Mark Pincus: How to Build Billion-Dollar Products

**Mark Pincus** (0:00)
I went to Fred Wilson, who's backed everything I've done. Said, Fred, give me a million dollars, and I'll give you 25% of the company in St. Mark. You know I love you, I'd back anything, but I just have a tough time believing that you're really going to go back to work. Your number one job as a founder is to be right. My goal in writing this book was, I hoped it could be referenceable on the level of zero to one. I reread Peter Thiel's book after 10 years, and I was amazed that the points still resonated. I hosted this Think Weekend, Peter Thiel and Reid, and Zuckerberg and Sean Parker, the smartest group people I knew, who were all kind of interested in these topics that nobody else was. Consumer Internet, macro investing, it was like, in a way, we were all outsiders. I know now it seems like the insiders, and that was in 06, and then I launched Zynga in the spring of 7 I'm an AI maximalist. I think it's going to be bigger than we can imagine. These two to five trillion dollar companies are going to be 10 to 20 trillion dollar companies.

**Molly O'Shea** (1:07)
Mark Pincus, welcome to Sourcery.

**Mark Pincus** (1:09)
Thanks.

**Molly O'Shea** (1:10)
We're here today to talk about your new book, Life at the Speed of Play. How long did it take you to pull this together? Because I watched this interview you did with Kleiner Perkins, I think it was like four years ago.

**Mark Pincus** (1:21)
Yeah.

**Molly O'Shea** (1:22)
And you were talking about it.

**Mark Pincus** (1:24)
Yeah, it's embarrassing how long and how much time it takes to write a book.
It's like building a house, it's like you can't justify the time you're putting into it, but then at some point in the process, you're just so committed. Once you know you're going to do it, like you have a book contract, you're just like, okay, I got to at least make something that I would read, and that's such a high bar. So yeah, it took a long time.

**Molly O'Shea** (1:52)
What was really interesting to me, and I'm so curious of if this was intentional or not, was you started the book, you literally started the book with Elon. He's very hype in the news cycle right now at the SpaceX IPO.

**Mark Pincus** (2:06)
He didn't need more press. He didn't need my help.

**Molly O'Shea** (2:07)
He didn't need more press, but you started the book with him. Why do you think Elon is so emblematic at the speed of play? And then also, what was the process of putting that in first?

**Mark Pincus** (2:19)
Well, the process was, it just made sense to me. It just, every time I came back to, I wanted to get across the essence of life at the speed of play, of this concept. Why did I put those words together? And why is that, why does that resonate so much for me?
And I thought, if I want people to picture it, I'd like people to picture the kinds of crazy things that Elon can go do that none of us can do. And crazy from one hand, like putting fart mode in his car, which no responsible corporation would ever allow a founder to do, to serious things like, you know, deciding he wanted to create a tunnel boring company while he was stuck in traffic in LA. And we all have those thoughts, those moments. I don't know about fart mode, but some version of it. And none of us can actually do anything about it. Or if we do, we have to like devote our lives to that one thing. Like, if you want to create a tunnelling company, you know, maybe, maybe you or I could. But it wouldn't just be a tweet, right? We would have to like do our homework and go and research that industry and possibility and create a business plan and blah, blah, blah, blah. All the things that are not fun. And he's just having fun. You can tell watching him. So that's, that was the first part of your question, why I wanted to start with that. And then process wise, it actually wasn't easy because I don't live my life at Elon's Speed of Play. I have a book co-author and a publisher and a chief of staff, and they all kept coming back to, Mark, don't go there. Elon's controversial and you shouldn't just call him Elon. You should say Elon Musk. And there's a whole weirdness, I think, that we're kind of breaking down around books and podcasts. And it's like, it's like, why can't we just talk the way we were just talking before we started this, right? Why can't we just be fucking normal? Why do we have to like be something else the minute that we have a camera on or we're publishing? And I just think we can do that now on Twitter and social media and it's fun.