00:54:50 · Nick Grossman, John Coogan, Mark Pincus
[00:54:50] S7: Right. [00:54:51] S1: You might be able to have your agent go and submit it to the store and wait two weeks and then it gets out there, which might be an acceptable flywheel for some developers. But it is like, the technology is going to get there quicker than the distribution and, like, the ideas, I think. I think you're spot on. [00:55:08] S6: And the ability to test. I'm also surprised this far into this AI cycle that if I would have thought that the first thing we'd see is kind of top of the funnel massive testing of using ads and links and things, and tell your agent to spend all night testing and come back in the morning with the winning variant. And I don't even see a I don't know about you guys. I don't see even one successful company or service offering that, and I don't find any founders doing that. It's more you can build something in three months that would have taken a year or two. So it's more of I can get to my prototype faster, but not I can test a lot of ideas faster. [00:55:54] S1: Yeah. Speaking of ads, do you think hyper casual games should be allowed to advertise with fake CGI versions of a different game to promote the install of their very basic, probably, pick three game. [00:56:11] S6: Wow. Now we're getting to a toss level, should they be allowed? At a morality level? I'd I'd say it's I don't like it. I mean, I think it's misrepresenting. I wouldn't blame Apple for taking somebody down for that Yeah. Because it's misrepresenting things. [00:56:39] S1: Yeah.
00:56:39 · John Coogan, Mark Pincus, Jordi Hays
[00:56:39] S1: Yeah. [00:56:39] S6: It's a bad user experience. Now, what I would be okay with is what we did in the beginning of Zynga is I would go I'd put up a link for some amazing new game. Do you wanna try? And it would go to four zero four page not found because I was just testing for heat and interest. [00:56:57] S1: Yeah. [00:56:57] S6: So I or eventually, we got more sophisticated and say, you know, well, you'll be the first to know about this game, you know. [00:57:04] S0: I had an experiment. [00:57:06] S1: Record the fake game, have it have an agent vibe code you a real version of the fake game. Because a lot people, when they want to play the fake game, but the fake game doesn't actually have the the flywheel of you will will keep playing it. You'll play it for a couple minutes and then you'll get bored and so they have to funnel you to something else. Jordy? Had a [00:57:23] S0: product in college. I was taking a lot of film photos and there was like a it was a thirty minute drive to the closest place to get film developed reliably. And I was quite frustrated by it, so I wanted to make like effectively a subscription service. They would send you one or two rolls of film a month and you just send it back Mhmm. And they would develop it and upload it for you and whatever. And to test it, I just like ran a bunch of Facebook ads at a landing page and I actually got I think I had like a $15.20 dollar CAC or something at the time. Facebook ads were a lot cheaper back then. [00:57:56] S1: Yeah.
00:57:56 · John Coogan, Jordi Hays, Mark Pincus
[00:57:56] S1: Yeah. [00:57:56] S0: Ended up not pursuing it. But I just refunded everyone like obviously Oh. Right afterwards because I wasn't offering I wasn't able to offer the service. [00:58:04] S1: Sure. Sure. Sure. [00:58:04] S0: I was just like, hey, sorry, like, you know, we over [00:58:07] S1: That's cool experience. [00:58:08] S0: Oversold or whatever. But Yeah. Best way to test something. [00:58:11] S1: Yeah. Back to the book. Peter Thiel did an a Reddit AMA after Zero to One launched and someone asked him what is the Straussian reading of Zero to One? And he said, Don't become an entrepreneur, which is a very funny response. What is the Stroussian reading of life at the speed of play? [00:58:35] S6: I would, not to be you know, re completely carbon copy, but I would say I'd say don't don't become a product founder. Mhmm. Don't do it if you want to make money. Don't go be a product founder if you think this is the best path to be rich and successful because I end the book by saying, how ambitious are you? And everyone says, I'm an 11 on a 10 scale. But then the question is, well, flip side of that coin is, what are you willing to sacrifice to get to that place? Would you toil in obscurity for 10 in order to have an 80% chance of the greatest home run of your life, or would you take of an 80% chance of a first base hit in one to two years? And most people would take the latter, and that's that's why they stay in their jobs or careers, or that's why even once we go found a company, I think we make all these compromises to derisk it. Yeah.
00:58:35 · Mark Pincus, John Coogan
[00:58:35] S6: I would, not to be you know, re completely carbon copy, but I would say I'd say don't don't become a product founder. Mhmm. Don't do it if you want to make money. Don't go be a product founder if you think this is the best path to be rich and successful because I end the book by saying, how ambitious are you? And everyone says, I'm an 11 on a 10 scale. But then the question is, well, flip side of that coin is, what are you willing to sacrifice to get to that place? Would you toil in obscurity for 10 in order to have an 80% chance of the greatest home run of your life, or would you take of an 80% chance of a first base hit in one to two years? And most people would take the latter, and that's that's why they stay in their jobs or careers, or that's why even once we go found a company, I think we make all these compromises to derisk it. Yeah. [00:59:48] S1: Is that the correct question to ask to assess someone's level of ambition? Should you ask them 80% chance of a home run-in 10 versus 20% chance of base hit or something like that? Or sorry, vice versa. I that. 80% chance. Those are good odds. But, or are there other questions that you can dig into when you're talking to a founder to actually assess their level of ambition?
01:00:16 · Mark Pincus, Jordi Hays
[01:00:16] S6: I think you can pretty quickly, you guys have seen this too, get a sense of what's motivating somebody and why they're doing this. And I think that the best founders have a passion for this that goes beyond this one business or opportunity, and they need that because it's probably going to fail. And so I think that there's a question like, why are some founders repeating success and some have one big success? And I think it is your commitment and willpower. We've talked about founder mode, and there's all these moments where I think as a founder, we we have to have real courage, but it's not courage to go against the world. It's usually courage to go against our own team, our own investors because we've promised them things. We've built expectations with them, and now we have to tell them we are wrong. Yeah. And you come in on Monday, you're like, I just saw another product the competitor had last week, and what we're doing is totally wrong. And people have complained working with Mark is like third grade soccer. Every Monday, he wants to chase another ball. And they're not wrong a lot of the time because I'm trying to be intellectually honest, I can burn people out that way. But it's because I'm more committed to winning than I am kind of harmony or even So [01:01:47] S0: keeping this team with [01:01:50] S6: I think that's more of the thread that I look for is do I see that this person is more motivated by taking the hill and winning than being liked or respected.
01:01:50 · Mark Pincus, Jordi Hays
[01:01:50] S6: I think that's more of the thread that I look for is do I see that this person is more motivated by taking the hill and winning than being liked or respected. [01:02:04] S0: Yeah. It's so interesting because you have I've been in that mode too where third grade soccer strategy where and I think that comes from fundamental knowing that what you're working on is there's something wrong with the idea, At least in the early days for me because like with with with with our with the podcast early on even when we literally had like a 100 viewers, I didn't have that I didn't have that like third grade soccer strategy. It was just like this is a good product and I know because there's people I trust that are not lying to me and they say like this is great, keep doing it. And so like we had the blinders on but I've been in that mode and in hindsight where you're just kind of like, oh, let's try this other variation of this thing or let's, you know, we need to go in a totally different direction and that was it it it comes off as scattered, but if you're able to admit it's it's more like you need to be intellectually honest with yourself and your team that you're scattered because there's something that's fundamentally off with the approach. Right.