Key Moments
The hidden pattern behind successful products | Mark Pincus (FarmVille, Words with Friends, & more)
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Key Moments
Successful products, like Zynga's hits, aren't born from radical innovation but by meticulously improving proven elements and adding a single, impactful new feature. The catch? This 'proven, better, new' approach requires deep consumer understanding, not peer validation, and a willingness to 'kill hope' on ideas that aren't truly A+.
Key Insights
Instincts are generally right (95% of the time), but product ideas are often wrong (75% of the time), necessitating a framework like 'proven, better, new'.
Zynga meticulously tracked day 365 retention as a core metric, believing it leads to more durable products than virality alone, and saw an 80% chance of a user returning in the next month if they went from zero to one active social network interaction.
The 'proven, better, new' framework suggests mastering existing successful elements ('proven') before making small, undeniable improvements ('better'), and then adding one significant innovation ('new').
Being 'less ambitious' at the outset, starting with a humble premise, paradoxically leads to more ambitious outcomes, as seen with early Facebook and Zynga's poker app.
True innovation in consumer social apps may lie in adding productivity (like early Facebook) or creating a 'cocktail party' experience, especially in the agentic AI age, to combat the current 'lonely' digital interactions.
Companies with the highest day 365 retention are statistically the most valuable, indicating that long-term user engagement is a stronger indicator of success than short-term virality.
The 'proven, better, new' product development framework
Mark Pincus, founder of Zynga, introduces his core product development philosophy: 'proven, better, new.' He posits that while human instincts are generally reliable (around 95% accurate), specific product ideas built upon those instincts are often flawed (around 75% wrong). The framework's goal is to isolate innovation and increase the odds of success by systematically analyzing product elements. 'Proven' refers to mastering and legally copying existing successful elements on the current platform for the target audience. Pincus likens this to earning a PhD in what already works, citing Sid Meier's social Civilization failure on Facebook due to poor first-time user experience, despite Meier's game design expertise. 'Better' implies improvements that 10 out of 10 users would unequivocally agree are superior, typically small but impactful polish or accessibility enhancements. 'New' is the novel, back-of-the-box idea, which, while exciting, has a higher probability of failure and should be tested with that expectation. The key is to fail for the right reasons (testing a 'new' idea) rather than the wrong ones (poor execution of a flawed concept).
The moral arbitrage of copying and true consumer ambition
Pincus frames the act of copying successful elements as a 'moral arbitrage,' challenging the conventional idea that innovation must always start from a blank slate. He argues that founders often become entrepreneurs to be innovators, making the initial step of copying feel like a 'beatdown.' However, by focusing on the consumer's needs—like the nurses in Indiana for FarmVille—rather than peer recognition, a different definition of innovation emerges. True ambition, Pincus suggests, is winning the hearts and minds of the consumer, not accolades from industry peers. He believes that even a slight improvement (one inch better) on something a consumer already loves can be more impactful than a completely novel idea they never knew they wanted. The art lies in executing these improvements so seamlessly that the consumer doesn't perceive it as a mere copy, but as an enhanced experience that doesn't disrupt their established patterns.
The paradox of being less ambitious to achieve more
A counterintuitive insight from Pincus is that being less ambitious initially can lead to more significant, ambitious outcomes. He observes that an overabundance of early ambition and visionary zeal can lead founders to miss product-market fit by not starting from a humble enough place. Many massive hit products began with embarrassingly small premises, like Facebook's initial iteration as a Harvard-only social app for rating students. Pincus shares his own experience: after early successes like Freeloader and Support.com, he felt he could 'do anything.' This led to over-ambition with his venture, Tribe, which ultimately failed. His subsequent venture, Zynga, started with an 'embarrassingly small' idea: a poker game on Facebook. This reduced ambition, focusing on a manageable initial step, was crucial to its success. For most mortals, Pincus advises that the path to grand success often requires starting small and humble, a lesson successful founders can sometimes forget due to the temptation of larger visions and easier capital access compared to new founders.
Kill hope before hope kills you: Differentiating MVP and MLP
Pincus emphasizes the critical distinction between a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and a Maximum Launchable Product (MLP). He advocates for 'killing hope before hope kills you,' as hope, defined as 'confidence without basis,' can lead teams to cling to unproven ideas. Instead, the focus should be on launching products with genuine belief, backed by data and user experience. An MLP is a product that the team genuinely believes will be a hit, not just something 'viable' that 'might make it.' This distinction is crucial, especially with AI, which can rapidly create viable products but might be misused to perfect one idea rather than testing many. Pincus suggests deliberately building products 'wrong' first to learn faster, using methods like testing ads before launch or leveraging existing users for early feedback, which can also reveal revenue opportunities, as seen with early FarmVille expansion pack sales generated from in-game 'coming soon' teasers.
Zynga's success: Retention over virality and 'active social network' metric
Pincus clarifies that Zynga's massive success, with eight out of ten major game launches becoming hits, wasn't primarily due to superior virality but to a focus on two key areas: a mission to connect the world through games and exceptional retention. While games like FarmVille and CityVille had huge installs, more enduring hits like Words with Friends and Poker succeeded partly due to their mobile transition. Zynga prioritized 'invest, express, and connect' features, enabling users to feel creative and connect with others. Crucially, their core metric was day 365 retention, aiming for products users would still engage with a year later. They even developed a metric called 'Active Social Network' (ASN), measuring round trips of interaction with friends (e.g., gifting, turn-based play). Reaching an ASN of four had an 80% correlation with users returning for 22 out of the next 30 days, demonstrating the power of fostering positive, reciprocal social loops.
The latent demand for social and the 'cocktail party' experience
Despite the difficulty of building durable consumer social apps, Pincus believes there's significant 'latent demand' for social connection online. He uses the analogy of a 'cocktail party' to describe the ideal social experience—one that feels exciting, valuable, and generative, not obligatory or empty. He notes that current social platforms, while providing connection, may have 'lost the adrenaline,' leading some users to feel proud about quitting them. Pincus posits that the next wave of social innovation will likely involve agentic AI, creating more productive and less time-wasting social interactions. He sees a parallel to the early internet where opportunities like Napster or Fster provided 'lead generation' (music files, dates) and that reinventing social requires finding where the 'cocktail party' is happening or can be hosted, making it 'rowdy' and socially productive.
Defining success: The 'A+' product and the danger of the 'B+'
Pincus differentiates between a truly great product ('A+') and a merely 'better' or 'good enough' one ('B+'). With the right person or product, he argues, you just 'know.' There's no agonizing doubt; it feels unequivocally right, like 'lightning in a bottle.' A 'B+' product, conversely, involves questioning and hoping it will become an 'A.' He advises intellectual honesty: if you're asking if your product is an 'A,' it's not. This recognition is crucial for knowing when to pivot or cut losses. Pincus shares his own struggle, having pulled the plug on a metaverse project for the fourth time after four years and $25 million, only to find renewed inspiration for ideas afterward. The power lies in recognizing a 'B+' for what it is and deciding whether to learn from it or move on entirely, which can be more creatively liberating than stubbornly pursuing a mediocre concept.
Distribution challenges and the nascent AI platform
Pincus views AI as a powerful technology but not yet a true consumer platform, differentiating it from hardware (mobile) or interface platforms (Windows, browsers, social networks). While chat interfaces like GPT provide a new portal, they don't yet enable a robust ecosystem of third-party apps and experiences in the way platforms do. This makes consumer product distribution exceptionally difficult, with crowded app stores and declining app installs per user. He suggests that successful consumer companies today might need a 'proumer' approach, focusing on power users and B2B-like strategies before a wider consumer launch. He also explores the potential of AI's decreasing token costs for future consumer services and the possibility of agents brokering social relationships more productively, serving as intelligent 'chiefs of staff' to manage social interactions and logistics dynamically.
Mentioned in This Episode
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Mark Pincus's Product Development Cheat Sheet
Practical takeaways from this episode
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Common Questions
Mark Pincus's 'Proven Better New' framework helps founders come up with and refine product ideas. It involves identifying 'proven' elements that already work, making them 'better' with small, undeniable improvements, and then introducing a 'new' innovative idea that might fail but offers a reason to try the product.
Topics
Mentioned in this video
Co-founder of OpenAI, quoted in Mark Pincus's book stating that the bottleneck to building great products is knowing what to create.
Founder of Zynga and guest on the podcast, who has created many successful consumer products and authored the book 'Life at the Speed of Play'.
A revered game designer who created a social version of Civilization on Facebook that failed due to a poor first-time user experience, highlighting the importance of the 'proven' aspect of Pincus's framework.
Entrepreneur and CEO, mentioned as an exception to the 'start small' rule due to his ability to raise unlimited capital and pursue ambitious visions from the outset.
CEO of Coinbase, mentioned for advocating for a flatter organizational structure, where everyone is an individual contributor or manages many, aligning with Pincus's 'make everyone a CEO' principle.
A friend of Mark Pincus who co-founded Electronic Arts, quoted for saying that 'internet treasures' will one day be in the Smithsonian, inspiring Pincus's 'why' for product creation.
Founder of Craigslist, referenced as a 'world-class product maker' for his meticulous two-year process of adding photos to listings, demonstrating extreme user-centric 'better' innovation.
Mark's son, creator of Bolt.new.
Co-founder of Apple, known for his obsession with product details and a potential inspiration for the iPhone's touchscreen after seeing an MIT demo.
CEO of Amazon, cited as an example of an executive who rose through the ranks after serving as a tech assistant to Jeff Bezos, illustrating a method of leadership development.
Founder of TBH and Freeloader, highlighted for his ability to identify 'proven' features buried in existing products and build entirely new products around them.
Co-founder of LinkedIn, credited by Mark Pincus for his definition of the metaverse as 'blurring the lines between the virtual and the real'.
CEO of Meta Platforms (Facebook), mentioned for staying close to the metal and working deeply with teams on important product matters, and for Facebook's ambitious growth model.
Co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, mentioned for his approach of 'collecting winnings' rather than making bets with product launches, and his belief in doing things in non-scalable ways by hand.
Founder of Amazon, whose leadership style includes staying close to the metal and having C-staff serve as his tech assistants, aligning with Pincus's management principles.
An investor whose idea about 'intelligence on tap free tokens' is repeated by Pincus as an interesting innovation zone for consumer services, based on the decreasing cost of AI tokens.
Investor and entrepreneur, whose concept of 'moral arbitrage' is used by Pincus to describe the initial resistance founders feel towards copying, before realizing it's a path to innovation.
Co-founder of Slack, who repeatedly tried to start game companies, which unexpectedly turned into successful non-game companies, exemplifying "unambitious beginnings leading to bigger hits".
An AI research and deployment company, whose co-founder Sam Altman is quoted in Pincus's book regarding product creation.
A social game developer company founded by Mark Pincus, known for titles like FarmVille and Words with Friends, where the 'Proven Better New' framework became a core product management philosophy.
A social media platform where Zynga launched successful games like FarmVille and Words with Friends, which leveraged its social graph for virality.
A payment processing platform mentioned as an analogy for Work OS, indicating Work OS offers similar foundational support for enterprise features.
Used as an example of 'best of breed proven' for mobile camera interfaces in the context of the 'Proven Better New' framework.
A social media and camera app mentioned as an example of 'best of breed proven' for camera functionality and social interaction, in the context of the 'Proven Better New' framework.
A social media and photo-sharing app mentioned as an example of 'best of breed proven' for camera functionality, in the context of the 'Proven Better New' framework.
An online community platform that evolved from Mark Pincus's earlier 'Tribes' idea, highlighting how early concepts can eventually become massive successes.
A company mentioned as a client of Vanta, benefiting from its compliance and risk management automation.
Mark Pincus's first company, which focused on offline browsing, inspired by a buried feature in Netscape and Internet Explorer, demonstrating the 'proven better new' principle.
A sponsor of the podcast that automates compliance and risk management for over 15,000 companies, helping them earn and prove trust with customers by streamlining security frameworks like SOC 2 and ISO 27001.
A business and employment-oriented social platform. Started with lead generation and massive social productivity but later veered into 'wasting time' due to engagement and ad focus.
A cloud data warehousing company mentioned as a client of Vanta, benefiting from its compliance and risk management automation.
A search engine mentioned as a primary source for 'leads' before the rise of social networks, representing a less efficient 'noise to signal' ratio.
A software company known for products like Jira and Confluence, mentioned as a client of Vanta, benefiting from its compliance and risk management automation.
The company behind Pokémon Go, where Mark Pincus's daughters had internships, building a first-time user experience for the game.
The company behind the hit game Draw Something, which succeeded by adopting the 'Proven Better New' framework after previous innovative attempts failed and the company was on its last dollar.
Cited as a historical example of a brutal platform monopoly that absorbed almost everything, with exceptions for music and games, offering a parallel to the potential future of AI platforms.
An early peer-to-peer file sharing software for music, identified as one of the first 'cocktail parties' on the internet that facilitated lead generation (music files).
A short-form video platform that created 'envy' for Instagram, causing it to shift its content strategy, and a current social platform that has 'lost the adrenaline'.
Mark Pincus's second company which, like Freeloader, started with a very small and humble premise before achieving significant success.
Where Andy Jassy, and other members of the C-staff, served as tech assistants to Jeff Bezos, demonstrating a scalable leadership development method.
A language-learning app mentioned as a client of Vanta, benefiting from its compliance and risk management automation.
A product development framework developed by Mark Pincus to generate and refine product ideas, emphasizing copying proven successful elements, making incremental improvements, and then introducing a novel feature.
Mark Pincus's long-term project which he defines, crediting Reed Hoffman, as blurring the lines between the virtual and the real, and one he repeatedly 'pulled the plug' on when it wasn't an 'A' idea.
A sponsor of the podcast offering APIs for enterprise features like single sign-on, SCIM, RBAC, and audit logs, enabling B2B SaaS companies to become enterprise-ready faster.
A social word game developed by Zynga, cited as an example of applying the 'Proven Better New' framework successfully, by being a polished mobile version of Scrabble with added social features.
An early social networking idea by Mark Pincus that ultimately failed due to being too ambitious and not focusing on a single use case, but the concept later evolved into platforms like Reddit.
A communication platform cited as an example of a successful product that might have been purely 'proven' and 'better' with no 'new' elements, illustrating that innovation doesn't always require complete novelty.
Mentioned alongside Slack as an example of a successful product, likely in the context of the 'Proven Better New' framework.
A company highlighted for its unambitious beginnings, toiling in obscurity on web stacks before realizing they could add their virtual machine to an AI coding co-pilot, leading to a breakthrough.
A communication platform whose founders concluded they needed an inverted pyramid structure, where founders are more involved in minute product design decisions, exemplifying 'staying close to the metal'.
An online classifieds website whose founder, Craig Newmark, exemplified meticulous implementation of 'better' features, like adding photos to listings, which took two years.
A hit game by OMGPop that became the number one app in the App Store by perfectly copying Zynga's turn-based system from Words with Friends, exemplifying the 'Proven Better New' approach.
A game developed by Zynga. Pincus started Zynga with a poker game, which was seen as an embarrassingly small idea by peers at the time.
A social app founded by Nikita Bier, presented as an example of a product that found a 'proven' concept within another obscure product.
A web browser that had a buried offline browsing feature, which inspired Mark Pincus's first company, Freeloader.
A city-building social game by Zynga, one of their biggest hits in terms of installs, engagement, retention, and revenues, alongside FarmVille.
A web browser that had a buried offline browsing feature, which inspired Mark Pincus's first company, Freeloader.
An AI language model, mentioned alongside GPT as a place where people 'hang out' but lacks the 'cocktail party' social dimension, presenting an opportunity for social AI innovation.
A social simulation game on Facebook developed by Zynga, highlighted for its massive success and its ability to connect women through cooperative gameplay, despite its 'spammy' reputation for non-players.
A company mentioned as a client of Vanta, benefiting from its compliance and risk management automation.
An AI language model, used by Pincus as an example of a product with clear 'lightning in a bottle' signal, where its impact was immediately obvious, contrasting with B+ ideas.
An AI art generator, mentioned as a tool that allows people to 'feel creative' even if they don't produce the art themselves, aligning with Zynga's goal of letting users 'feel creative'.
A classic board game mentioned as the 'proven' basis for Words with Friends, illustrating how existing successful products can be copied and improved upon.
A popular mobile game cited as an example of a 'wildcat drilling' approach to product development, where 45 different games were created before a hit, contrasting with the 'Proven Better New' framework.
A popular augmented reality mobile game developed by Niantic, on which Mark Pincus's daughters worked during their internships.
A revolutionary smartphone mentioned as an example of a product that followed the 'Proven Better New' framework by improving existing phone elements and introducing groundbreaking new features like the touchscreen.
A portable music player mentioned as a precursor to the iPhone, demonstrating a 'Proven Better New' approach by taking existing music players, making them better, and adding new functionality.
A brand of sweatshirts created by Mark Pincus's neurodivergent daughter, Carmen, as a generative outlet for her creativity.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose team demoed a touchscreen at a TED conference that garnered Steve Jobs's attention.
The university where Facebook initially launched as an app to connect students, highlighting its humble and initially unambitious origins.
A group of museums and research centers, mentioned as the potential future home for 'internet treasures' (successful digital products), underscoring their lasting value.
A gathering group for neurodivergent middle school kids, created by Mark Pincus's daughter Carmen, showcasing an initiative to turn a personal challenge into a supportive community.
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