core value. That's the core value."

2:26 But, I started to realize that that's in service of something much bigger. And to me, life at the speed of play represents it it it has meaning on a bunch of levels. One is it's the vibe. It's the way that I think we should approach making products. I think it should be fun and playful and light. And and I think the Someone asked me at a party, they're like, "Oh, is is this book also targeted children?" And I said, "No, actually, they already know how to play." And so, I think remembering the kind of level of fun and imagination that we have in play, you know, as kids, giving ourselves permission to play is important. I also think that in this AI era, which you told me about years before we got to it.

3:16 I wish I'd listened harder. in this AI era, we are just hurtling towards living our lives at the speed of play. And I think that that's more and more accessible to all of us. That this idea that we don't You don't have to quit your job to to try out build an idea that you've been thinking about. You don't have to go and mortgage your house, raise a lot of venture capital, do all these things before you can experiment. That wasn't true when you and I were starting out.

3:51 And even a couple years ago that wasn't true. And now we're at this place that we have all the one-person founder team. So, so that's the other part of it. Proven better new. What's the framework? what's the baseline of understanding again? And we'll do that, and then we'll move to also talking about that in the age of AI. In order to explain proven better new, I got to start a chapter earlier on instincts versus ideas. Literally a chapter earlier, I guess.

4:18 But >> the the the foundational point for me as a product maker is that we have winning instincts, the things in our gut. You just you know it. You and you're tuning into it. You see it. You're like, I know that's right. If you accept this premise that your instincts are right and your ideas are usually wrong, then what do you do with that? And and and that And what I mean by that is like, you know, you could say I We all had the idea for Riot, the dating app, or whatever. But we didn't. We had the instinct that something was broken there, or there was a better way. So, it's not that idea.

4:54 So, proven better new is this framework that we got to out of I got to it out of out of the failure of Tribe, like came the the commitment to winning in Zynga, and with that this framework of proven better new. And the idea was to say, "Okay, we've got to be more scientific about this." And it's it's an it's a it's really a it's a way to isolate and box in your innovation in one place, and to say, "This is where I'm innovating, and this isn't." And so, if you're Zuck and you're building Threads, which is, you know, a copy of fast follow of another very successful product, he he didn't He did a a very good I give him an A- minus very good job of proven better new and he the things that are proven are things that on that platform for those users works and you're not planning to make better and you should copy those legally.

6:01 if you do it artfully people don't realize it's a copy but you should not change a a single thing. >> Stay as close to it as possible without doing anything that's illegal. >> Yeah. The real art of it is that the end user doesn't feel like it's a blatant copy. Yes. That's the real magic trick. >> By the way, there are funny things in copies cuz in 2004 when I went to Shenzhen, there were three copies of LinkedIn that were such exact copies in Chinese I could fill out a profile and I don't speak any Chinese. Proven is No, no, we know what the game mechanic is. We know what the product mechanic is. We see the demand. We see the signal for how people use it, why they value it, etc. Stay close to that within what you're doing in your product.

6:40 >> Yeah, and and the best product makers that the irony of this, the paradox of this is that the best product makers, the best masters of the craft are the best at copying. >> Yes. >> And and they have the least ego around it. And the most junior amateur people feel the need to change everything and they're the worst at copying and they fail for the wrong reasons. And that's the thing, if you don't do the proven right, you're going to get you know, usually false negative signal, very rarely false positive signal but your product will fail for the wrong reasons.

7:13 And then better I like to say what you believe is better is called new. Right? What's actually better is what 10 out of 10 of the existing users of that product would say, "Yeah." >> Yeah. >> And better, so better is usually very simple and basic things like it's now free. No download. >> Yeah. >> You know, it's clear something that they really care about is like 1 in better. >> Well, you already have the consumer experience of what this thing is and what would be obvious like it would be immediate like yes this is >> Yes. Yeah, it's clearly better and then it's clearly better because it's also something I really care about and I care so much about this product that I noticed that you polished it more.

7:57 >> Yes. >> Okay and then new is your novel idea that will probably be the reason why people will try this product and it will probably also fail. So we called it the back of the box but it's it's the reason it's new and improved. My favorite bad example was was the game Risk, right? You You and I love board games. I remember when I said oh some MBA at Microsoft decided to change my Risk game. What did they do?

8:25 It was like proven worse and bad new. >> Yes. >> Took the wooden pieces that I loved and made them plastic. They made them Roman numerals. Like I want to show my force. I don't want Roman numerals. That's not better. >> Yes. >> And then they had another game on the back called Risk which I never even learned. I like what what I'm in the classic Risk, right? So So that happens too often you know that people try to make it better. But But we have to realize that our if we realize our new idea is probably wrong then we can plan ahead for it and say well what are four other ones? And and am I looking around at other products other versions of what I'm doing so I can learn faster. And so what you try to get to with proven better new is we want to be we want to be like scientists with white lab coats and we want to be prosecuting this instinct and saying okay I'm not attached to this idea and my team isn't and and I'm going to give myself and my team permission to change every Monday.

9:27 >> Now take proven better new and use that lens to talk about the age of AI cuz one of the specific strangenesses is there's very little proven. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> So you're suddenly in a the proven is okay, chat GPT is proven in some ways, cloud code is proven in some ways. >> But they're pretty expensive proven. They're like, well, there I can point to something proven and all you need it used to be 10 billion. Now all you need is 100 billion for that game.

9:57 >> And the compute cluster. >> People say, does proven better than you still apply in the AI world when you're going to a new platform? And we can come back to whether this even is a new platform. What do you do when there's no proven? it's much harder and and I try to deal with it in the book by talking about there's a fuzzy proven you're looking for. It's it's it's is there something that was proven there's an experience was proven somewhere else and now I could I could try to apply it here. It's a better well to start with.

10:29 That's a better vein than just I'm going to come up with something the world's never seen before. That's much less likely because you and I know that behavior, the more it things change, the more they stay the same. And the other hard part of this is when we think, okay, is is there a platform here? Is And I'm curious, do you believe that AI is a platform? >> Well, there's several senses in which we talk about things as platforms.

10:55 and so there's some senses at least in which it's a platform, but platform is >> in a consumer sense? >> Well, AI certainly has platform technology for consumer applications. All of the model underlying what could be a number of different agents. And so that model could be the technological platform for this. There's also the question of the front door, right? And so, you know, the kind of the fact that the people will generally go to one, maybe a couple more, that's the front door for everything. That's why we use Google and search synonymously.

11:29 >> Right. So there's the portal. >> It's the portal. And so there's there's a platform sense in which I think there will be will have people have an agent, maybe a couple, but certainly an agent that's kind of their general front door. >> But they don't yet, right? >> Well, well, I think that's one of the benefits where the chat GPT position is. I think the chat GPT is the closest to that right now. >> Totally agree.

11:51 >> Right. >> I would argue it it is not yet a platform at a consumer level. There's there's no >> fact that it's huge, yes, it's not yet there. >> even as a contrast that with Google in the early days >> Yeah. >> was a platform for web distribution because there was SEO and SEM >> Yes. >> through Google. And so that was a platform. I mean, the web obviously and the browser were, but Google was itself a let's say a platform enabler magnifier. And we are not we're not yet there. I think we could see it. We hope for it.

12:27 >> By the way, this is funny because this is the your comments are echoing back to our very earliest conversations as friends. Because both you and I kind of went to the there was this internet winter. the internet was considered to be concluded. It was Yahoo. Do you remember that? You know, like Amazon, etc., etc. And all of Silicon Valley broke in two directions. It broke to either enterprise, oh, we're just going to go to enterprise, or clean tech.

12:56 >> Yeah. >> And we're like, you guys, the consumer internet had just started. That was the reason you and I were the earliest web two guys. Because it was like, guys, and then we we formed a little group of people who were doing angel investing. We started doing companies and all the rest cuz we're like, hey, the consumer's coming. And so what part of what you're saying is that that with AI people haven't realized the whole consumer revolution >> Yeah.

13:19 >> that's going to come with AI. And I agree with you. And as we know, as we see in Silicon Valley, everyone's talking, well, well, can enterprise win the money is. That was the same thing back in the internet winter, you know, etc. And like, no, no, no, consumer is going to be big. Now, enterprise will be big, too, right? And by the way, they were right. The clean tech generally failed and the the shift to enterprise did the cloud revolution, SaaS, right? So, there will be a whole bunch of enterprise stuff. But like, it's funny how few people are thinking about the consumer thing right now. It's a very good illustration. And that was one of the things you and I started having dinners on going, the world is here and no one realizes >> Yeah, yeah. I mean, in fact, I remember when we both wrote checks for Friendster, it was not because we thought it had any chance. We just were like, this is an experiment that needs to happen because this is important for the consumer internet.

14:10 >> Yes, exactly. And it was later that venture came in and around cuz it was like, oh, look at the growth curve is beginning to happen. And it was one of the funny things is I hadn't realized there was such a demand for the consumer side that Friendster didn't understand virality or growth hacking. They just literally the wave picked up the boat and the tsunami moved it along. That's a good way of putting it. So, I agree with you about the AI thing as not yet a platform in those regards.

14:38 >> It does feel very analogous to the nuclear winter, yes, internet nuclear winter we called it in '02 to '03 when right when you started LinkedIn and I started Tribe. And this feels this feels very like a similar moment but it's just it's not figured out but but you know it's going to be. >> Part of the reason why I think the book is important is because like when you were doing Zynga and I was doing LinkedIn, we had a bunch of things that we would trade in terms of like just like as friends but it was wasn't like Settlers of Catan like who cheap for a rock. It was more, hey, I'm seeing this. Hey, I'm seeing this. Hey, I'm seeing this. Hey, I'm seeing this.

15:19 Just like, it's knowledge and intel and part of it was Zynga more or less kind of wrote the modern book on game dynamics and thinking about game dynamics for everything for product design for interaction etc. And you frequently would get criticism because it was so rotated getting game dynamics is like well wait a minute. Are you guys just a game dynamics company where the games are like well look we're very professional at the game dynamics and we build the games that work with the game dynamics. And that's part of the reason why like FarmVille household name Words With Friends household name etc. etc.

15:56 etc. As ways of doing it and I think this lens in life at the speed of play and the dynamics proven better new instincts and ideas kill the bad ideas keep the good ideas etc. Is a general thing for everyone and and I do think that game games represent a perfect canvas to do to learn these concepts of proven better new and that because you can break it down into mechanics but I think but I do think I I try to point out in the book that it really does apply to to any consumer product. I think the book is important right now because one of the things I think we're going to see with AI is a massive generation of products.

16:39 This is just about to go you know like >> >> bonkers large. Yeah, I I I believe that I I even see it with my partner Hillary that she started getting into vibe coding with Claude code and got way ahead of me. I was like wait a second. This is what I did >> >> and she made this little mobile app for all of us and our nanny to like it was pretty amazing based on the location. It would recommend activities for with five kids each kid by age and I was like wow, there's a great design aesthetic and the point to me is I'm like, "Oh, that's where we're headed. We're all going to become product makers. And we're because it's democratized, because it's accessible, and my one daughter, Georgia, is making a poker app. I'm like, "Wait, that's what I do." Like, okay. So so I do think that everyone kind of becomes full stack when you when the stack's automated and it's and it's just promptable. And so I and then it gets down to taste. Hillary taste. So I was so impressed with the subtle design of her app.

17:53 >> And which are the key things from the Zynga playbook that you would recommend to like kind of call it the AI native companies. Like for example, some of it is you know, well, like some for me would be like launch early, right? In order to learn cuz that's kind of speed of engagement and learning. You obviously practice that. it could be, you know, things around, you know, like we'll build level 1 to 10, see if it works, right? Which is kind of a like I learned from Zynga and it's kind of a classic.

18:25 >> All of that is like more possible at your fingertips today than ever before with AI. And I like to say, you know, do not build it right. >> Yeah. >> Build a culture of building it wrong. >> Yeah. >> Do not the build it right presumes some level of success. I love Eric Ries. We've had great debates. >> Yeah. >> I I'm in the same spirit, but but that word viable is actually hurtful because viable also means hope of viability. And what you want is not viable, you want conviction.

18:57 And and and viable is actually a very weak word to me. It's it's not strong. Conviction is strong. And so what I would say from the Zynga playbook that people should ruthlessly copy today that was proven was test more ideas in a week than your industry tests in a year. Build a testing and failure machine usually at the top of the funnel. Like usually it's at the level of especially in consumer, but but is anyone even going to click on this and do don't even don't be embarrassed. Don't build the rest of this. Just just the landing page, just the ad link and nothing else and and it's amazing to me even today.

19:39 And I think we're in this weird paradox with AI that I would have thought by now that people would be all over the place with these testing machines and they'd be building prototypes in a day and testing and they're not. And it's not what I see. Because you can almost get to that minimum viable product in 3 months instead of 3 years, people want to do that. But then they go native, the wrong native. You know, they get too committed to that product and then they can't kill it. Cuz they're like, well, we have a lot in this, you know, and so if I'm going to keep iterating on this or it's or you and I both so often teams say it's not ready yet.

20:19 And and you know, it's so true that if if you're not embarrassed, you know, you're not you're not launching early enough and it's and launch is the wrong word. It's like you should turn it on to the level that you learn. But but that I kind of go to this question with founders, how ambitious are you? And everyone says a 10 and then when you unpack that 10, you're like, no, you're not actually. If you're really ambitious, you're willing to be wrong for a long time. So you can be wrong for 3 years and then really right or a little bit right every day. Most people take a little bit right. I also like you, I'm an extreme AI optimist and I believe that that we are on the verge of the greatest gains in you know, not just human productivity, but in proliferation of new kinds of services for humans by humans. I don't want to sound, you know, tone deaf about it, but my belief, just like every other era of the internet, the web, mobile, is that that there's so many industries we can't imagine today that that are going to pop up.

21:29 >> In addition to being a great entrepreneur and creating stuff, you're also like one of the world's most dedicated dads. Like it's like your kids are amazing. You put a huge amount of time into it. You're always paying attention. you're doing things with them. That sort of stuff. Obviously, one of the things that games and, you know, social networks and everything else, people are worried about addictiveness of phones, addictiveness of games, addictiveness of some apps, AI being used against it in various ways.

21:58 As a parent, what do you think? What do you do? What would you recommend the industry do the same or differently? >> That the irony, right, is that so many of us who are spending our time building apps and working in this industry, shield our kids from it, but just the same way any parents could and, you know, I'd argue should. So, with my twin girls, who are 15 now, I made it pretty far. I told them, "No smartphone until you're 16."

22:27 Now, I They had to convince me eventually to get them a flip phone. So, I said, "You're going to be the coolest kid. You're going to be the only one with a flip phone." They didn't think they were cool. but I lasted a couple That got me a couple years. And then, when they were 14, they did an internship at Niantic, working on Pokémon Go. They built a new first-time user experience. I was very proud of it. And they convinced me they needed phones for that. And then, I wasn't able to take them back away, but I said, "You're permanently on probation. If I see you on your phone at dinner or not paying attention to your little brother or sister, your phone's gone forever." It's like kind of put the fear of God in them.

23:04 And they It's a good question though. I we we enjoy being together. We enjoy playing games together. We have really big debates. I try to meet them where they are. And they're for the most part they're on their phones way less than other kids and I think that's really healthy. And and I have noticed at times when one of them is on their screen for long periods of time they get more isolated and and just more flat and sometimes sad and so I take it away and I'm like go outside.

23:49 but I think it's the reality is it's it's a parenting issue for all of us and I don't maybe it sounds self-serving but I don't blame Facebook for this. You know, I don't think it's like cigarettes and it's a drug or I don't blame games. I think it is a part of our culture and society that we what are we modeling for them? We're on our phones constantly. We don't even want to look anymore at Apple showing us the amount of time we spend on our phones.

24:20 And so I think most of us are and so it's it seems hypocritical to you know, for us to be doing this. It's like we're smoking cigarettes and then we blame the cigarette companies for our kids smoking. Well, like who did they see doing that? now you say well, how did we get addicted? But but I I just I think I think it's a it's a real challenge. It's kind of giving all of us ADD. And and it it makes it you know, harder than ever with our We have a one-year-old. We have a four-year-old and my partner is she's very vigilant about like no screens ever. And a lot of my friends who are new parents are of the same way.

25:04 So, I think I I'll tell you the other thing. The The second I had my first my twins when they were born in 2010, I had two thoughts immediately. One was how do I how do I implant GPS devices so I never lose them? >> Classic dad. >> And I was like, "Well, that's a good business model. You'll never stop paying for that." someone told me it was not okay to do. People still don't do that.

25:32 and then the other one was could we make an app for parents that would gamify screen time for our kids that would let us limit it and you know, incentivize them. And And I did I did have a a I had one of those job wheels like an analog job wheel, you know, that they would spin and they really enjoyed. So, yeah, so I don't I don't have any magic answers other than yeah, what what I've done with my kids is to keep them off as as long as I could and and they went through being into games and now my daughter Georgia is obsessed with chess and chess.com and I feel like that's a more okay addiction, you know, than >> Well, and and like obsession and commitment are part of what can lead to a lot of success. So, you just it has to be healthy versions versus unhealthy.

26:23 >> And the game that I really am trying to get them into and I tell every parent I'm like cloud code. Whether it's cloud co-work, you know, or code X, whatever it is like like I basically think my kids should And And it pains me to see what high school is like today. And you you don't go through this. You don't witness the way I do, but high school it feels like it's the end of a 100-year cycle and our poor kids are stuck My poor kids are stuck in it.

26:53 And it just doesn't feel efficient. They go there all day and then they come home and they get so much homework. My kids have homeschooled for the last semester and they were missing the social but they had so much more time. They They told me they learned more. So the learning efficiency went way up and they had way more time for other things. I was like, okay. In an ideal world they'd be doing, you know, much more efficient learning.

27:19 And then if they were on a screen it would be like for cloud code and otherwise they're outside doing stuff and nothing in between. >> there was a huge amount of focus on the metaverse and now it's completely pivoted to AI. So what do you what will what what prognostications on the future of the metaverse? >> I I think that the metaverse is starting to happen and I I think it's going to happen and it's going to be as big as Zuck thought and it's just not going to happen inside of an immersive game goggle that is painful and hot to wear on your head even if the form factor gets better.

27:57 I think whether we start to wear devices that listen to us whether we have AR Ray-Bans >> >> or whether we're just on the phone we've always been on I like I was saying before I think that that everything is going to get more metaversian. It's It's I think that what's going to be the big unlock for games is the more that we put the real world you know, real humans, real social into our games because basically games should be a good use of your time. They're It's this big of industry and it's total waste of time.

28:35 Imagine if games improved your life skills. Imagine if games were doing LinkedIn for you. You know, imagine if you were getting a job by playing a game. Like how much bigger would it be? So I think that's an unlock. And at the same time, I think that all of these, you know, the Duolingo's of the world, all of these apps are going to be more and more gamified. And I think that I I I think that we're going to see kind of more playful Things are going to get I think things the winning services are going to become more fun and more rewarding, which is kind of to me part of the promise of the metaverse.

29:20 And and I I think I also think just once the unlock happens for consumer agentic AI, what's that going to be? That's the metaverse, right? When we have avatars that are roaming the world while we're not there and networking and finding us dates and jobs and new ways to make money, that's the metaverse, right? It just doesn't have to be immersive 3D. It could all happen in your brain because you're getting a message back, a text back that says, "Read AI just gave an amazing talk in you know, in Bombay. You know, you crushed it."

29:56 >> So, last question. What's a piece of advice you're glad you ignored? >> Mhm. I had a a junior partner at Excel once tell me I think it was when I was trying to raise money for Zynga. And Excel had backed support.com, you know, for very successful outcome. And he said, "I just worry that you're not coachable." And I said, "Oh, thank you for asking. I'm you know, I said, "That's a tricky one. I I actually have a lot of coaches, but I've chosen all them and I'm not coachable by a VC who's never held this job, who's never sat in this seat. And so, I I guess it's not exactly advice, but it was implied advice of, you know, I should pretend that I'm going to learn something from the person with money or the adult and and I've always kind of said no to that.

30:51 >> By the way, I agree with you. The classic VC stupidity is, I'm a pattern recognizer and I see patterns like Look, patterns are useful. Also, know how to play the game. >> Yeah, and and if you just look at patterns, you might miss the pattern interrupt. >> Yes. Which is usually like they say >> which is also usually the thing that is the discontinuous investment. >> Right, which is usually the best outcomes and everyone else is looking at patterns, playing the same game and you know from your brilliant Settlers of Catan that you have to have some different strategy in your back pocket or you can't expect a different outcome.

31:26 >> Mark, always a pleasure. >> It's been 10 years, but worth it to get to >> And we'll do it again soon. >> Thanks again to Mark Pincus for joining us on Masters of Scale. His new book is Life at the Speed of Play, Launch Products People Love. It's a fantastic read full of actionable insights like the ones he shared in his conversation here with Reid. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. Thank you for listening.

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