Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:25:14 · Mark Pincus, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:25:14] S0: Well, that's another one that I stole from Bezos. But if I get to pick one thing that you do as CEO, I'm going to pick that you're right. Even if you don't operate the ship or the factory that well, I'd rather that you picked the right product, the right strategy than your phenomenal execution, or inspiring people or managing. Because being in the right body of water matters more than the right boat, and a great boat in a dead lake bed isn't going anywhere. And so I look for that in people, like, "Are they right?" That's the best resume, I could see that you were right about something. And I look for that in the team, and it's less do I like your style, or approach, or your personality fit? I'm like, "I'll take misfits who are right." I'm like, "I want those really smart expert witnesses who are intellectually honest." And the more people you have around you who are right, they're putting balls in the net. [01:26:34] S1: I want to maybe end with a question about your kids and parenting. I talked to a bunch of people that know you well in preparation for this conversation, and every single person commented on just how wonderful a dad you are, and how much time you put into that part of your life. And a question I've been trying to ask folks that are parents and great parents. In this AI era, and there's a lot of stuff I want to ask about, but let me start here. It's just what's something that you are teaching them or helping them to develop that you think is going to be important to them in this crazy world we're entering of AI?
01:27:06 · Mark Pincus
[01:27:06] S0: Thank you for asking about this. I think my greatest role, and job, and service to the world is trying to grow good humans. So I really, really put a lot into it and take it seriously, and I get so much out of it. I like to say, "I'm growing my best friends." And so far, it's true. So there's a couple of principles that have come in. Philosophies that have been important to me as a parent that I've just seen... I do them naturally, and I see that they work over time. The first one for me is I have five kids, they're... Every one of them is just such a different version of a human. And I have a special needs son who's fairly extreme special needs. Our new one-year-old baby has a gene mutation, and she actually may also end up being very neurodivergent. So I used to have this wide range. My 15-year-old girls are... They're twins, and they're completely divergent from each other. This first principle that I've found is meeting them where they are. And it's with kids I find we can talk down to them, we can talk to them as kids, or, we can treat them like adults and neither of those are right. And it's like, "We got to engage with them at the altitude that they're at. But as human to human, and find the way to do that." And then once we do that and meet them where they are, I think we can bring them to surprisingly sophisticated places that may be way beyond where they're supposed to be in that moment. Like my twins, I started playing with math with them when they were really, really little. And then during the pandemic, I taught daddy math because I saw that their school was not equipped to do online homeschooling. So I taught them and their friends daddy math. And I just tried to teach them a math brain, and I didn't know where they were supposed to be, they were in fifth grade. But I just started for them and their friends just trying to teach them how to approach math in a way that's fun and curious. And then we found out later I'd taught them all the way through eighth grade math. And I didn't know it, and they didn't know it and that was cool. And then I'd say in the... How does this apply in the age of AI and where we are?
01:29:49 · Mark Pincus
I feel like we're at the end of this 100-year cycle of mass-produced education, which was get the most knowledge in, get everyone's averages up to the best place we can, educate 20 million graduates a year or whatever number. But it was factory produced, and it was for a certain kind of work. First factories, then knowledge workers. Knowledge working is going away, it's changing. But we're still teaching knowledge education, and I feel badly about it with my kids. And what I've tried to do with my older kids is teach them to have critical thinking more than... And I say, "I don't care if you go to college," which is a little hard for them because they're achievers. And like, "I don't care if you go to college. What I care about is that you develop critical thinking, and you find a way to be useful to people in the world." And my one daughter, Carmen, she's also neurodivergent. She has ADHD and dyslexia, and she's created a brand of sweatshirts called Comfy Fancy. And she also has created a group for neurodivergent middle school kids called Neurosparkly. And it's taking this thing which should be a problem and a deficit, and it's making it a way that she can connect and help a lot of other kids. So I'm proud to see that. The dissonance that I feel in this moment as a parent is that my kids are in this educational system that is trying to prep them to get into a good college and to be a knowledge worker, and I know that game is over. So what do I want my kids doing? I try to teach them to... Look at the meta of what's going on. When an adult is trying to convince you of something. When a teacher has a point of view that you don't agree with, try to understand why. What's their agenda? What's their lived experience, and how has that impacted it? So I'm trying to teach them to ask better questions, not know more answers. And I'd say in terms of how that spills into their online use and what I try to promote and discourage, I try to promote how can you be generative in what you're doing and not consumptive? So what can you do online or offline that is generative, that is actually putting something new out in the world, because that's how you're going to get something back? And not consuming, not being a passive consumer of content and experiences. And sometimes it works, and I see them doing that, and then sometimes it doesn't.
01:32:49 · Mark Pincus, Lenny Rachitsky
But that's how I'm trying to navigate this. I also tried to make it until they were 16 with no phones, no smartphones. And I got to 14, I got them flip phones. And they had internships at Niantic working on Pokemon Go. They built a first time user experience. It's really good that they were, I think, used. But they had to get smartphones for that, and they still have them. I tried to make it, and I didn't. [01:33:20] S1: Oh man, that's hilarious. [01:33:22] S0: Oh, and also, I'll tell you one more thing. For my older girls, I keep a running Google doc of life philosophies. And anything I say to them as a quote I say over and over, I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to actually write that up with stories, and I keep it in this document for them and who knows if they'll use it." But they do start to repeat some of them, so I know they read it. One is nothing's personal. Don't ever take anything personal. And if you assume nothing's personal, you're probably right 19 out of 20 times, and the 20th time you probably handled it right because of that. So that's one. And don't be a victim. The world doesn't happen to you, it's happening around you. We're defined how we react to the world, not by the events that happen to us. So I'm trying to give them these. And they're teenagers, or the older two, and I'm in it and learning. And I've got two littles that... A one-year-old and four-year-old who sleep with me every night and-
01:33:22 · Mark Pincus, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:33:22] S0: Oh, and also, I'll tell you one more thing. For my older girls, I keep a running Google doc of life philosophies. And anything I say to them as a quote I say over and over, I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to actually write that up with stories, and I keep it in this document for them and who knows if they'll use it." But they do start to repeat some of them, so I know they read it. One is nothing's personal. Don't ever take anything personal. And if you assume nothing's personal, you're probably right 19 out of 20 times, and the 20th time you probably handled it right because of that. So that's one. And don't be a victim. The world doesn't happen to you, it's happening around you. We're defined how we react to the world, not by the events that happen to us. So I'm trying to give them these. And they're teenagers, or the older two, and I'm in it and learning. And I've got two littles that... A one-year-old and four-year-old who sleep with me every night and- [01:34:40] S1: Oh, man. You're busy. I feel like it's clearly what your next book is going to be is these life philosophies. I feel like these are useful for people, for humans. For adults, I mean. [01:34:50] S0: Yeah. I wanted to write a book on parenting saying, "Everything I know about parenting, I learned from my dog Zynga." Because I had her before I had kids, and she was like a person. And I gave her clear boundaries, and freedom and love in between, and she believed that she was a person. [01:35:14] S1: Is there anything else you wanted to share before we wrap up?
01:35:14 · Lenny Rachitsky, Mark Pincus
[01:35:14] S1: Is there anything else you wanted to share before we wrap up? [01:35:20] S0: The thing that I've gotten, that's resonated most in writing in my book of life for the last 30 years. It took me a long, long time. It took me until I started Zynga at 41 to finally identify and articulate my why. And I think for all of us, it's so important to get there. And we might do for a long time before we actually can say the why. But I figured out that mine, what I talk about in the book, is I want to create an internet treasure. When people say, "Mark, how do I know that you're going to work hard on this next thing, or you're post-economic, or you're a bored, rich guy or whatever?" I'm like, "Well, I haven't done my thing yet." Like, "What does our soul need to do before we die, or at least to be in integrity with it? What do I need to be working on and know that I gave everything I had against it?" And it's to build an internet treasure, which is a service we can't remember life before or imagine life without. And I believe as product makers, that that's the greatest ambition and the greatest thing that we can offer the world. And my friend Bing Gordon says, "One day, those treasures will be in the Smithsonian." And I think he's right. And I think it is the greatest opportunity that we have as product makers in this era, is to build those digital skyscrapers that the next generation can't believe anyone ever lived without. That's my ambition, and why I'm still rubbing sticks together and... Yeah, it is.