Founder's Story - Mark Pincus Took Zynga Public and It Was Acquired For $12.7 Billion | Ep. 431 with Mark Pincus Founder of Zynga

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

Daniel opens by sharing that Zynga was one of the most influential stocks he ever purchased, then takes Mark back to childhood to understand what shaped him. Mark shares two early influences: his lifelong love of games and a painful falling out with his father that pushed him to become independent earlier than expected. That tension eventually became part of the fuel behind his ambition, his desire for freedom, and his belief that money could give him the ability to choose his own path. The conversation moves through Mark’s repaired relationship with his father, Zynga’s IPO, the anxiety of public success, and the painful moment when Facebook changed its algorithm and Zynga lost a third of its traffic in a day. Mark describes the IPO not as a victory lap, but as a false peak that brought more pressure, more scrutiny, and a public stage for failure. The episode then shifts into Mark’s book, Life at the Speed of Play, and his product framework for founders. He explains why many entrepreneurs have a powerful instinct but express it through the wrong first idea, why “new” usually fails, and why founders need to test marketing, demand, and customer heat before they spend months building. Mark also shares his view that AI gives people more creative leverage than ever, but that the winners will be the ones who combine speed with discipline. Key Discussion Points Mark says two childhood influences still shape him today: his love of games and a major conflict with his father that forced him to become self sufficient earlier in life. He explains that after his father told him he had not become the man he hoped he would become, Mark left, supported himself, and began thinking seriously about money, independence, and what he wanted to build. Mark shares that he and his father repaired their relationship by the time he graduated college, and that his father later became one of the people most proud of his success. He originally did not want his family to invest in Zynga because he had been scarred by a previous company where friends invested and lost money, but his father pushed back and Mark eventually let the family participate. Mark describes Zynga’s IPO as a “false peak,” saying it did not feel like a clean victory because he already knew going public created new pressure, new expectations, and new risks. He says the IPO made his stomach sink because instead of feeling finished, he felt like he now had ten more jobs and the possibility of a very public failure. Mark recalls that after Zynga went public, Facebook changed its algorithm and Zynga lost a third of its traffic in one day, eventually missing guidance and watching the stock fall sharply. He says he went from being named Founder of the Year to being labeled one of the worst CEOs in America within roughly a year, showing how thin the line between public praise and public criticism can be. Mark reflects that the press was not something he enjoyed, and that avoiding the press sometimes allowed others to define the narrative around him. He shares advice he once received from Reid Hoffman: if you do not write your own narrative, the press will write one for you. Mark says he resisted that at the time because he saw himself as nuanced and authentic, but later realized Reid was right. Mark says Tony Robbins had a major impact on him after he saw him speak and later attended Unleashing the Power Within. He learned from Tony about the emotional center of leadership and how to motivate people beyond compensation or intellectual arguments. He explains that he used lessons from Tony Robbins while building Zynga, especially in company meetings where he wanted people to leave emotionally energized and return to work with renewed intensity. Mark describes writing Life at the Speed of Play as painful but worthwhile because he wanted to turn years of advice, Stanford teaching, and founder lessons into a playbook others could reference. He says the book is meant to feel like a cheat code for founders, especially around the idea of “proven, better, new.” Mark explains that many founders have a real instinct that could become a major company, but their first version of the idea is often wrong because ego gets in the way. He argues that founders need to separate the instinct behind an idea from the first product version they want to build, then study what is already proven in the market. Mark says “new” is usually what gets people to try a product, but it is also the part most likely to fail, which is why founders need to test many versions before betting everything on one. He warns that even if AI lets someone build a product in three months instead of three years, that only means they may fail in three months instead of three years unless they test demand first. Mark recommends starting with the ad, the customer, the market, and the demand signal before building the full product. He compares testing an idea to standup comedy: tell people the idea, watch their reaction, and see whether there is real energy or just polite confusion. Mark believes AI will create enormous opportunity, saying it can help people move closer to the creative core of an idea without needing to master every technical skill first. He compares AI to earlier technology waves like mobile phones and the internet, arguing that adoption tends to keep rising even when markets become overheated or volatile. Mark says AI may dislocate some people, but he believes it will also create new industries, new jobs, and a new wave of people building things faster than ever before. Daniel asks about Mark’s son Wyatt, who was born with a gene deletion. Mark says Wyatt has taught him patience, quiet time, and the importance of meeting people exactly where they are. Mark shares that Wyatt processes the world differently, and that as a parent he has learned the only way to connect is to enter Wyatt’s world first, whether that means jokes, ASMR, washing machine videos, or whatever Wyatt is focused on. He says that lesson applies beyond parenting: if you want to help someone move somewhere else, you have to meet them where they are first. Takeaways An IPO can look like a finish line from the outside, but for founders it can feel like the beginning of a much harder, more public chapter. If founders do not define their own narrative, someone else will, and that story may not reflect the truth or the nuance of who they are. The best product ideas often start as instincts, but founders need discipline to separate the instinct from the first version of the idea. “New” can attract attention, but “proven” and “better” are what increase the odds of building something people actually want. AI gives more people the ability to build, design, code, and create, but speed alone does not fix bad product thinking. The deepest leadership lesson Mark shares is also a parenting lesson: meet people where they are before trying to move them somewhere else. Closing Thoughts Mark Pincus’s Founder’s Story episode is not just about Zynga, FarmVille, or Silicon Valley success. It is about the emotional reality of building in public, the pain of being misunderstood, the thin line between praise and criticism, and the discipline required to turn instinct into products people love. Through Life at the Speed of Play, Mark is trying to give founders a practical cheat code: test before you build, separate ego from instinct, and use the speed of today’s tools without losing the discipline that makes great products work Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You have an instinct that probably is a multi-billion dollar company right now, but you'll be it up because of your ego. He founded Zinga, took it public, and the company was acquired for $12.7 billion. But first, he almost lost everything. This is Mark Pinkus. I went from being named founder of the year in the end of 2011 to fortune naming me one of the five worst CEOs in America in the end of 2012. Facebook changed their algorithm and we lost a third of our traffic in a day soon after we were a $2 stock. And my dad saying, I didn't finish the job in raising you and you didn't turn out to be the

man I hoped. I just said, when I left. A lot of young people right now, they don't see billionaires as heroes anymore. And they're almost telling me that the system is rigged. Zinga was one of the most influential stocks I've ever purchased. It really was one of the first high-performing stocks that I had, I think maybe it was 10 years ago when I purchased. But let's go back in your childhood. What was something that happened to you when you were a child that remained an influence up to this day? Well, two things come to my mind right away. One is, I would say, I was addicted to video games and just games and playing, as is my son.

who's sitting here off camera. He's not video games. He's addicted to playing. He always wants to play. And so I was always trying to get people to play games with me from an early age. But what I'd say was even more impactful in my life direction was a falling out I had with my dad when I was about 18. And I think so many of us, especially men, kind of hit this point where we either

kind of doubled down on our parents, especially our dad, and become more like them or we kind of rebel. And in this case, it was kind of my dad calling me on it, saying he kind of said, I didn't finish the job in raising you, and you didn't turn out to be the man I hoped. And so I'm taking you out of college, and you're going to come work for me so I can finish raising you. And since I was so much like my dad, I just said, fuck you. And I left. And, and, and, and, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and ended up supporting myself and, and it really just put me on a totally different path. And, and it kind of made me grow up at a much earlier age. And, because I, not let me go get jobs and have to become, um, self-sufficient earlier, but, but I had to think more about what I wanted to do in the world and how

was I going to make money because I thought money was freedom and, you know, it would let me go have the life I want and not have to buckle under to my dad or anybody else. Let's talk about your father. I know that he passed away in September. You rang the bell in December. When you were standing there at that bell, were you thinking about him? Yeah, I was. he and my dad and I repaired the relationship by the time I graduated from college and and he was

really proud of me and he turned into being his greatest role in life with being Grandpa Teddy and he was like the greatest grandpa at everybody and just the sweetest guy and and we really became friends and yeah and he was really proud and and I actually another little fight we had was I originally didn't want to let him invest in Zingo because I'd had such a bad experience with my previous company, Tribe.net, and I had some friends invest and lose their money, and I was scarred by it. And I thought, this is so risky. This could all fail. And I don't want to have to carry that burden again. Like, you're going to war and you don't want to have to worry about the people who are relying on you. And I said, I'm not letting anyone invest this time. And then my

dad got really mad at me and he said, how can you not let your family invest? And I said, okay, okay. And so I let them invest. And yeah, he was, he was really proud. And I think he, and my dad, I built this financial PR firm called the Financial Relations Board. They took nationwide. And he was really into public company communications and IPOs and all this stuff, way more than me. So he would have, and I'd had a company go public. Support.com went public in 2000, so he got to go through that. But this was on a much bigger scale.

I think he would have really loved it, more than me. What did it feel like when you went public, when you saw this massive success? I mean, Zingo was huge. I remember when it actually went public. Did you think about all those failures, those hardships,

getting fired everywhere, going through rock bottom, doing something that you thought was going to be amazing and it just didn't, it collapsed. Was that going through your mind? In some way that that's always present. And it's always been in my consciousness like the thin line between success and failure for me and for so many other people. And I don't, I can't say, I think for a lot of founders, founders, the IPO is kind of like a false peak. It's, you know what nobody warns you about as a founder?

How fast the years catch up on you? Late night, stress, bad sleep, I started feeling it. And that's why I began taking Blueprints Longevity Mix. If you spend time online, you've seen Blueprints founder, Brian Johnson. He's the don't die guy running one of the most measured longevity experiments in the world, tracking his biometrics and publishing all the data. This is the exact formula he drinks every morning. Instead of a cabinet full of pills,

is one scoop in water done. It helps support energy, focus, sleep, and healthy aging with ingredients like magnesium, one of my favorites, creatine, taurine. Everything is third-party tested for purity, and they publish the results. For a limited time, new customers get 20% off

plus free shipping at blueprint. Ryan Johnson.com with code founders at checkout. That's code founders. It's, I think if you've, I had been through it once before, so I knew it was a false peak. I mean,

it's not a real victory moment. It's like, that's why they always say, okay, this is day one. It's a reminder to them and their company say this is not an end point. And so I don't want to celebrate.

It feels kind of icky to me. And it did, it felt, a little icky, but everyone around you wants to, and the world is, and it's the ring the bell, and we did it in our lobby at our headquarters, partially because I didn't want to be away from my kids, and then Facebook did it in a bigger way at their headquarters. But it's just, it feels, it's kind of like being on the cover of Fortune magazine. It's like, okay, things can only go down from here, and you're kind of setting yourself up

energetically for that. The world isn't, they're kind of applauding you in that moment, but then they kind of don't want to see you succeed. That's what it all felt like. And you have a lot of employees that say, I wanted to be at a public company. I want to go through an IPO. Now I have goodbye. And so the culture changed. So anyway, all that stuff was on my mind. It's probably, if I look at picture myself then, I probably was like carrying a lot of anxiety and no sleep and just like, okay, now I've got 10 more jobs. So, you know, people say, what did it feel like? Wasn't this great moment?

You're like, if I'm being totally honest, it's like your stomach sinks a little bit. You're just like, ugh, ugh. This is like, now I could have the biggest public belly flop in the world. And in fact, I did, right? Because, you know, we went public in December of 2011. and then in May of 2012, Facebook changed their algorithm and we lost a third of our traffic in a day

and then missed our guidance and then soon after we were a $2 stock. And so I went from being named, I don't think I'd talk about this in the book, but I went from being named founder of the year by whatever the techies, the crunchies or whatever in the end of 2011 to 4,000, to fortune naming me one of the five worst CEOs in America and then of 2012,

I probably had that, I'm probably the only founder who could say that they have that distinction. What is that to you as a founder knowing you put your, because I don't think people understand, if you've never created a business and then obviously created a business at that size, you don't know how hard it is, like the crap that you have to go through, knowing that somebody out there on a magazine is making this decision that probably has never

even founded a company. What do you think about that? Unfortunately, I kind of think things have changed for the better. I'm so happy that there's podcasts like yours. So if there were then, I would have been, I would have gone on your podcast exclusively, and I would have said no to all the press. Just the reality to me back then is the press was not your friend. They had an agenda of their own.

They would make up a narrative about you if you didn't give them one. And I hired a PR firm early on to keep us out of the press because the press wasn't going to get me any more users or revenues, just more competitors or just more noise. And then at one point, like the Wall Street Journal in New York Times, each had quotas. They had to write a certain number of stories about our company a month. And they just said, look, we're going to write stories about you,

whether they're working with you or not good or bad. We're just going to write them. So you might as well give us content. And, you know, it's just, it's just this, like, annoying thing that's going on. And other people think you must love it, the fame, whatever you hate it. It's just, it's a distraction from what you're really focused on, which is, you know, your players or customers, your teams, product and it's like it's a tax so I wish I could sound more you know triumphant about it there's some people who breeze through it and love it but you know I also

when when I see people CEOs and founders on panels or giving talks I say why are they there what's their agenda are they doing this because they need me in some way for their business or do they not know why they're there and that's kind of a fake CEO moment, which I didn't want to have either. And so, you know, I mostly avoided the press and it was to my own peril because then they started writing really bad things about me. In fact, when I started dating my partner, my current partner, Hillary, who I have two kids with, I said, just don't Google me. It's not good. You're not going to like it. I think it's like this, it's like a fame perception. It's built to create a perception.

and narrative that they can control to drive clicks. Because sadly, people don't really click on happy stories. Like, if you're a nice person, nobody cares or wants to know about you. We've had many people on from athletes to actors to different founders, and they've all had to create a persona that was many times slightly negative than a positive person to drive. Yeah. Yeah.

And Reed Hoffman said early on, like, Mark, what's what's your narrative because if you don't write one the press will for you and i said no read i'm i'm authentic i'm me i'm nuanced i'm not like any one thing and that's what makes me me and he's like no that's that's never going to work and he was right it didn't you you've obviously gotten to interact with a lot of very interesting people i mean read hoffman i'm looking at your book right now Brian Chesky wrote a quote, Gary Tan, Sam Altman. Talk about an interesting character right now who's in the news. Shane, the CEO of Polymarket.

I mean, you have some fascinating people that you've been able to interact with throughout the years. Was there somebody that stands out that maybe wasn't exactly who you thought they were going to be, not in a negative way, just maybe impacted you? I love these questions. So, yeah, the one that comes to my mind immediately, and he actually, gave me a quote for the book, too, but not in time, was Tony Robbins. And I saw him speak at the TED conference, and it was fairly early on, like, I don't know, maybe it was 0-2 or 03. And I got to get my years right, but it was right after the presidential election, Al Gore had lost because of the Supreme Court.

Remember the hanging Chad? And Tony Robbins said, you know, we all make up victim stories. We all give ourselves excuses to fail. And Al Gore is in the front row and yells out, do you mean like the Supreme Court? And Tony Robbins didn't miss a beat. And he said, yeah, that's exactly what I mean. You didn't fail because of the Supreme Court. You failed because you didn't want to win.

You didn't bring any passion. You know, you were kind of like cardboard. And now we see you talk about climate change. And you're really passionate. If you brought half of that passion, you'd be president. You just didn't want it. And he said what we all thought. And then everyone, like my stomach sunk.

I was like, I'd pit my stomach. What's he? What's going to happen? And then Al Gore got up and hugged him. And I was like, holy shit. This guy's got something to teach me. And then he said to the audience, if anyone ever wants to come to my seminar thing, just email my team and we'll get you a pass.

And I was like, I'm going. So I went with my friend Gary to his unleashing the power within in like 2006 or something. And it was really cheesy. Sorry, Tony. It felt cheesy. It was like, you know, a convention hall in New Jersey with 5,000 people, mostly out of work real estate agents. And, you know, did all these things.

But I learned so much about the emotional center of leadership and how do you get people, How do you get through to people in their emotional center in a way that's beyond intellectual, beyond compensation? And I used so much of his stuff when I was building Zinga and motivating people. I was like, okay, if I do like a full Tony Robbins for this company meeting, I'll know because people, it's a Friday and people will be back at their keyboards again like after the meeting after the party. So yeah, Tony Robbins. You know, funny enough, a few weeks ago, we just did something with Tony Robbins and somebody else. And his wife, Sage, sent me the most amazing voice note. I'm like, she didn't need to.

And it wasn't, I was blown away. Also, the fact that my last name is Robbins in my book, many times if I go to the store and I say, hey, do you have this book? Because I want to see it. You know, I want to see it on the shelf. They always think it's by Tony Robbins since we have the same last name. but I'm going to go to unleash the power within in November by the way. Great, great.

Walk across the coals, like take notes. By the way, I can't remember if we plug my book or not. We got, we got into it. The whole, I mean, I was going to put this across the whole thing. You're not even going to see my pace.

It's just going to be this. Here, we should just talk as the book. Okay. This is just the book talking to you. I was on, X Twitter this morning and Nikesh Aurora from Pellon Networks, I love seeing people like him like wake up and be like, I'm going to do my own Twitter as myself,

like not my social media manager. And he's like, I'm liking this. And I said, we're happy to have you here, Nikesh. Like this is 100% what it's for. It's like a place to authentically connect to people. And he said, he said, Mark, I wrote something back like, thanks. I'm learning from you. and I immediately said, great, do you want to order some copies in my book for

phallets of networks? And someone was like, wow, always be selling. So I was like, yeah, I'm hoaring out my books, you know. ABC, you always have to be, you always have to be closing. Writing a book is one of the most painstaking things that I've ever done in my life. Yes, like, what the heck made you? I mean, why? Like, Mark, why would you even put yourself through it?

I don't know. I say everyone should write a book one time. And if you get the chance, like, build a house one time, but not more because the ratio of, you know, time to pay off is not there. But it's like you could start a company or write a book. But I had this class at Stanford. And I had this body of work. And I give this. advice, my class at Stanford at Stanford Business School, Stanford CS, and to so many founders over and over and over. And I just said, last week I opened up my fridge four separate times, hoping something new and magically appear, and it never did. I ended up eating crackers over the sink. That is why Hewell Black Edition became my default. It is not a shake on top of food. It is a complete meal you have instead of food. 40 grams of protein, 27 essential vitamins and minerals, no artificial sweeteners, colors, or flavors, and it mixes with water or milk in about 30 seconds. When I'm running out of the door, I grab the RCD bottle instead, 35 grams of protein,

seven grams of fiber, under $5 a meal. New customers get 15% off online with code founder at huel.com slash founder. That's Hsu. Thank you to Hewle for partnering and supporting this show. I'm going to put in a book. I know books rarely get very broad, but at least I hope it could be referenced. I hope like, I hope this, some of these concepts, you know, and I say someone in the book, if it gets through to a few people and really changes their course and they do something important, that hopefully that'll be worth it.

My dad wrote a lot of books. He was prolific. I was like, I'm just doing one book. But the idea of the book was that it's my playbook, and I wanted it to feel like a cheat code. It is like a cheat code, because if you can stick to some of these principles like Proven Better New,

you can change your odds. And it's so hard, I barely can stick to Proven Better New. And it's my own framework. And I fail at it so often because our ego gets in the way. And it's, you know, to me, it's kind of self-indulgent to just pursue this one idea because you like it and not be scientific about it, not force yourself to like pull out the proven, you know, isolate the new. That's just not as fun. It's not like vibe coding, you know. We just want to let go and build and just jam.

You know, I get it. But we have to combine it with this, in my opinion, if we combine it with this really disciplined approach, which usually it's a founder on their last dollar. They do Proven Better New. It's like they try it all these things. They all fail. Now they have to show something. And now they narrow it down to something very commercial.

Can you die deeper? Because launching products that people will love, I think will resonate now more than ever. Because everyone is vibe coding an app every five seconds. If you have $20 a month, you can get software that can make you anything. And I don't know if that's a good thing, democratizing so much access to create. Or if that makes things, I don't know if it makes things worse because people just make a lot of crap that maybe will never turn in anything. But what is with all these people making things? Well, here's the whole premise.

It's that any of your listeners right now, many of them have some idea. And maybe it's haunted you for some time. Maybe you've had some idea, some dorky idea. But it's stuck with you like a good joke or something. And it just keeps coming back and things keep reminding you of it. And you've wondered, should I go pursue it? And you probably don't. In this era for $20 a month, you finally can try your idea.

Okay, for those who do, they'll probably fail. So that's a beat down. The whole point to me of getting to life at the speed of play is to say, okay, let's be a little more disciplined. Let's separate this instinct that you have. Let's go really deep on what is the instinct that's driving this, this idea of yours, and let's separate it from the idea the way you're instantiating that, which is probably wrong. But you have an instinct that probably is a multi-billion dollar company right now, but you'll fuck it up because of your ego if you even build it.

But if you can be disciplined about it the way the best product makers in the world are and say, okay, I'm going to really, really study what's proven around my idea and then I'm going to look for any opportunity to make it better. For the people who already like this kind of product and use it, better is not easy to get to, but it's something that 10 out of 10 of those users will say, fuck yeah, I'll take it. It's free.

Half the price, much faster or whatever, like they really care about. And then new is most of what's in your idea. It's this novel thing, which will fail. One of the principles of my book is all new fails. But it's also how you're going to get them to try your product. Because if it was just copying something that worked, there's no reason to try it. But you have some new novel idea, probably around AI now. Like, now get the weather, but it's smarter than you are.

And it can tell you what to wear today or whatever because of the AI. That's a gimmick usually. And the point is that you don't just try your one idea. you try, hopefully you test tons of ideas. I say more ideas in a week than the industry you're going into tests in a year so that you find signal. So you give yourself a better chance.

You don't build a whole product. Even with AI, maybe you're building a product in three months instead of three years. Great. Now it's going to take you three months to fail instead of three years. Let's change your odds and let's spend this week testing ads for,

Once you build your product, then you think, how am I going to market it? Let's start with that now. How am I going to market it? Oh, shit, nobody wants this. That's good data. There's some really dumb, obvious things that we don't seem. Our brain doesn't start learning until after we are in the market with our product. And unfortunately, it's just backwards.

It's like start with the ad. Start with who you're trying to get this to and how. And can we test that before we build anything and find heat? And then let's build a bunch of versions. And the other thing is that you can also, the fastest way to test your idea is just talking to people, like a stand-up comic. Like you just tell people, here's what it is,

and they kind of look at you with a blank face like you're looking at me right now. Or they kind of go, oh, wow, that's amazing, which they almost never do, right? So that's the fastest way I think is just talking it through with people. But so I said hopefully this book is like a cheat code for people. Like you have an idea. You want to like jump in and try it. Great. There's never been a better time than now.

I really think that people are going to build amazing businesses and they are all around us. But give yourself a chance of succeeding. It might be the most important time to have this book, Life at the Speed of Play. There was a lot of anxiety right now around AI, and there's a lot of generational anxiety around AI, which fascinates me. You've seen it all. You've been through every internet technology wave that's happened. What's your honest take?

Okay. And yes, I'm that old. Like, I've even been through the beginning of cellular phones. I similar to when cellular phones first started, like when you look at the underlying the adoption curve, you know, the valuations on the companies, you know, bubbles, crashed, they went like this, but adoption just went like this. We wanted our mobile phone, we still do, right? And the internet was a little different because it, it, the bubble, the consumer internet

got way overheated. This is different. I mean, during the dot-com bubble, all of my peers, we all thought the financial public markets were crazy. My company, support.com, went public the last day of the IPO window because we were an enterprise software company. Now, but I think everyone's getting,

we're getting smarter as a society and a culture. We're more used to adopting a new technology because we've been through it before. We absorbed the internet. We saw that eventually it did deliver. And so we're just a little smarter. Yet every new platform and technology seems to be like 10 times bigger magnitude, and AI feels like it might be 100 times bigger.

And no one really thinks anyone's being kind of falsely exuberant, even if there is any temporary bubble. people think there's no question this is going to be more important than the internet in the long run. So then there's this fear and anxiety people have around anything new and there's all this talk about our jobs going away, which was stoked by Sam Altman and Dario. And those guys are kind of too close to their own technology and they believe in it too much. So they are like, okay, it's creating the age of abundance and no one's going to ever work again. I'm like, dudes, like maybe in 20 years some of what you're talking about is going to happen. I don't want to sound like, maybe this won't age well.

And maybe if you'll watch this in a year and be like, Pink is they were right and you were a Luddite. But I have a feeling I'm going to be right, which is the more things change, the more they stay the same, which is the internet was a net job creator. The internet created new industries. The internet helped our economy massively. It's part of the reason we have twice the economy of the EU now because our country doubled down on the internet and they didn't. They use it, but they didn't double down it. I think the same and more is happening with AI. I think that job openings have gone up in the last year, not down, both computers, yes, computer science, customer support.

All the jobs that were supposed to go away seem to have gone up. I think there's going to be a new gig economy where people, I mean, I can get on mid-journey and design a beautiful room for you. I'm happy to do it later. I designed a logo for my partner, Hillary, that in like five minutes I made a logo that she absolutely loves and uses. So the potential for people to now live their life of the speed of play, the potential to not have to learn the skills of drawing.

of the art, but actually just get close to the metal of the creativity and then bring that to life and sell that to somebody, I just think it's got to just explode. And I get that it's going to be, people are going to be dislocated. I get that, like, by the way, some of the people are dislocated most are people graduating from Harvard Business School or Yale, and they were guaranteed a job at McKinsey and a million dollars a year and a place in the Hamptons and now that guarantee is gone and you're like, whoops, maybe you're on the same plane as every fucking other person out there and you don't have a built-in advantage anymore. Welcome to the real world. It's going to suck at the top

to some degree for like the elites. It's also going to raise up a lot more people. You could go to a community college in Dayton, Ohio and use Learn Cursor. And, and you learn cursor. And, and, and program at the level of a Stanford CS grad. So that's going to increase opportunities for Dayton, Ohio, and it's going to flatten some for Stanford. So that's my take. Don't get me started about college. I dropped out at 20.

Good job. And so I wanted, I always, this was my goal in life. I wanted a license plate that said no degree, but I wanted to have it on a Lamborghini. That was like my goal in life. I mean, I don't know why. I mean, I had to do this. I thought I had to do this thing.

I thought I had to go to Wall Street to make enough money to pay for college. And then I went to Harvard Business School because God's honest truth, I had no idea what to go do next. And I was getting kicked out of my job in investment banking or I would have stayed. And I thought, I got no idea. I want to work in tech and all this stuff, but nobody's going to hire me. I might as well go take two years off. At Harvard Business School, I learned squash. I watched HBO.

You know, I learned how to sell to corporate America. I didn't, there's nothing I can point to that I really learned at Harvard Business School that was a real, like, helped me later in life be a CEO lesson. and like nothing. It has, you get a good bumper sticker, though. It's a cool. There used to be the H-bomb.

It used to be like, they'd be like, oh, where did you go to school? I went to a business school in Boston. Where? Oh, Harvard Business School. They call that the H-bomb.

Like, you'd humble brag. But, wow, I don't think that's much of an H-bomb. You know, now the H-bomb is I learned to do Claude Code, you know. That's true. Here's my app. And I'm 10 years old, and I made an app, and I have $10 million. So you know, there's something very interesting that's happening.

Very, very interesting. A lot of young people right now, they don't see billionaires as heroes anymore. And they're almost telling me that the system is rigged. But I just want to double click on that. You talk to young people who say that. And by the way, are these people who are in college or pre-college? I just need to get a little more information from you on this. Yes.

So I would say young college. Let's call 18 to 20. Okay, college kids. College kids, yes. Because I think, I come from Chicago. I think the middle of America is pragmatic, and I don't, I could sound tone-depth, but I don't think that they actually, that the mass majority of people, I don't think they have a problem with Elon Musk.

I think they are proud that he's an American and thankful that SpaceX is an American company and not a Chinese company or a Russian company. So I think that the silent majority that's mainstream America, I don't believe that they have a problem with Elon Musk or the billionaires that are out there building and doing things that are helping our country win in the world. My nephew Ned, I'm going to see him this weekend. and he went to some fancy private college, little college in Minnesota,

and he came home and he said, Uncle Muck, maybe I was there's Uncle Mark. There's probably when I was building Zing, and he said, you know, you, you, you're like a big capitalist and you're stealing from the people. And I said, let me tell you something that the food you're eating tonight, you just stole from the people because I just paid for that with the money I made from Zenga. So you're complicit in this. And 10 years later, he was selling NFTs. You know, he's a complete capitalist entrepreneur.

He and his brother have started a, what's it called? They started a taco burrito truck high end that goes to bars. They're capitalists. So anyway, don't even get me started because this would be a whole other podcast. I was just reading something about how many millionaires were created last year. And obviously, we know a lot of that is through stocks. And all these people that are retired now are not reliant on their pensions or their social security. They're relying on 401k IRAs, which are stocks, which are driven by.

But let's change subjects here. A few years ago, my sister was diagnosed with a very rare disease. And basically they told her, like, they're not really sure. how long she has left. And she had to completely change her life and how she did things. And I've watched her going through this. I know your son,

you've been talking about on Business Insider. I was reading about that your son was born with a DNA deficiency. Am I said that? Gene deletion. Sorry, Gene. And I know I'm sure that's been a whole change in your life. What did your son teach you that billion users, all the success that you had, all the people that you met that they never did.

Such a good question. Yeah, my son Wyatt was born with this gene deletion and everyone is different and his manifested that the connection between the two sides of his brain is wafer thin. And so he processes things at like one 200th of normal, fully developed, fully developed humans. and I'd say the biggest thing he's taught me is I got to meet him where he is. It's the patience and I got to go on Wyatt time. Like if he's into fart jokes right now and all he's into he thinks farts are hilarious, I got to go to meet him in farts. And it's just do you, and it's true with all kids and all five months.

my kids, they're all neurodivergent from each other and from the norm. And normal is such an interesting word when you actually go to the derivation of it, but it wasn't even a common use word until 1800s and it was out of construction. You know, and normal just meant a straight line or it was a perfectly straight line. So I'm not sure normal's good, but I have five kids all neurodivergent from each other in the norm. And Wyatt, the most, is such a special different guy, and he's got this deep sense of humor to himself. It's really wickedly clever.

It will kind of shock you how clever it is, but he's just going to be where he is and nothing you can do or say is going to move him. So your choice is like, meet him there or don't meet him. Those are your two choices. But you got to meet him, if you want to help bring him to somewhere else. And if he just wants, and he's kind of like gone deep on ASMR's,

he was into like washing machines on YouTube, like just watching them for like three months. He was into watching ASMR of like inside the pilot's cockpit. And you just got to like go there. And that's how you engage with him to get to other places. But I just think that's that's just such a good life lesson. Just we got to meet people where they are. Thank you for sharing that.

Have you ever had a conversation with Elon Musk? Yeah. How is it? I've always wondered, how is it to have a private conversation with Elon Musk? I've had a few over the years. And, you know, he's brilliant. I've had conversations where I found it really hard to talk to him because his brain was focused on something else

and I couldn't go there so I couldn't meet him where he was. I've been with him and a group people where it was like the best stand-up comedy I ever heard not long after he bought Twitter when he was talking about his experience going into that company

it was just priceless fucking humor. I mean, he talked about how he said, this was after the pandemic, they were still spending a million dollars a year on software that would look at their cameras to tell them the density of people in the office, but nobody was in the office. I mean, during the pandemic and after the pandemic, but they were still paying for the software. And then he said that they were also spending this big monthly budget to stock all the bathrooms worldwide with tampons, not just the women. but the men's room too. And my favorite stand-up joke he had was he said, he was just wondering, was there going to be a moment that a robber broke into the headquarters and was that time of the month and identified, though,

as a man. So went to the men's room but needed a tampon and Twitter had them covered. I thought that was pretty good. One day. I want to be a fly on the wall, Marga. I want to be a fly on the wall for these conversations. But I'm with you. Like what even is normal now?

I don't even who like being normal sounds so boring from what normal I think what normal could be. But man, life at the speed of play. This book is going to change your life. Look at all these amazing people talking about you positively. They should have put, you know what you should do? I want to see somebody who puts writing on the back where they talk really bad about you. How funny would that be? It'd be funny.

See, that is my kind of jam. That's my kind of marketing. It's non-sequitur. Because we kind of tune it out because you expect to have a beautiful blurb from Sam Alvin. But if Sam was like, you know, I never read the book and I really can't say you should read the book either. And, you know, I don't know about Mark.

And I put that on the back of the book. That'd be fucking baller. That'd be amazing. Like you send an email to them to get a quote. And the email back is like, I don't even know who you're talking about. These are the two best books, though. I hope everyone gets both of these books. Oh, I got one more for you.

I could have done. I could have put a non-quote from, I sent an email to Jeff Bezos, and I asked him to give me a quote, and he ghosted be. So I could just put blank Jeff Bezos and put he ghosted. Yes. Oh, my gosh. Did you think Jeff was going to reply? Maybe it was arrogant.

My experience with Jeff Bezos is whenever I sent him a message about, something being broken with Amazon the service. Like my mom had this bad experience, I would hear back in five minutes. But when I was like, Jeff, can I talk to you about this business opportunity, Zinga? Ghost. What about Mark?

Did you ever think to contact Mark for the book? You know, it's funny. I have such a weird, long relationship with Mark. I didn't. And I don't know. I reached out to a bunch of people who pre-ordered big orders, White Cominator, Andreson, a lot of venture firms.

They should hand this book out inside Meta. So many of my former PMs went to work there. They adopted so many of our practices. So he does prove him better than who. Maybe you need to do jujitsu with him. Oh, yeah, that would not go well for me. I'm not Elon level. I can't get in the arena.

But yeah, maybe I will send him a message. I like that. Put ghosted on the back. I think that's awesome. But life at the speed of play. Again, when they reached out to me about having you on as a guest, when your team reached out, I was like, Mark Pinkis, founder of Zinga,

I immediately went to my portfolio and I was like, oh my God, Zika is the longest stock I've ever held in my life. I don't even know why I held it for so long. Like, I probably should have. I'm not hearing that it was your best return. Do you know that, Robin Hood would give out one share of Zinga to people when it was like a $2 stock as like a gimmick, like when you signed up for Robin Hood. And so I would go into like hotels and places and they'd be like

Zinga, I own your stock. And I'd be like high five. Like they own like five shares. They'd $10 of my stock at the time. Now it's work more. That's true. But Mark, this has been great. Thanks for sharing everything. I mean, I was thinking, why am I even talking? Who am I? to talk to Mark, to be honest. Sometimes I think, I don't even understand why I'm sitting here talking to you right now, to be honest, but I'm honored that you're even here. I'd rather be talking to you than, you know, a reporter at the New York Times or the Washington Post who's just going to like get to some quote they want for me that fits into their thing.

You know, talking to like real normal people, you give me a chance to just talk and don't portray me, whatever way, you know, their skewed narrative goes is like, I'll do that all day. Well, I appreciate that. I'm a future billionaire. You are. You already got, I got to tell you, you already have that instinct inside you that's a multi-billion dollar company. It's just, can you tune into it and do you have the discipline to go after it? I was going to say I'm a billionaire in love. You could match that with dollars, though. I won't need it because AI is going to do everything. We're going to go into the abundance world and AI. Abundance, robots, yeah. It doesn't matter. I'll be a billion robots. But Mark,

this is... Thinking about going to Mars, but if I go to Mars, though, I'm going to bring this book with me. You should live life and speed of plate, even on Mars.