00:40:45 · John Coogan, Jordi Hays
[00:40:45] S1: I have a bunch of questions. [00:40:46] S0: I have a fun thought exercise. So John and I have had this debate of is it possible to build a competitor to Instagram? That's a business. I think that I would like to see someone someone try because I believe the capital markets are in a are in a state right now that, you know, even though it's insane and there's like, you know, 99% chance it doesn't work, like, there's gonna be people that would take the bet. And you have Instagram which is one of the most popular products in the entire world and the company is like very focused on like other things, right? Like they're focused on AI and now a cloud business and and maybe the company overall doesn't fully appreciate just how amazing the business is. And it and it still continues to grow. And so I wanna believe that it's possible to for for a smart team to actually go and and and create something that would actually compete in that category. John is like, it's just not possible. It's over. It's like network effects and the scale and the social game that it's turned into. But I want to believe. I'm curious what your view is.
00:42:00 · Mark Pincus
[00:42:00] S6: Well, one of these instinct veins that I talk about is the cocktail party. Originally, there was a cocktail party on Napster, and then there was a cocktail party on Friendster, and then Facebook, and now Instagram. And it once the cocktail party is there and working, it is hard to get people to move, but these cocktail parties can wear out and and kind of lose their excitement or appeal. And in the case Instagram today, I think it's lost a lot of its original value to us, which was social networking. It was kind of serendipity that we get at a cocktail party. And they for maybe business reasons, they pursued engagement. They wanna be more like TikTok and get you be more entertainment, reels. And so I do think that that opens up an opportunity. I I don't I know if you guys spend much time thinking about Net Promoter Score. It used to be really popular NPS. And there's a funny thing. You can you could go research this now or maybe AI could simulate it for you even quicker. But I would bet that that today, users of Instagram probably have an NPS of 35. And the day they quit, it's like quitting cigarettes is probably a minus 35. That's usually the sign of some weakness, you know, in your product or brand. Looking at that, you know, on the exit, you know, they're not promoting it. In fact, they're proud that they've given up this bad habit. And what I would say though is there probably has to be a
00:43:41 · Jordi Hays, Mark Pincus, John Coogan
[00:43:41] S0: new The only thing, it's a small sample size, but the friends that I know that quit Instagram, they end up still sending me memes from their business accounts. And so I'm like, all right, I get it. [00:43:54] S6: They can't keep up the addiction. [00:43:56] S0: Yeah, yeah. I think they're actually signaling that they've quit, but they're still having a cheeky drag here and there. [00:44:04] S6: Well, I got to say, I got my drags down to I probably use Instagram once a month. Sure. And then I find myself just drawn into time wasting. I'm on Twitter or X. That's like my Cigarette. Social network, my drug of choice. I I tell myself it's more valuable content, but that's what we do. [00:44:25] S0: Yeah, say I look at it as like it's an opportunity to do whatever the inverse of a meditation is, right? In a meditation, you're sitting there, you're like, I'm to let thoughts flow through but I'm not gonna hang on to them, you know, whatever And your approach it's like, what if you could add 20 new ideas to your head every ten seconds? And that is awesome. [00:44:46] S6: Would you do that? [00:44:47] S0: And it's like, here's drone warfare and here's a protest somewhere else and here's some startup who's rage baiting you. It's addictive, whatever it is. [00:44:58] S1: It is.
00:44:58 · John Coogan, Mark Pincus, Jordi Hays
[00:44:58] S1: It is. [00:44:59] S6: But I would say that it's probably you need a shift. You need something new, I think, to get consumers, to get all of us. We are lazy and apathetic and low attention span. And so, you know, no one's downloading new apps. So there has to be something probably AI and agents that that is the new thing that pulls you into a new cocktail party. Yeah. I I But I do believe it'll happen. [00:45:26] S1: Even though I'm I'm, like, skeptical about the particular go to market, I'm curious on your read on the state of venture capital because if you go back to Zero to One, the sources of monopoly power, network effects are one of the four. They're very enduring. And everyone believes that network effects will endure even in the age of AI. And so I guess I have been surprised, even though I can't think of how to disrupt an established social network, I've been surprised that we haven't heard about a $1,000,000,000 premarket Well, round [00:46:00] S0: yes. So that's what I'm saying. So that was [00:46:01] S1: the interesting capital community to actually buy their way into network effect. [00:46:05] S0: Yeah. You can build a new social media company, but you need billions of dollars, and like TikTok is evidence of TikTok was spending Yeah. How much money on Meta, how much money on on Snap, all these other platforms. [00:46:17] S6: Advertiser on the Internet for [00:46:18] S1: a while. [00:46:18] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For for a minute there. So I do think it's Snap, I [00:46:21] S6: think they were getting their users, you know, from social networks.
00:46:21 · Mark Pincus, John Coogan
[00:46:21] S6: think they were getting their users, you know, from social networks. [00:46:24] S1: Yeah. Yeah. [00:46:24] S6: But But I I I would just say, your question on venture capital, why aren't we seeing this funded? I think you gotta pull the camera back and just also say we're not seeing a lot of consumer being funded. It it almost feels like it's not investable right now. I think Y Combinator, probably less than 10% of their companies [00:46:44] S1: Yeah. [00:46:44] S6: Are consumer. But I'm investing in some consumer, but it's after I see traction. [00:46:49] S1: Sure. [00:46:50] S6: And it feels unpredictable and completely uncertain before there's traction. So I just think distribution is pretty broken even though AI feels like platform. At a consumer level, it's not. We have kind of a portal in GPT, but we also have to remember, like, we're so early. GPT is a single player experience. Right? There is no multiplayer version of Claude or GPT. [00:47:15] S1: Yeah. [00:47:15] S6: There is no app connection. None of the things that enabled Zynga MySpace was started. I mean, YouTube was started on top of MySpace. People forget that. So there isn't an obvious way to jump start distribution, and I think, you know, VCs rightly wanna see something predictable. And so the small number a company called FOMO announced a big round last week, I invested in that along with Union Square Ventures. I only invested after they proved it and got the traction. Sure.
00:47:15 · Mark Pincus, John Coogan
[00:47:15] S6: There is no app connection. None of the things that enabled Zynga MySpace was started. I mean, YouTube was started on top of MySpace. People forget that. So there isn't an obvious way to jump start distribution, and I think, you know, VCs rightly wanna see something predictable. And so the small number a company called FOMO announced a big round last week, I invested in that along with Union Square Ventures. I only invested after they proved it and got the traction. Sure. [00:47:53] S1: Yeah. How how do you think vibe coding, agentic coding is going to change or is already changing game development? Because it feels like we should be seeing AAA games produced by solo developers. I don't know if that's more of a VC backable strategy or opportunity, but it feels like we're very, very close to some inflection point there. The indie dev community is already booming. But how do you think it'll play out? A thousand flowers bloom. The simulators are fun. But yeah, I'm just wondering if you think that there's like a business opportunity there or if it will just be more like the d to c boom where there were a ton of small brands. A couple breakouts, but by and large it was just that, oh, there's a ton of, you know, solo entrepreneurs on Shopify today, and that's great.