Zynga Founder Mark Pincus - Product Instincts: “Proven, Better, New”

0:00 Steve Jobs famously you know when he came back to Apple his biggest complaint about the company under its horrible management for the previous eight years was that they come out with a new computer and they try to make every feature you know 50% better and the whole computer was you know uh or 10% better and the whole computer was 50% worse and the point is takes so long to make one single feature better actually better for the

0:27 whole world hello n my guest today is Mark pinkis Mark is the founder and former CEO of Zinga which pioneered social gaming and developed some of the most popular mobile games of all time like Farmville and worlds with friends um the company went public in 2011 and was acquired by T2 interactive in 2022 for um about3 billion do or so PRI 13 billion or so sorry sorry I meant to say 13 billion or so my my my apologies

1:00 difference our sh very big difference yeah 10x sorry about that that's that's uh me always underplaying you um and prior Zinga Mark uh founded a number of internet companies including tribe.com one of the early social networks he was also an early investor in Facebook and today he runs reinvent Capital which teaches product management and teaches product management at Stanford Margaret welcome to World death thanks now you have this cool framework that I love that's like it says like proven better

1:28 new which is kind of the simplest formula I've ever seen for Success can you walk us through it a little bit sure so the basis of my whole product management course I created nine years ago at Stanford and I'm writing a book on this now called life of the speed of play is two there's two fundamental philosophies that make up my Approach and in one way or another most at least

1:59 consumer even B to be um product makers approach to to inventing products one is I have this core belief that I've found to be true that we have these winning instincts that that you know at some human level of your experience and we put on top of those usually losing ideas and and and the key is we need to

2:29 isolate Our Winning instincts from our usually losing ideas and so the point is that you might have quote unquote an idea for some new product and maybe you never pursue it maybe you pursue it and it's a B+ and it never makes it somebody else seems to pursue the same idea and theirs makes it so what happened well my analysis of that is that uh someone like me you know you Oren we have ideas all the time I I had the idea I had an idea

3:02 to order a taxi through my phone in 2003 so was early and I registered smst taxi.com and I did the analysis and I said maybe I could get a million Riders a month and I could get paid a dollar per ride from the taxi company so I thought the best instantiation of that might be $12 million a year and working with terrible taxi companies and I scrapped the idea well Travis when did my idea no he did

3:31 my instinct and a lot of other things you know clicked into place to enable that to to have a moment that weren't there in 2003 you know like the iPhone and GPS and and but he had a much better idea to let anybody become a driver and just sidestep the taxi companies all together so the first concept is really try to isolate Your Instinct in its raw form from the idea variant that you're putting on top of it and be

4:03 dispassionate about your ideas you and I have known so many entrepreneurs over the years Orin who we see kind of valiantly stoically going down with the ship right they're they have this this B+ business and year after year you see them pursuing it and you're like why are you still doing it it's like a friend in a bad relationship you're like just ended already and so so that's one point I Tred to get across to people because

4:31 if you can be dispassionate about and that's part of like the proven is just like trying to figure out what's the proven piece of The Proven better new right yeah all right you mve me along so the once you buy into this instincts versus ideas it opens up a new world of product management and what you can then do is apply this framework that I call proven better new which is think of it as your job is to be a scientist and a

4:58 white lab code you're dispassionately trying to isolate this winning variant of your instinct and your idea and the reason you do proven better new is what you do with it is you say okay if if I want to compete with Uber today I would start with everything that's proven that you shouldn't [ __ ] with so and Steve Jobs famously you know when he came back to Apple his biggest complaint about the company under its horrible management

5:26 for the previous eight years was that they come with a new computer and they try to make every feature you know 50% better and the whole computer was you know or 10% better and the whole computer was 50% worse and the point is takes so long to make one single feature better actually better for the whole world that you you couldn't possibly have time to make the printer drivers and the email and all the things better and so what what you need to do

5:57 if I was going to try to com create a compet to Uber today which I think someone actually should I would say what is proven about the experience I wouldn't [ __ ] with the app for the most part you know idea of the drivers with the Independent Drivers but I might say what could I make better and better is something that nine or 10 out of 10 of the current users say [ __ ] yeah not what

6:20 you believe is better but it's what every user would say [ __ ] Yeah cheaper everyone's GNA say [ __ ] Yeah cheaper faster yeah [ __ ] yeah I think people might say you know a professional driver or a nicer car is a [ __ ] yeah but I don't know that to be true so it could be new yeah right you is your novel idea that that is completely unproven and you should assume it's going to fail and one

6:45 of my mantras is all new fails if you if you isolate the new to maybe 20% of your product then there's a good chance that your product will be commercially successful even in when you're idea fails and you won't get you know a false negative signal so what you might do is have a actually good new idea but because you tried to make everything else in your product new and it wasn't better your product failed and you never

7:17 had a chance to test your new idea so you have the proven so you know that's going to work okay Uber is a good business you know okay you know okay if we made it cheaper and faster like more people would want it and then I've got this new Sizzle on it and maybe and now we're only going to do one thing we're going to introduce one thing to it and then we're going to figure out like we

7:35 know the proven we know the better and then like it's either going to work or not um and we should be able to figure isolate that pretty quickly but if we had things we wouldn't we wouldn't be able to do so you do them in series rather than parallel yeah yeah and it's if you do this well it's like a time machine so rather than you know with tribe.net I pursued one idea really on top of three

7:58 or four great instincts and I never tried another idea even after Zuck walked in my office in 2004 and I was like [ __ ] he's got this right he got trust right I still didn't change anything I was like oh he got it so I invested in him great but but I didn't I still was like the stoic you know falsely courageous entrepreneur who went down with the ship with Zing I didn't do that I actually ironically got zingo

8:26 right with my first idea and first instinct but I was much less ambitious than I was with tribe so if you go back to my first poker game and say what was my proven my better my new proven was poker yeah I copied the game of poker I took everyone knows everyone like people like it they like to play it you know it's popular I didn't change the thing I didn't change the rules I didn't change

8:48 what the table looked like okay better was no download would you rather have this download to your computer or no download 10 out of 10 people you can prove this because you lose half your audience the minute you ask them to click on a download so it's it's statistically and obviously yeah provable you can get in the game right away like boom yeah you get it right away right and the reason I was able to do that is it was not for real money so

9:15 I didn't care about security so I didn't have to have a download okay and new was the the new thing worked was real friends and real people at the table instead of these weird cringey avatars it used to you pick between six avatars you don't know who it was that turned out to be right okay so I got it right on my first try but I was disciplined and not very ambitious you know we're usually too ambitious in our Pro we try

9:45 to do too much Innovation at once and I'm the most guilty of that so if we were gonna build like I don't know a a movie together let's say we're doing a romantic comedy okay there's proven like Guy meets girl guy loses girl guy gets girl back at the end or something right that's the proven Arc of all those movies let's go to even more proven Orin this is why all you see is sequels and it's always with the aist Stars you know

10:10 we just ran into Adam Sandler this weekend it was in our hotel and my daughter courageously went up and talked to him um we'd go get Adam Sandler we'd literally take some movie right for L movie he's done we get him because he has a proven audience you know we would just make it as tight to what worked we'd spend more money you know but but the likelihood of success would be much higher and then we'd come up with some

10:36 new Twist on it or some new thing which could be a distribution thing for a movie or could be some other kind of like something really cool in the product or something like that yeah or you know and you could literally look at a case study of quibby I don't know if you remember quby you know what Jeffrey cats and they just did new on so many fronts it was like 4 and then and then Tik Tok came out I was

11:01 like oh actually that was trying to but they were kind of trying to be a streaming service that could compete with Netflix yeah and but they said it's going to be short form 10 minutes on your iPhone all new content and I was like you know that's not if you look at what Ted Turner did with Turner Classic Movies Turner Classic Movies he just said I'm going to give you a free channel that Dad supported on cable that

11:28 has movies that I already know you like do you want to watch yeah it's just free yeah it's it's older but free yeah and it's the simpler ideas like that are just you know much less risky right and so if you think of like um like a magic leap or something like that which you know presumably had these incredibly smart people all these Innovations but like never was able to come out with like the the the the the killer thing

11:54 and and and your content they're just trying to do too much new yeah the okay with magic leap and Oculus the obvious thing was video games right yeah you can't it's it's incredibly risky and really fool hearty to to bet on a new consumer Behavior it's just it's arrogant like so people already play video games that had huge potential to deliver better video game experiences

12:25 start there yeah go after Reinventing you know architecture or whatever you want but they don't put goggles on to have an architecture meeting you know the chances of somebody being willing to put goggles on for an amazing immersive video game experience you know we just much much higher so you know make it easier for yourself yeah it's funny because like I I you know like one thing is really fun to do that Everyone likes to do is like watch a movie on the plane

12:53 right yeah um like why can't you just have like simple goggles you put on you know and has like this submersive experience it it tethers to your phone your phone's the one like streaming whatever Netflix whatever it is on it or the United Airlines app and just like it would just be doesn't do anything else it's just kind of simple but like everyone like people like watching movies on the BL like something like that I I like I'm not a consumer guy but

13:18 but the pro but it's a that's I don't think you or I would do it because the reality is we kind of barely even think to like bring our iPad and it's kind of good enough enough have to be careful you might be right yeah is it that much is that much better through good point yeah it's a good point um now play is like part of what you do I think really well is like you you you you do play and

13:44 plays important and in some ways it's so obvious in B to C that plays important but it there's it could actually be even more powerful in B2B like how would you attack B2B with something playful if you're enjoying this podcast please sign up for our newsletter go to world of.com the link is in the description below now back to the video Let's just even say fun fun yeah so I would just say that The Human Experience of

14:17 computing of interacting with a device with a software interface um it's the same whether it's for the most complex you know um accounting software or something accounting software yeah I was trying to think of the most Arcane but you know whatever CRM thing I will never use but sap app I couldn't understand any of those doesn't really matter whether it's

14:47 that you know or it's a video game at the end of the day bless you at the end of the day that you you still need the dogs to want to eat the dog food and not be forced and so you know I think it's a great example if you look at slack right like slack F yeah yeah slack I so Stuart you know was a failed video game company right you know the story and they you

15:11 know just on the side built this app for themselves but because they brought this consumer video game mentality it it put this veneer on it of the experience that just made everyone in your organization want to use it and inside Zinga I was like I don't it we have I think something called hip chat other free TOS yeah everyone insisted on slack and half the engineers were rolling their eyes and everyone else loved it but slack kind of took

15:43 over the world for no real technical reason right it wasn't technically better it's just way more fun to use yeah and so then it got better and I think that's a really under explored area and even I I built an Enterprise software company called support.com that we took public and let me give you to an even more basic like I think maybe your sales forces could understand this idea even if you don't buy into fund you buy

16:11 into usage okay yeah so with support.com our sales didn't take off we had an amazing Roi so we had this software that could magically resolve 10% of your help desk breake fix problems remotely and it was magic but that's 10% and so the help desk wasn't going to keep it on the front of their you know um screen and think to use it if it applied to 10% of their

16:43 problems it was this tool they had to remember to take out what did we do we put in chat and a really really shitty help desk system that came with every other product it was nowhere near as good as remedy that's when our sales took off because all of a sudden appli to every ticket right yeah and and it's it's a non-intuitive point it's about can we put in something that gets them to use us all the time every day and you

17:10 see it in consumer mobile that if you have you know there's a completely direct correlation between frequency of usage frequency even per day if if you have 10 or 20 sessions a day using your app your long-term retention is going to be much higher yeah I'm positive that's going to be true with a B2B app as well right that if if you're in it to a slack right if you're living in this app you know the likelihood you want to use it

17:40 in a year is also much higher yeah and you're proven better new like the better just could be fun it's like okay proven everyone buys these apps whatever they're the whatever they are that it's in every Enterprise everyone buys them and now we're just going to take it from like experience that people dread to experience that people enjoy and you can and and I'll I'll say two things real quick on that one is a great example of

18:04 a proven better new you know in this space is I I think this company from David saxs is called glue is that have you heard of that uh I I don't think I Know It wait I might have the name wrong but but it's a proven better new against slack and the the the new is AI so it's like hey do you want you want slack but now it's Ai and kind of a viral knowledge base inside your company that

18:31 will search you know all this stuff and and bring it up and it's just you want to buy slack with AI yeah and I think there's you know and we just got pitched my family office a product called canoe that's basically like a ghetto at ofar but with AI and cheaper yep and and the team liked it and you know and Joe lale just said to me no no don't buy it because we we have the same AI coming

18:55 out soon but so there by the way as anyone on call ever used adapar like it's terrible it's so bad I mean it might be it might be it might be it might be creative for the wealth manager before the wealthy person consumer who agre with you and the pricing it's it's it's absolutely the worst app like it's it's so funny you say that I I just had dinner with Joe Monday night and sorry Joe by the way I wasn't as hares you but

19:23 I said it it produces some nice reports but it's overkill for someone like us it's great for a hedge fund or you know an institution but for a family office or a small fund it's Overkill and the pricing least that they give me is based on a percentage of your assets and I'm like what that's [ __ ] crazy I lie about my assets oh that's crazy that doesn't make any sense people take a zero off but and he said oh you they're

19:55 just not giving you you know the best pricing but and so a free Easter egg for anyone listening is I'm interested as a user and I would look at investing in someone who wants to knock off adapar and just make it for this lower end of the market it's still a high Market but and also like make it useful make it fun like being able to like run easy reports and do things ask qu quick quick

20:21 questions to it so you don't have to email your manager or whatever like help me on my asset allocation right give me a really quick there's so much easy knowledge you yeah yeah and and of course you could upsell you could kind of do a ripple a Rippling is that the name of company yeah rling you can actually even make it free for qualified people um you can make premium and then you could upsell you know a lot of

20:46 products so and I don't get why it's so expensive I mean other than he's trying to solve for really high-end and really a huge number of obscure you know high-end requir Ms that we don't have yeah now I I I think every successful founder has a superpower some of which you know some people are great at engineering some people great at marketing some people great at sales like yours is clearly product um when you're and and when you're interviewing

21:16 other people to join your company or to potentially invest to them how do you assess their product chops in a short time frame well I have two answers first is I'll tell you what I do and the second is I'll say I I'm not very I'm not very good at at interviewing and assessing up front and and so I have a hack for it that I'll give your listeners so the first answer is I go through a process and I have a team

21:47 around me that has people do deconstructs so we look at apps we admire we're thinking about a lot of times games it's even if you're not doing anything to do with games or consumer games are the best to test someone's ability to deconstruct and break an app down into every one of these core mechan I call them mechanics that make up the overall experience and what I'm looking for is do you go down

22:18 to the pixel level of that experience do you question every single click and so you almost like show them something like what would you what do you like or what would you improve that type of thing or well then first can you deconstruct can you take can you take slack okay deconstruct slack yeah tell me what are what do you think are the proven things about slack what makes slack so great as a product and give it to me at the pixel

22:47 level and The Click by click level then if you were going to do something better and new today what would that be so I want to see what are your product chops like how how good are you at that kind of analytical thinking the second answer I'll give you is something I call my book the talent myth and and I've given some talks at why cator and other places and I don't know if this is um a little

23:14 bit controversial but I I think this is true we all hear that like your founding team Beyond like your maybe your co- couple co-founders but once you try to scale your team past three or four you know we all hear every single hire matters and you should you know go for worldclass people but most of us including me every single thing I do in the beginning is flaky it doesn't matter it's every time I try to convince

23:45 someone to join a new thing I'm doing it just sounds flaky and yeah about Zinga I'd had so many successes and it still sounded so flaky I don't know if you remember back then Orin but I'm sure if you really honestly think back to 2007 that you were along with all my peers nobody was impressed that I was making a poker app for Facebook nobody including me Y and so I couldn't recruit anybody with with an A+ golden resume

24:15 and so so what do you do as a Founder because that's where most of us are yeah of course right there's something I called the talent myth I think that this this idea that you can go recruit these amazing people I think is myth you don't have time so what I did then and I would still advise doing is don't don't let um you know don't let an I I say both don't let an a be the enemy of getting

24:43 something done so go for a B+ like go for what I call broken resume yeah get somebody and over what I mean what like I guess like someone could have they could be you know a b but they could be like super passionate about what you're doing like is that you over like what what like what do you or they could just be like hardworking and passionate but like maybe not that great would normally they wouldn't normally make the cut so

25:09 so for instance here's one of my hacks okay that I still do but in the early Facebook days I just wanted someone who was good at Flash and knew anything about games okay and so I looked through the Facebook app directory at failed Flash apps yeah I just like is it nice looking Flash is it snappy and good graphics and then I would reach out to the developer because no one else was I mean these were apps with like 100 daus or less

25:40 yeah yeah and and I'd get messages right back and I would hire them as contractors by the hour you know and and that's how I found Justin Waldren he was 18 years old he was living on his mom's couch in Connecticut and he had made a failed flashbook flash app for Facebook and and I hired him by the hour and he worked for me remotely for six months before I moved him to San Francisco and I made him part of my founding team I

26:07 also said the f everyone I hired in 2007 there was like 35 people I called them founding team members they call themselves co-founders today good for them so Zing has 35 co-founders it motivated them more right it got more out of them um and you know it's good to have 35 people who think of themselves as founders my point is I had a really wide funnel and I was willing to hire anybody and I used hiring as an

26:34 interview process so I just would hire them as contractors and and then I'd find some diamonds in the rough but I'd go really Broad and and today it's like go find failed mobile apps you like go you're trying to break into you know consumer apps on telegram go find failed telegram apps that are nicely done but in if you're in a B2B area you know it's it's if if they it's kind of a broken resume if they have if they've worked on

27:03 a failing but nicely done app it just means a bad strategy but they might have all the skills you need and be highly available now couple product things love you to get your Riff on okay so one thing is fun for a lot of people is shopping shopping is just fun um and it's enjoyable and it's kind of exciting to find deals it's exciting to find new things and stuff like that and we're starting to see these like AI shopping

27:29 agents perplexity has one now there's other ones out there like how how do you think that's going to evolve in a way to like keep it fun and exciting well it's it's a good question I I think what you're calling fun I would just deconstruct that okay feeling a little bit more Orin so what we have to pull out of that is novelty versus fun okay right I think there's a big part of what

27:59 you're saying is it feels novel today and and you have to say like think about what's in that okay shopping well what is it about that is it just that shopping is fun or is it that you're taking something that's kind of tedious and now bless you and now you're you're taking something novel that you want to spend more you want to play with AI and agents yeah but when it's new and novel that's good enough so we get to we're in

28:31 discovery mode so that's one thing I just want to call it always ride that wave okay you could have the most boring as [ __ ] product but if you put an AI agent in front of it right now it's novel and someone says oh what is that yep oh yep you have help us software with an AI agent I want to hear yeah totally okay so that's the first part the piece underneath that of fun now the

28:55 novelty can be fun but that going to wear off really quickly so you have to be careful it's not durable then you have to look at well what is durable and fun and that's when you can come to game mechanics and I found the game mechanics always work when you you can put them in the most boring product points always work leaderboards always work yeah um achievement badges you can just put them in in the dumbest way and they seem to

29:23 work even just making it video gamey your app that it it just when you click on things it makes a fun noise I mean it's don't forget that this Computing experience is so [ __ ] boring I mean and our jobs are so boring and the other thing that makes it fun is just variability like surprise and Delight was a big thing that we valued at zing and put that on your wall like how do you put

29:52 surprise and Delight how do you there's something I call bold beat like a positive disruption in this experience If Tomorrow People sign into your the front page of your database app and I mean think about slack they said Namaste right they they had some word you know they said hello in 50 different languages so you know it could be as simple as something like that it could be I I always want to like kind of [ __ ]

30:22 with people a little bit I thought it'd be fun if your whoop or your Apple watch got mad at you totally you know you didn't you haven't worked out in days hey fatty like get get moving like I'm not gonna talk to you today yeah totally do something non-intuitive you know if if you're appt just turned off and said no I'm not talking to you and it could you but you ate too many potato chips so

30:50 I'm I'm giving you the cold shoulder for a day yeah yeah like you haven't talked to me I'm not going to talk to you I mean just it's all so boring that I just think like try anything and and kind of we're trying to find a pulse It's like because it's just the same thing you know even Google's feeling lucky doesn't feel that interesting anymore y yep well what what about um group chats so you know you I'm in a bunch of these like

31:21 WhatsApp grp group chats what'sapp sucks like I just like it's like I call it the Craigslist of messaging so bad like why do we all use this thing like it's so annoying it's not fun and and you know what Craig Newark got right is that consumers do not like change yeah we're not paying attention to what's happen and so it's terrible but it's our terrible correct ownership yeah you know Craig took two years to

31:51 add to add photos to Craigslist think about it you're driving to go pick up someone's couch across town who doesn't want a photo right he took two years you know so on the one hand consumers do not like change on the other hand I agree that WhatsApp is a terrible app that has no innovation and we're trapped in it and and it's kind of shocking to me that that it's still that bad but but at the

32:24 same time if some MBA ch changed your WhatsApp interface tomorrow and made it better you and I would probably get angry because of course to find things in the [ __ ] up place that they're in no uh when you built Zinger you kind of built it initially off of like a platform at that time as Facebook um now a lot of people are building things on top of like open AI or anthropic um how what have you learned

32:51 like what advice would you give to all these companies that are building on top of those two kind of new um AI boohemoth well it it depends on it depends on you know obviously if it's consumer or B2B but what I the advice I'm trying to give myself right now is in the beginning like go for things that are painfully obvious like don't don't be too [ __ ] clever and Innovative don't overthink it

33:23 yeah and and I have this desire to go after things that are really hard that are complex and the reality is the most successful things that I'm seeing I think we're seeing are people doing really obvious things and mostly it's just a front end to you know chat just do it and do it quickly and then like iterate after that don't worry about itly get in the market fast engage with you know go vertically deep faster than

33:50 anybody else it's go vertical not horizontal and do really obvious things and start with something that that you just like better than than people think is better it needs to be better for the next five minutes not the next five months like and chances are if it's better in the next five minutes you'll probably keep being better in the next five months but we don't know what it's going to look like in five months so it's not worth building for five months

34:20 out right now and and I think the most interesting startups I'm hearing about right now are these you're probably hear them too but these companies that are just going into people intensive businesses agency businesses bureaus service bureaus and they're just applying chat GPT to totally people's jobs I mean you know 20 years ago it' be called a VAR a value added reseller and today it's a SAS AI startup in a

34:52 vertical it's a SAS vertical I think Gary tan just wrote about it yesterday on Twitter but like do you think like because there are some certain economies like India and Philippines which are very very dependent on these outsourc businesses like like as an I know if you put on your like macro investor hat like are these economies going to be hurt significantly from some of this stuff I it's I wouldn't want to make the

35:22 call today as an investor because I think I think the landscape is going to shift more in the next 5 years than it has in the last 25 years oh my gosh okay so I think it's I think it'll be I think five years out it'll be unrecognizable and and I'm I'm always a longterm longterm I'm always more optimistic than everybody else and short term I'm usually more pessimistic although right now I'm not which maybe should be a cell

35:54 signal but um I would say that I think that I think that that what we're going to get out of this is massive growth and so to think about think about what did web 1.0 give us you know sure did the newspapers and the classifi get you know cannibalized sure but the real growth was eBay yeah the real growth with eBay and Craigslist was massive new

36:24 consumption Y and and I here's my Mac mro Economist point of view I believe that the reason why the stock market's gone up for so many decades and the reason why we've mostly had such low inflation at least in the dollar is except for you know recent chapter is that we don't know how to we don't know how to measure productivity anymore correctly and that the amount that we

36:55 are spending messaging and consuming in content right now it's a different it's no one's measuring that as part of the GDP because other than like putting ads up you know we we don't know you take take Snapchat yeah which I'm a big bull I I I very bullish long-term holder of Snapchat stock it's it's amazing real estate that is massively undervalued um you know just in terms of like the dollar that they get per user

37:26 per month yeah terization per da and Ma is probably you know a small fraction of why have they not been why have they not been able to to to to 2x their ad rate and stuff and well they have massively increased their performance ad rate they they were very dependent on brand ads which have gone sideways to down performance ads have grown but it's hidden because there's such a bigger ad base on the brand ad

37:58 um and their user pay has grown I think to like five or 600 million ARR um in the last 14 months and no one's paying attention they have a subscription called Snap plus they have like 11 or 12 million paying subscribers oh wow but they have 450 million daus um they have amazing retention engagement I why is not there there might just be part of it is

38:30 I might have this wrong I don't think the monetization is very good you know on WhatsApp either so messaging apps so far are not a great place you know as good as a Tik Tok or an Instagram but I also don't think monetization has ever been a priority for them um but but bigger point at a macro level is that we don't know how to measure the economic value of the time that people are spending on Snapchat or even on Tik Tok

39:03 other than to say well how much is it being monetized as an ad right now um or what we're not even thinking what's the Gap that it's not being monetized and thinking of that as yeah a hidden Shadow GDP so anyway to come all the way back to your question am I you know bullish or negative on these other economies that kind a more human-based I I'm both I think they're going to shift I think they're going to do better

39:34 overall I think India the Philippines I think they're going to see massive surges in the demand for you know human productivity and there's going to be amazing AI tools to magnify them but I think it's going to shift in what what kinds of Industries I also think that knowledge workers that you know well-trained Americans are going to do well too I I think everyone you know is ultimately going to

40:04 do really well but I think there's going to be massive painful you know dislocations you know on the way and I mean one of the things I admire about you not just being a great entrepreneur but you're you're one of those people who are also really good as an investor and also weirdly as a public market investor um and these to me those skills do seem very different like what has made you such a good Public Market

40:31 investor well I don't know if I would call myself a good Public Market investor for depends on how you define it I've had some great calls and I'll sell like choth and I'll take a Victory lap but I've sold almost all of them way way way too early I mean including Facebook I mean I had 9 million shares of meta okay I do not today have N9 million shares I spent $38,000 on my

41:03 first investment for that okay I should be you know circling the globe in a SpaceX you know rocket or something um and I'm not I I sold I think Peter teal I think Reed I think all of us sold sold you know way too early and I don't I never I never saw that that could be a one point five trillion dollar company so so I wouldn't give myself strong marks you know in a very far up

41:34 Market let's say let's you've made a lot of really good calls in the public market let's say like for one year like a one year you maybe not a 20y year but a one-year thing okay I'm gonna invest in this thing and then like one year later it's gone up 10x or something well Bill Campbell coached me for a while I was lucky enough and he said that I was one of the best 18mon think he had ever

41:58 met he said okay said Mark your magic powers you can you know your superpowers you can see around corners in 18 months um and so maybe that's what it is but but I would say to go back to your first question I think it I think it is good to think about the P to be what I call full stack to think about public markets all the way down to incubating seed investing cuz it is ultimately all

42:29 related at the end of the day we're trying to create businesses that are durable and deliver you know High sustainable cash flow margins um I put up but I I start with a product that I'm that speaks to me and I'm obsessed with and then I try to figure out can it be high margin I was basically all the money in Riya and and I was using Ria when I was single and I like to say if

42:55 an app is on the front page my iPhone I think it has a stick value of a minimum of a billion dollars so I cold mailed Ria info you know at riaa.com said I want to invest and Jared um Morganstern emailed me back he said Pinkus I told you I was going to the company why didn't you email me and and so first I put up three million and then my fund put up 11 million and they're

43:22 crushing it they don't like me to talk about their metrics but but they have no marketing cost and you know they have it's all viral High margins they have you know 60% daus Maus I don't think I'm giving anything away but you know they will also eventually if they want be I think a terrific public company because they have you know such a durable audience Bas and it flows through to their business by thinking about all of

43:50 this let me turn your question around I have low trust in the CEO of any cons consumer public consumer internet company who's not the chief product officer of their company y okay and by the way to my own detriment I sold or collared all my stock and take two when they bought Zinga because I didn't understand Strauss the CEO yeah stra is amazing yeah but I didn't understand him I said I don't get how someone who

44:19 because he's like a finance background or something but not just Finance background he's not a product guy he's not the chief product officer and he says he's more Hollywood he says I support great talent I help them be successful he's done great the stock is now higher than was when they bought Zinga you know I collored and sold it at much lower prices to my own detriment I didn't understand it okay I understand Snapchat because Evan is a brilliant

44:49 he's an amazing he's a generational product person yeah Zuck is a brilliant you know product guy who also understood business and and how to flow through you know and make massive Cuts in business so you know I I'm looking for the unicorns where they can do all of that and and I have moments I think where Wall Street gets it so wrong and where I think I've had some good calls is like I called the ball on Twitter when they

45:17 were $12 stock and every analyst had a sell and I said this is a drawer stock in 10 years I'll be using Twitter to get my news and I don't I know I won't be using Facebook and I probably won't be using Instagram but I know I'll be using Twitter so I thought their day 365 retention of me and a lot of people like me is going to be really really high all I have to worry about is can they

45:44 eventually monetize us through ads yeah I think they can so I said I don't care you know I don't care about their multiple of eaah today I just think you know they're worth 9 billion um you know they had terrible stock based comp they they were making 800 million a year they're paying out 800 million a year in SBC and so it made no sense but I bought it and tweeted it and jack dorsy retweeted it because that was

46:12 the only and then another thing I'd like to do I'll just give you a little hack if you if any of your listeners want to day trade um if there's a company that you believe is a drawer stock or generational company and they announce bad earnings if they still have a Founder at the helm and they get crushed you might have a generational buying opportunity we saw that two years ago with meta they had a quarter right that

46:39 was incredible buy opport Y and I will honestly say I bought the stock I bottom ticked at 89 okay um you also had that opportunity with Spotify they traded below their IPO price they went down to $85 a share Daniel e bought the stock himself all the way up to like 110 a share yeah it's these These are hiding in plain site yeah yeah you know you can just go through the list of especially recently Apple oven was just such a

47:10 great buy right generational founder right um so you just have these like you have ones Roblox in four or five months ago they had a bad quarter the stock went to 30 32 you know it was just a no-brainer like it just close your eyes and pull the trigger I mean all no I don't know if you remember this but we met 20 2001 long long time ago and I literally remember I remember meeting it for the

47:39 very first time and you just sat me down you said Orin you need to buy the stock in Coro I don't even if you remember Coro it was this fallen. comom and you just put a bunch of money into it and at the time was 50 cents a share I thought you were crazy and I did not follow through or buy the stock but I followed it because I'm like okay this crazy guy Mark told me to buy it and it went up

48:04 like I think it went up to $10 it went up from 50 cents to $10 in like six months it was like a 20x return and okay since then I've always just thought you were just like the the most brilliant investor but that was not like the founder had left it was the you know there was you know all these problems well I call companies like corio um I I love call them broken internet companies yeah and and and I

48:30 have a strategy that if it's at the time I think it was trading below cash or something if the founder is still there or owns a lot of it has influence um you know sometimes you get a ghost ship which is what Twitter became but if the founder is still there and has influence um and it just makes no sense you can just back up the truck as long as they have a durable you know franchise or

48:55 business and and these you know usually do you know payoff and you're going to probably make at least 50% when they just write the ship I mean when I came back to zinga in 2015 you know the day we announced that I came back as CEO the stock went from like four to two something went down to $1.75 we were trading for like cash in the bank right such obvious buying opportunity yeah yeah just back up the

49:24 truck when Steve Jobs came back to Apple you know traded for cash in the bank it's like you're getting a a phenomenal you know one of the world's greatest you know the world's greatest founder product Guy for free you know they were trading for eight billion they 8 billion in cash it's like it's it's you get this kind a free call option so yeah so and by the way I do tweet these when I say I'm you do I tweeted about

49:52 PayPal you know snap Twitter so yeah you're you're very generous with telling people to to to follow your your your things but you've never done a public fund or anything no I I don't think I would be well suited for that because you know I go through so much volatility look at my Snapchat position I mean I my a I think my average is like 820 a share I just bought more of it by the way it just

50:21 went down below 9 again I bought around like 870 I bought up to 950 but it's so volatile and it's I mean during the pandemic it went to 70 it went from 670 a year to 70 back down it's been trading between like 8 and 16 or 17 you know and Wall Street the hedge fund people like it then it doesn't deliver in the short term then they all dump it um and I just think if you're

50:51 willing to sit through that volatility you're going to get rewarded over three years or five years years it's really hard for a hedge fund though yeah yeah totally do that 50% I mean right now I own Alibaba right that's a really risky stock if if things work out between Trump and China and he's just trying to cut a good deal it could be like one of the great stock buys of all time and if it doesn't it could really right right

51:20 right the nice thing about investing your own money is you could you could you could invest in a different more long-term way and you could take different risks than if you're investing other people's money yeah yeah and sometimes sometimes you get things that I think are just an absolute no-brainer like January of last year I backed up the truck and bought a big position in Google because they were trading for I think I don't know like 15 to 17 times evit da and there

51:52 was a headwind because of AI yeah they made any AI an they're still super fast you know yeah they're growing at like 20% and everyone thought they were going to get rolled over you know because of AI and I was like no way this this is going to make people more interested in search yeah there's no way Google is does not have ai stuff to announce so I thought you're clearly going to get an AI boost you even if in the long run

52:18 you're wrong so I thought that was not huge upside I mean it's up actually it's actually up like 60 or 70% but I thought you had like of a guaranteed you know 15% a year sh I sound like a stock more like a sometimes I could sound like um I don't know a hedge fund manager the um now uh um a couple questions I would love to ask folks but I think for yours I think they'd be particularly interesting what

52:47 is a conspiracy theory that you believe um God I let's see I've I've had there's there's a few different categories okay let me start with the most obvious well I I believe and this maybe it's it's become so mainstream that this is not that interesting and not that embarrassing I

53:19 guess if I'm not embarrassed to say it it's not a good conspiracy theory correct yes so I've believed for a while that believe that there is a a high percent probability that uaps UFOs are real yeah and I I I would put it at I believe there's a 50% or more chance that uaps and some higher

53:49 Consciousness is real but we're just not able to understand it yet and I believe there there's about an 80 to 90% chance that the government has intentionally or unintentionally been covering this up for a long time okay and some of it the second one the second one is is is is the conspiracy theory right right right they gotta go together but yes yeah um so you know and I

54:22 think I I'd also say other ones I I think that Trump I heard him on Joe Rogan I think he knows something that he legally can't tell us I think I'm excited about like JFK's assassination you know when he said he's going to um you know make all of these confidential documents and files you know public record I I think there's

54:52 some more to that that'll be interesting twists that do I is it as far as the CIA being I doubt it's as far as the CIA being behind you know JFK's assassination it's it's probably but I'll bet you it's much murkier I'll bet you I'll bet you that there were really obvious lapses on the part of the CIA that were covered up and for years it hasn't been in their interest then part of it is why what

55:21 like this is like so you know this happened assassination happens in ' 63 um and then they the you know then they War commission comes in and then they basically say okay for 75 years you know which is 2038 right um You can't like release this like I mean I can understand for like 20 years but 75 years just seems so long like I I don't even well obviously that was they were trying to think of somebody's longest

55:45 lifespan right so yeah yeah yeah but like yeah I guess there were maybe 20 at the time and they Liv to 95 or something they hope they'd get to live longer so they're like I want to get paded a little bit like yeah yeah yeah but yeah I think the only reason you do that right is that it'll be or even beyond the humans those individuals it could be that so embarrassing for those institutions that there there could be a

56:14 public outcry to to take away the power of those institutions yeah and that gets to kind of the deep State question which I don't really believe that there is an actual deep State you know I just believe that there is these institutions that are more committed to their own longevity than to the public that so do you know what I mean I I don't think there's like I mean that's that's not even a conspiracy like that

56:46 that has to be true right yeah I mean people that's the way people are right well I just think that nobody questions the first principle of what was the point of the CIA and FBI and these different groups and and if we get to the point that the CIA is clearly guilty of spying on- American citizens is that the are there a few bad apples or is has the institution just lost its accountability

57:16 to to the the public to the people I mean yeah have they gotten so far beyond any form of accountability so that's what I mean is the Deep state is more the institutions have lost lost their account but anyway the I don't I guess I don't have super interesting conspiracies because they you know these I think a few years ago you know saying that you believed in uaps would have been more you know

57:47 embarrassing definitely it would have been super embarrassing a few years ago it's interesting how that has shifted so much in the last few years it's just normalized yeah it's oh yeah I mean and I guess I don't agree with RFK I don't you know I Peter teal said it really well on Barry Weiss's podcast that that the way I you know my mom asked me over Thanksgiving how can you be okay with RFK saying that vaccines

58:15 are just a conspiracy and that you really want to get rid of the polio vaccine and I said I don't I don't agree at the surface with what he's saying but I'm glad he's skeptical you know I'm glad people are asking questions yeah and and Peter said we don't want to be too dogmatic you know we don't want to be too skeptical but we've been too dogmatic and we're just leaving this the reason I'm so happy and I publicly

58:44 supported Trump to my own detriment um the reason I'm happy about it culturally is because it's finally okay for us to question the grown-ups like to question the government and and that's what I like about any conspiracy theory I'm open to them all yeah it's just it's open season on skepticism and you know my my brother-in-law and and sister-in-law work in you know a government agency and they're their hearts in a great place and they got

59:14 real work ethics and they do great work and you know they said you know we don't like that now government workers are just seeing as bad and I said I don't fundamentally see anyone who works in the government is bad I see the institutions have have lost accountability and they've lost connection with the first principles it's just like when Elon came in Twitter I'm sure most people he got rid of were good people who will be good in another

59:41 job they just weren't good at Twitter anymore because there was no one running the show like the the ship it was a ghost ship and and I feel like the government you know I'm kind of veering off but I think the government has become this Ghost Ship like so many companies have and I just said it's not good for any organization you know it's healthy for every organization to have people come in who are skeptical that

60:07 used to be private Equity people you it's interesting too like this idea that there's this idea that like oh there was this idea we should trust the expert yeah and and how dare you you know Orin you know the the the press the the Caris wishers of the world would say where the loudest voice is saying to all of us stay in your swim Lane Mark Orin no one wants to hear from what your opinion is

60:31 on polit on you're not a you know when did it become the the sole domain of the political class and the and the pundits you know it used to be that you know with George Washington you were supposed to be a leader in industry or somewhere or something else or in science or somewhere and you go to a stint and now it's oh Daniel lurry has never served in public office so he's risky I'm like why

60:59 is that riskier than someone who's never run an organization in their life I'm like I don't get that it's also like the expert thing is also funny like there are people who are clear experts right like if I want to like um you know fix the motor of my car there's like a clear expert who like knows how to do that and will do a much better job than I would and like has done it a hundred times

61:21 before and like I would gladly defer to that person but that same person is not going to tell me how to fix like the congestion Transportation problem of the United States like just because they know a lot about an individual car does not mean they're gonna like be and that's what we like it's like we have this doctor they know a lot about like helping somebody like if you know if they broke their arm fixing their arm

61:46 but then it's like oh but like we're also going to trust the doctor to solve like the Health crisis of the entire America I'm like that that that doesn't translate I don't know why one to translate to the other no it's there there's there are th there's threads in these things that are useful like for me I said you know I don't trust or understand the CEO of a consumer internet Product Company who's not a product person okay so I get that you

62:13 need to have a good understanding and empathy around whatever your product is but a good CEO I mean like Strauss is able to surround themsel with experts and do a good job of listening to those people and so you know and I I'm kind of veering I guess towards politics I I saw no evidence you know that KLA was a good CEO and and I see a lot of evidence you know knowing Daniel lurry that he will be a good CEO

62:46 he's he's a listener and the first thing I want to see in a CEO is that a desire to you know listen to people with you know humility and and modesty so anyway this is great I love it all right last question last question we ask all of our guests what conventional wisdom or advice do you think is generally bad [Music] advice well okay here's my Global one that I've found to be true

63:17 um I it may be bad advice for you to slow down and and really think really think carefully before you tweet though everyone looks at Trump as being so awful for like putting up and Elon uhuh um it's at least more fun since April um I've I I

63:48 uh I had a chief of staff for nine years you know Dan Garen who who protected me from myself I put tweets they say Mark you have to take that down and I like to say half the time he was clearly right and and since April I've just been tweeting whatever I want whatever I think about even Under the Influence at 3:00 am type of thing or well you know with soon to be five kids I don't have that many of those moments

64:16 but I seem to be able to put up equally dumb things at 3pm and and I'm just putting up things um and and occasionally I do delete it if I come back and I'm like oh yeah that was that's pretty I don't or sometimes people in the comments will say Mark you just retweeted or put up something that's actually proven to me wrong and I said oh I look I take it down but but I've I I'll give you an example I was

64:44 really pissed off I checked into my hotel room in Chicago at the peninsula and it was late it was like 12:30 at night and I'm the only person there at the front desk and I'm just watching them type and type and type and I was just like what the [ __ ] are they doing and and so I tweeted while I was standing there why is it so difficult why is it that the nicer the hotel is

65:09 the the longer it takes them to check me in why can a roadside Motel text me a lockbox number and you know for a 30 or $40 night room and why do I have to go through this do do they not know I was coming do they not trust me they need yeah signature and that was the second most viral tweet I've ever put up and that was just me being cranky you know why why is it so like why like you think

65:38 like if it's super high-end Hotel you know um they someone there's a startup here okay they should like they should meet you at the if they need if they can't get your mobile key to work because those things never work like they should just meet you at the door as you're walking in it's highend hotel and say Mr pinkis here's your key you're in room 412 you need help with your bags Mr Pinkus you're like no no I don't need

66:01 help with my bags I just want to go straight to my room great and by the way like I'm not that TV is not gonna be on when you show up like who want the TV on that [ __ ] yes like I said zero out of 10 people are thankful that the TV is on the Barker Channel and they have to now look for the clicker at 1 in the morning totally figure out how to turn the

66:20 [ __ ] TV off yes there's so many obvious things and they've just lost the plot thread the pants by the way and there's going to be like plugs right by your bed and it's going to be easy and why can't they why can't forget on a plug how about a charger right right right it's a highend hotel right it can't cost that much money if if the hotel is charging more than $1,000 a night like why why can't they spend like

66:45 10 bucks to have someone meet you at the door and give you your key so Oren if I was creating a new version of the we're talking about proven better new proven Everyone likes else it's Pro okay better I would we could go and ask your listeners but I think that I think that 10 out of 10 people would say [ __ ] yes to this zero people at the front you have a few people at the front desk maybe and

67:10 they're just it's just coner when this is for a high-end Hotel you have 10 to 15 people you really staff up at the front door yeah you've got like you're swarmed so there's there's more people out there at the front door bell Hops and people then there are guests coming in Y when you get there when you get there maybe if it's your second time they know your name yeah okay they they like you could just you could just like

67:40 you you could just tell coming somehow like and you you're they see you're you're showing up like you whatever they know you're coming right okay they know your name worst case scenario you have to say to someone oh hi Mark pink is checking and they go great worst case scenario they have to type you into a thing like an Apple pay kind of ter you know an iPhone but they've got your key already they're expecting you they hand you your

68:05 keys and they say what can we do for you what would help you most right now do you want us take your bags do you want to just leave them with us we'll take them up to your room do you can anything we can do otherwise have a great stay you know here's I sent you a text in case you have any questions while you're here yeah you can text me to get you reservations and things you know there's

68:30 there's just a text which is team at Peninsula or team you know it goes to anyone on our team you know if we ever take more than five minutes to text you back let us know you know room service anything this is is so easy and obvious gosh all these things are so obvious and and you're completely right by the way like there's no there's no correlation to price and ser you think like it'd be easier to get in our room inverse

68:58 inverse it's inverse go a road trip you got a road trip and they are texting you there's so many cases where I would pay more for self-service like if someone's going to first print or just like print out my key if I had to I'll just go print it out right so this is a great inter if you were interviewing someone to be a product manager you'd say apply proven better new to the hotel experience soas the high end you'd go to

69:21 First principles and you'd say what do I want at every moment moment to moment when I check in when I get to my room what's the outof boox experience of entering my room what's your experience of going to bed of getting up in the morning I don't want to have to remember to put the do not disturb sign out or some woman is walking in my room while I'm naked getting out of the shower you know like that's not my fault that's

69:47 that's a bug you know not a feature for most people so there's so many obvious things and there's places you give me surprise and Delight right yeah you gave me by the way like why they know there's a motion like why can't they know that there's someone in the room um they should be able to know that all the people the room because hotels are really a real estate play and this is why it doesn't take the smartest people

70:11 to build you know an own you know hotels because it's a real estate play right yeah y yep it's not the smartest people you know do well in real estate like you own you own and you keep you hold it yeah yeah and so you know it's it's you because you and I probably are still going to go stay at whatever the hotel is even though they they give us this [ __ ] experience but at the margin I

70:38 would pick a different Hotel because and I would talk about it and people care because I saw um Ryan from flexport tweeted a couple days ago here's how much people care about this he put up a tweet same thing as me about why hotel is this bad I put up a reply my reply is up to 2,000 likes wow just people have a lot of emotion and when oh totally yeah it's a great sign of signal you know

71:10 there's clearly there's a gap these people are corporate and I like to say corporate stands for lack of thought or Intent no one ever thought corporate was a good word yes like you really seem corporate lately totally yeah not a compliment yeah so all right this has been amazing thank you Mark pus for joining us on World of D podcast um speaking of Twitter I follow you markp I definitely encourage our listeners to engage with you there um you always have

71:41 very interesting things to say and I really appreciate you coming on fun thanks for listening if you haven't already done so please subscribe to World of Das wherever you consume your podcast YouTube Apple Spotify and more and please help us get discovered by leaving a review and check out worldof dash.com that's worldof Dash da.com and of course connect with me on Twitter or that's aen would absolutely love to hear from you