Mark Pincus is the founder of Zynga and a Village Global Luminary LP. He took Zynga public after starting it as a social poker game for Facebook, and it was his fourth company, after earlier ventures that included Tribe.net, one of the first social networks.

Ben Casnocha, co-founder of Village Global, sits down with Mark at a Village Global Luminary Gathering to dig into the core ideas of Mark's book. Mark's central claim is that your instincts are probably right more often than you know, while your ideas are usually wrong more often than you'd like. He explains how that led to his "Proven Better New" framework, which came out of a product management class he created at Stanford Business School, and why he thinks most founders do too much "new" and ignore too much "proven." He illustrates with an SMS taxi idea from 2003, before GPS and smartphones existed, and with an instinct he's still chasing today. They also get into the difference between hope and conviction, and why Mark says to kill hope before hope kills you. Mark walks through the lowest point of the Zynga story, when a Facebook algorithm change cost the company about a third of its traffic in a day and he went from Founder of the Year to one of the 5 worst CEOs in America within a year. He shares what he learned from Mark Zuckerberg, Bing Gordon, Reid Hoffman, and his father, gives his own version of founder mode, and explains where AI is strong (proven) and where it's "absolutely terrible" (new, intuition, and taste). The conversation closes with audience questions, including how he'd build Zynga today and how he stays grounded.

Thanks for listening. If you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.com or get in touch with us on X @villageglobal. Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.com/signup

Zynga's Founder on Failure, Founder Mode, and What AI Still Can't Do | Mark Pincus (Zynga)

Village Global Podcast

Zynga's Founder on Failure, Founder Mode, and What AI Still Can't Do | Mark Pincus (Zynga)