How to kill your bad ideas, w/Zynga's Mark Pincus

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Watch it. Good morning. Hello. Good day to you. How do you do? Good morning. Top of the morning to you. You might be wondering where I am, listeners. Well.

I'm in New York City, a place you probably heard of. Maybe the more important question. is when I am. I'm in eighteen ninety. December eighteen ninety to be specific.

I'm right here on the corner of fifty seventh street and sixth avenues. Festive candles flicker in store windows. And gas lamps. Light the streets. It's Christmas time and chestnuts are roasting on streetcarts.

I can smell them. along with the horse manure and the factory smoke. You might wonder what I'm doing here. Well, there's a story unfolding here that I wanted to tell you about. Just a few blocks away, a well to do New Yorker

We'll call him John Smith, is flying down the steps of his townhouse on fifty-seventh street and pushing his way through a throng of carol singers to flag down a horse-drawn handsome cab. He jumps in, telling the driver to head downtown. He's desperate to get his four year old daughter. the latest must-have toy for Christmas. It's the tickle mielmo of its day. The world's first

Talking doll. Which recites nursery rhymes. To lull your child to sleep. It's made possible by a revolutionary new audio technology. developed by the greatest entrepreneur of the age.

Thomas Edison. John speeds past 42nd Street. But a Chrysler building will pop up about thirty years later. His cab clatters past the mansions of Fift Avenue. The horses snorting steam into the chilly air.

I maybe. He arrives at Schwartz Toy Bazaar in Union Square. He throws the driver his fare and runs into the store just in time to snatch one of the last talking dolls from the emptying shells. Triumphant. He returns home.

creeps upstairs and tenderly places the new toy next to his sleeping child. He turns the crank on the doll's back. Eager to hear its sweet lullaby. But instead Not surprisingly.

The dolls were a flop. Edison polled production after just six months. But while he killed this particular idea. Edison persisted in his belief that sound recording would be big.

Just so long as it wasn't delivered via screeching terror dolls. Edison went on to pioneer the phonograph. which paved the way for an entire new industry of home audio entertainment. And every entrepreneur and inventor would be wise to follow his lead.

I believe. You have to be relentless about pursuing a big opportunity. And ruthless. About killing your own bad ideas. Along the way.

You gotta have incredible talent at every position. Huge push. There are fires burning when you're going out. Can you believe it? Such an idiot. And then you go back to this is truly gonna be amazing. There are so many easy ways. I have no idea what to do. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. We're gonna have a free bed from Park. It just seems absolutely nutball. Ten years later I'm like, well that's just how you do it. We haven't made it. Just how you do it. This is masters of scale.

I'm Reed Hoffman. Founder of LinkedIn, and Vestor Greylock. And your host. And I believe you have to be relentless about pursuing a big opportunity when you see it. But you also have to be ruthless about killing your own bad ideas along the way.

And this ruthless approach. Is hard to develop. It's tough to twist the knife into a cherished idea. Especially when you're just starting out. But experience will teach you that the true value of any individual idea

Lies in how close it gets you to your ultimate goal. If it doesn't move the needle. You have to ask it quickly. and find a better idea. That propels you forward.

And for that. You need a certain kind of mindset. One that sounds like this. I'll try anything and I'll kill anything and I'll kill it quickly. That's the voice of one of the most ruthless killers in Silicon Valley.

He's not afraid to kill his own ideas. Or yours. And he does it incredibly quickly. as he constantly strives to grasp the opportunities he sees. Unlike real serial killers, as he's only a killer of ideas.

He is not a household name. But you'll likely recognize his work. Here's a clue. Oh It's Mark Pincus.

Found of the social game company, Zinga. You probably know Zinga best from its social games like Farmville. Mafia wars and words with friends. Each of which drew millions of players. They all succeeded because Mark Molded Zinga

Not only into a game company. but a well-homed killing machine that tests hundreds of ideas daily and quickly kills the ones that don't work so it can focus on the ones that do. To witness Mark's genesis as an idea killer. We need to go back to nineteen ninety six. Mark had recently sold Freeloader.

The company he co-founded was Sunil Paul. Now Mark and Seneal are outside a Tower Records. We would stand outside Tower Records. Remember Tower Records? Doing market research for a new idea. It was kind of like AOL meets a computer meets the internet. AOL

Pow records. This is sounding like quite the nostalgia trip. Mark sights. We're firmly set on the future. He wanted to give consumers an all in one device that would get them online with zero fuss.

I kept thinking. The internet's too hard for consumers. This instinct had given rise to the idea that Mark was now pitching to passers by outside that Tower Records. Fast.

Frictionless internet access. Via free computer. Who could say no? As it turns out. Everyone.

What we learned was Nobody wanted a free PC. You heard that right. People were flat out turning down a free computer. They basically didn't trust you.

They were like I don't get why you'd give me a free P C Um, they didn't trust you. Mark convinced people he was no scam artist. Only to uncover a more basic issue. that was putting them off getting a new computer at all.

The insight we had from that was that The number one thing stopping people from ever going getting a new PC was this fear of moving their software and the idea of having to reinstall their kids' games and everything else. I thought huh.

That's a solvable problem. So Mark did something that has become the defining habit of his career. He realized an idea wasn't working. In this case The free

All in one. Internet PC. And he killed it. Stone Cold Dead. But he remained true to his gut feeling that there was a big opportunity to give users a frictionless experience.

So he moved on to a new idea. creating a piece of software called Move It. Which help people switch seamlessly. To a new PC. Ultimately that led to

My technical Brilliant co founders. building this core technology That became the basis for support.com. Support да com

Became a pioneer in tech support and cloud services. It's still going strong today. However Ahead of Mark. Tough lesson.

That solidified his belief that you need to be ruthless when it comes to cutting losing ideas. It happened at the start up. He launched after support.com. The social network. Called tribe. Tribe is an easy chapter. Painful, but easy chapter.

Tribe was launched in two thousand three. It focused on bringing groups or tribes of people together around specific interests. These could range from knitting to heavy metal. I was intrigued by the idea of looking at a local social network and saying what would it look like if The people on Craigslist had a picture, a profile, and a reputation.

I was in my early thirties, and I thought Okay, we're all living in these urban tribes. Let's codify that online. What would it look like if we could connect with our tribes And then Use those tribes to find apartments and jobs and couches and cars.

While initially it wasn't aimed at any particular section of society. It became popular with certain subcultures. The most famous of these were fans of Burning Man. The annual gathering in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. The tribe failed to make itself into something that would appeal to a more general audience.

You know. One that doesn't necessarily dig getting freaky in the desert. My girlfriend at the time was completely turned off by tribe and When she was there got

Lots of you know, unsolicited messages and interest and it Freaked her out. And she said, This isn't for me. Sometimes you you can get a focus group of one that's more powerful than the rest of your data and and that one

was probably it. But Mark ignored that minimalist focus group. And as he was unwilling to retool tribe for mainstream appeal. The network's fate. Was sealed.

It's pretty amazing if you think about it that I started one of the first three social networks And you know, two thousand three and I managed to fail.

At a time when everything worked. I actually managed to fail. I think Mark is being too hard on himself. It's true that two thousand three was a banner year for social networks. My space.

Tribe. LinkedIn. High five. Frenster the year before. Facebook The Year After.

Of those Only half are still around today. The lesson from tribe that came resoundingly out for me and still stands out. That

As entrepreneurs, part of the journey that we're on. is learning how to separate our winning instincts From our losing ideas. I think as a rule of thumb if you're a good entrepreneur you can assume that your instincts are right ninety five percent of the time and your ideas might be right

Twenty five percent of the time. I'm not as certain as Mark when it comes to fixing percentages on things as hard to pin down as instincts and ideas. But I do believe in being able to recognize a winning instinct is an essential part of being an entrepreneur. And I certainly agree with Mark. That you can expect to see a very high mortality rate among your ideas.

Even if The instinct behind them is right. There's a group of people outside of Silicon Valley. Who live this credo every single time they go to work. And they do it for a reward.

Far greater than a billion dollar market cap. Their place of work. The comedy club. The reward? Laughter.

Mm. We spoke to New York based comic Matt Ruby, the incisive mind behind VUSA. VUZA is a video comic strip that pokes fun at the start up world. It's been called The spinal tap of startups. This pitch.

From one of their videos sounds true to life. When we pitch Fusa, we're telling a story. About our business. And that's what you need to remember that pitching is is 10% success and the other 90% is failure. And that's what I remind myself all the time, it's okay to fail. I am a failure. I mean I tell them all the time what a failure you. And I appreciate that. Thank you. You're also a failure.

Thank you Welcome. We started by asking Matt how he feels when he's certain there's something to a joke idea. But it's just not working out. I think the audience is wrong.

But I'm also wrong because I haven't delivered it in a way that's funny, or that gets laughs. So They're wrong and I'm not good enough. And that to me is a challenge. to get better and make them realize they're wrong. But this is also

problematic and not helpful for me in most areas of my life. To avoid this pitfall. Matt is constantly trying out new ideas. Using his audience as his barometer.

Something might not get a laugh, but you can feel in the room that you've hit on something. You have an idea that might be captivating to people or provocative or has them on the edge of their seat waiting to see where you're going with it. And then even if you didn't take them all the way to a punchline that delivered a laugh, you might be like, oh, there's something here. You kinda turn into a dog with a bone of like, okay, I know this other this idea. Maybe I just need to go in a different direction, or maybe there's a different punchline or example or a metaphor I can use to really get the idea across. Eventually you might hit on something and be like, yeah, it was worth the effort. And other times you might uh be like, Okay, this is just a waste of time. I gotta move on. In the case of tribe, Mark was pursuing three instincts that separately were Would indeed turn out to be spot on. His instinct that real name social networking would be huge.

was born out by Facebook. His belief In the power of smaller sub community forums powered by reputation. Found form in Reddit. While creating a better way to find jobs and showcase your professional talents?

Why? That's LinkedIn. But his idea to pursue all of these instincts With one product. was wrong.

I persisted with one losing idea Which was What if we mashed all these things together? And I got

a bunch of the components of that wrong and I stubbornly persisted with it. I enabled anybody to connect with anybody. And what I got wrong was that mass market people

Did not feel comfortable sharing everything with strangers. Mark needed to kill the extreme openness of tribe if he wanted to attract more mainstream users and take advantage of the big opportunity. But he could not bring himself to deliver the killing blow.

The idea of tribe Wasn't right. And rather than Failing fast. So that you get a lot of shots on goal.

We stoically, stubbornly, heroically stuck to our one idea the entire time. It was this bitter experience with tribe that reawakened the killer and mark. Out of that for me came this mentality that I brought into Zynga of I'm not wedded to any idea, whether it's mine, your's, someone else's.

I'll try anything and I'll kill anything and I'll kill it quickly. And I'm not gonna let killing an idea kill a winning instinct. His next company would bring together everything he had learned so far. But his methods would be contentious. Because Mark would remain unflinchingly true to his new guiding principle.

If an idea didn't work. it'll be sent straight to the chopping block. It was the only way to stay relentlessly open to pursuing big opportunities. When you've built substantial wealth through your business, it's often tied up in a single equity position. The upside is real, but so is the risk, and knowing when to act isn't always obvious.

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Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There's gonna be two types of companies. Those are great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future? That is human centered. I'm Rana El Calyubi. And on my podcast Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone.

Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future. And we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in. Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show because every Friday we release a second Rapid Response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely. From Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find. Just search Rapid Response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there.

The new company. stem from a big opportunity Mark saw in the social networks that succeeded. I kept thinking, wow, these people are kinda hanging out with nothing to do. And one of my early instincts on social networks was this concept that people just wanted to hang out there. It was like a bar or a club and people just wanted to be there and they wanted more to do there.

There it is. Another one of those nagging instincts. That leads to a big opportunity. This time It's that people want to do more things together on social media.

And here comes the idea. And I thought. Games. were kind of this lost love affair that we had growing up, whether it was board games or video games, We couldn't play them as adults because they required too much time and they required us to be

In the same room. With your friends and family around a scrabble board. The leap of faith That I think I connected to at an instinctive level.

Was I believe that there was a latent demand. In All of us. to play games.

but there was just way too much friction around it. Like the Internet back in nineteen ninety six. Gaming had too much friction for the average consumer. You need to know how to download the games. Maybe your computer needed a graphics card.

Or more memory or the right operating system. Actually, the Radium HD 2900 XT isn't compatible with this particular first person RPG. Duh. The question was to me not whether or not people want to play games. But

Is there a way to deliver games to people that is so low friction and easy that they Trip over it. Mark's instinct. that there was a huge untapped market of people who would play games on social media.

Was the right idea at the right time. Facebook had just started to let third party developers build apps and games that people could run within their Facebook accounts. Zinga could use this ready-made delivery system to mainline games into a previously untapped audience. Soon there were millions of people playing and sharing Zinga games. was like an exciting

Mysterious carnival. had just arrived in town. And there was a stampede of people. Eager. Step right up.

Step right up one and all for the amazing sensational traveling Zynga Arcade. Enter now to be astounded by our many attractions. Guaranteed to enthrall and delight even the most sombre of sour pusses. Boom. Zinga went stratospheric. It also left. The rest of the computer games industry

Scrabbling in the dust. Or maybe that should be Words with friending. In the dust. At the time game companies would build an entire game and take

Even two years and fifteen, twenty million dollars before they even know if anyone wanted it. And we could come out with it on the web. Maybe only spend four weeks. Mark turned Zinga into not just a game company, but

But an idea killing machine. For every hit like Farmville. Sing a poker. And words with friends. There were countless others that didn't make the cut.

Sadly. We can only imagine what some of these titles might have been. You step right up for a Laundromat Baron? Experience the throne of helping your friend

Uh A yo-yo-y with cat? Anyone? Hello?

Hello? Actually. I can think of a few people who'd enjoy Yo yoing with cats. Another advantage Zinga had over traditional game developers was

was that it could constantly improve games that it had already released. Mark had an ingenious way of working out which new features to pursue that I like to call Guerilla testing. Because it is sneaky, highly targeted. And very effective.

We would Maybe in our poker game put up Five words promoting a new feature or idea for poker or a new game. And

If people clicked on it, we'd say Awesome, this is coming soon. Let us know if you want us to let you know. And I generally said if Half your audience clicks on it. You pretty much know it's an idea worth pursuing.

Mark's teams would guerrilla test Hundreds of ideas every day. They could be small, like changing the color of a menu from green to blue. Or huge, like the selling of virtual in game items and perks. Which would go on to form the basis of the company's revenue.

Those ideas that made it through this initial stage were then flushed out into actual features. They would become what Mark calls Bold beats. Something that got users. Really excited.

For an example of a bold beat. We're gonna look at a game that has its roots in one of Mark's deepest fantasies. Broccoli. I had a farm and ranch fantasy.

And I still do, and I pictured Pincus Valley Ranch and we would create our own broccoli and It'd be super organic and Serve by name and restaurants.

I thought I don't have the time or space to go and actually be a farmer, but It would be a fun hobby or fantasy to create a farm. The idea was Farmville. One of Zinga's biggest hits.

In it. Players planted, nurtured, and harvested crops on a small patch of land. Which they could decorate with animals. Hay bales and fences. Everyone could have their own version of Pincus Valley Ranch.

Broccoli not included. The bold beat came about when an engineer made a seemingly tiny change. An engineer one day just hacked on the animals. And made a cow move. And we put it out.

Didn't really know what players if they would notice, what they would think about it. And it lit up Twitter and the blogosphere. Animals that move. It's a teen idea that took just a few hours to code.

But the excitement that cow caused led to a whole range of new features. Animal breeding, horse racing, chicken coops with hatching eggs. It really was one of the perfect classic examples for us of a successful bull beat. And if a bowl beat is right... It could lead to

Inspiring your players to really imagine a new dimension that that gameplay can go to. and inspire you to play for another three months or another year. Mark had shown his teams how to quickly work out which ideas to focus on and which ones to terminate. The beauty of this is twofold. One.

The idea lives or dies. By the customer reaction. Which you can see immediately. And two The scope of a new idea is limited, so it won't break the product.

You're being bold. By constantly trying out new ideas. While risking very little. And we used to say when you delivered a bold beat or a great feature that your players loved. It was like Christmas Day.

Because when we turned it on. Your metrics would light up and blog posts or Twitter would light up. And it was amazing because You literally could watch your DAU DAU stands for daily active users, by the way.

And you turn on this feature. And it would just Jump and then stay there. And it is a beautiful new way of doing business. Every product team was geeking out with a gorilla testing.

And watching with glee when their metrics lit up. It was Christmas Day. Every day. But there was no standard way to track and share all this hugely valuable data. They were all doing their own version of these things and nothing was standardized.

Some were working better than others. And some had kinda lost the threat. And I said, This isn't gonna work. We're gonna standardize, we're gonna pick one template, you can fight like hell for what you think is right, but then we're all gonna commit to it.

And people's heads spun around. Mark wanted to scale his rapid kill approach. To do that. He had to make sure every team could access the treasure trove of data. And interpret it.

The same way. What they needed was data standardization. It may not sound like the most exciting of subjects. So we found the most exciting person we could to explain why it's vital. Andrea joins Rui is an analyst at five thirty eight.

The website founded by Nate Silver that brings data to bear on news reporting. Andrea's also А Circus Fire performer Heard that right. Circus fire.

You may be wondering what that means. It means I light something on fire. And then I Like put it on my body and everyone gets impressed that it doesn't hurt, even though it does, and then I eat it, which means I put it in my mouth. Ouch.

Eating naked flame sounds painful. But Not as painful. as unstandardized data. As Andrea will tell you.

If you don't standardize data you don't have data. I mean you just have a huge Mess. And I mean the the reason we put things in data is so that we can share it with a broader audience. That audience may be your executive team.

Or it could be the entire world. But if your numbers aren't clear, No one will be able to interpret them. It's about making units. Compatible.

And then making sure that Whoever's receiving that information understands how you're measuring it. But Andrea has been burned in this respect too, despite her credentials as an expert in the field. When she was a professor at New York University's Shanghai campus. She and her fellow professors tried out an experiment that completely backfired. When we got to NYU Shanghai, we were very excited about pioneering a brand new way of doing education, and we came up with what in retrospect was a terrible idea.

Of coming up with a new grading system all our own. So we abandon the A through F scale. And we assigned a different scale. The scale itself ended up being a bit ridiculous, which was the best score you could get was truly outstanding. then superior

Then very good. Then good Then needs improvement. And the students understandably freaked out. What because they were like, what does it mean if you get a very good what does that mean? That sounds good. But if you map it to an A B C D F scale, that's a C. Uh Good.

Is a D and you're just like these numbers don't go together. It caused all kinds of confusion. And then in the end it was a huge mess because You can't have transcripts floating around that say things like truly outstanding on them when they're applying to grad school or trying to get a job, because everyone understandably would be like, What does that mean? So we then had to convert it all back to A through F. Anyway, it was a huge mistake.

This shows just how hard keeping a grasp on data can be. Standards are a slippery subject. Even for the experts. But the effort is worth it. Because once you get it right.

You have a powerful tool with which to accurately test your instincts and ideas. Which is exactly what Mark wanted for his teams. So he ordered them to crunch their numbers in the same way. What we got though with the standardization was now The ability to see the same metrics.

The same tests. And share information faster. They went from having a huge message. To a huge cache. of valuable insights.

They could analyze what their players were doing down to the last click and understand exactly what the players wanted. Teams could then share their hot new findings with every other team at Zinga. This was all good in theory. But with dozens of product teams. Testing hundreds of ideas every day.

There was an avalanche of data to deal with. So Mark made an unusual decision in hiring talent for scale. He started hiring data engineers and analysts. At an accelerating pace. At a moment.

When most other game companies Would be hiring product managers and game developers. Zinga was betting the farm. Actually. The Farmville.

That all this data would give it a huge advantage over its competitors. We were pushing it more than anybody. Because we went to tracking every click and analyzing it. a at a time that they were using Google Analytics. And we were investing so much and we had so many people on it.

that we kept getting called stupid. That people say Singa has fifty people and this company's doing the same thing with ten. Zinga has three hundred people and this company's doing the same with twenty or fifty. Because we wanted to overinvest. In

Knowing the data. They weren't called stupid for long. This investment in data geeks meant Zinga could work out exactly what features got their customers excited. and immediately act on those findings. All at a speed that traditional game companies could barely comprehend.

One of the most gratifying things as a founder and entrepreneur is to see people go after an idea that you would never have thought of in a way that delivers on your vision. Any entrepreneur. No matter how smart is only right part of the time. The antidote to thinking you're right when you're not.

Is data. This data may come from standing on the street asking random people about an idea you've had. Like Mark. Outside Tower Records. Or it may come from hiring hundreds of data analysts.

As Zinga's user number soared. Mark never lost sight of how important it is. to be willing to kill ideas rapidly. But he was finding it challenging To maintaining this winning approach.

While scaling. So what was Mark's solution to this? How did he find a way that allowed him to scale rapidly? While maintaining that vital ability to test, analyze, and kill the ideas at a tremendous pace. True to form, it was controversial.

So controversial. For the first time in the history of Masters of Scale, we're gonna have to bleep out a word. I'd better test my bleeper. Yikes. Wrong button. Let's try again.

Okay, all working, here goes. Roll the tape. One of my biggest lessons about scale was f Scale. Excuse me?

scale. That's what I thought he said. Now I'm known for my contrarian theories when it comes to scale. But you might think that giving scale the middle finger is a bit far. Even for me.

But hold on. Let's put this in context. Bye. Scale. Mark's not saying

Don't scale your company. He's saying Don't lose sight of your overarching goal. Your customers.

What really matters your customer is that they have an amazing experience. They don't give a sh how it got there. You're at uh your favorite hamburger joint. You want a great fresh burger. And if you find out that the owner of the company was there back there making it You're stoked. You don't care.

If he figured out how to scale. Mark wants to be intimately involved, and what some people would classify as The small decisions. That affect user experience. Because Mark knows that it is these small decisions that can have the biggest impact on customers.

And he wants everyone in his company. To care to the same degree. I want our teams to care about the product experience at the pixel level. And I want that to be apparent to our players because especially on mobile, every pixel counts. Every nano second we take of your time.

How it's and quality is delivered at the pixel level. Micromanage the things that really matter. The things that are going to excite people and make them love your product. Instill that obsession across your entire company. Make sure that you're trying ideas and killing ideas.

In order to delight your customer. With practice, killing your bad ideas will become second nature to you, and this ruthless killer instinct will clear the path towards your big opportunity. If you do these things, whether your product is a great burger or a game about building a great burger restaurant empire. I guarantee your customers most certainly will.

Give a shit I'm Reed Hoffman. Thank you for listening. Masters of Scale is a Weight What original.

The show is recorded on site in California and produced at the studio inside SY Partners in New York. Our executive producers are June Cohen and Darren Triff. Our producers are Chris McLeod, Adam Skuse, Jenny Cotaldo, Dan Kedmee, and Ben Manila. Our supervising producer is Jay Punjabi. Original music and sound design is by the Holiday Brothers. Mixing and Mastering by Brian Pew. Special thanks to Chris Yay, Bob Safian, Elisa Schreiber, David Sanford, Saida Sepieva. Christina Gonzalez and Sara Sandman.

Visit mastersofscale.com to find the transcript for this episode, and be sure to subscribe to our email newsletter. The next episode of Masters of Scale is coming in two weeks. In it. I talk with Marissa Meyer about how when you can't find the right people to help your company scale.

You have to make them. I want a bat that I can hire new people right out of school and trained them to be great product managers at Google. You know, Larry and Sergey at times just kind of yelled at us until we did what they needed us to do and rose to the occasion. I was like, I'm hoping to do that with us yelling. We also get the inside perspective about what happened. During her time at Yahoo.

So what would you have told yourself to do differently? Sure. I love Yahoo. I think it would have been amazing to see it. Return to greatness. But that said It would have required almost perfect timing.

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