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- [00:00]
A
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B
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C
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A
welcome back every with Mark Pincus, billionaire founder of Zynga, former Democrat and now Trump supporter, author of a brand new book Life at the Speed of play. Launch products that people love. Mark, welcome.
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B
Thanks.
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A
So what is how did you make your money?
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B
The old fashioned way I guess. I built it one company at a time, one product at a time and I founded my first company when I was 28 at the beginning of the Internet era and amazingly it was acquired after seven months. It was the first consumer Internet acquisition.
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A
What was that?
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B
It was called Freeloader and it was a free downloadable product that attached to your browser let you subscribe to Internet content. It dialed in in the middle of the night because remember it used to be really slow. Downloaded all the Internet, put it in an interactive screensaver with ads on your computer and 2 million people downloaded it in the first month. It was known as push technology. In fact, Fox, you know, in the middle of all that, got involved with pointcast. I don't know if you remember that era, but so anyway, so the company was acquired for 38 million after seven months. So that, you know, at a young age gave me the ability to pursue a career as a founder. And then I went on, I created another company, support.com, which was an enterprise software company. It was the first subscription software company before SAS and that went public in 2000. And then eventually I started Zynga, you know, public. We created social gaming and kind of mass market casual gaming and was public for 11 years and then merged with take two a couple of years ago.
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A
So from that takeaway, you're now afraid of what's next. A lot of people were concerned about the Internet, look out. I'm worried about what's going to happen. And now we're in a similar spot when it comes to AI. Why were you not intimidated by this new era where we watch the new era of AI? 22 year olds at commencement addresses booing AI. When you would think 65 year olds at the Villages would be booing AI is the 22 year olds. And, and here you are a 28 year old and you're like, I'm loving this brand new untamed Internet world.
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B
It's, I, maybe it's the way, you know, I just was wired that I've always, I used to be obsessed with new media before there was an Internet. And then the Internet came around and I said, oh my God, this is, this is the thing. So I've always just love trying to connect the dots on these new technologies and make them accessible to the mass market. And the greatest joy that I get, that I try to talk about a little bit in the book is creating products that can deliver real meaning in people's lives. And the most meaningful thing is usually social. It's improving the relationships. We counted success at Zynga in marriages and.
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A
You mean through gaming? Yeah, yeah. And you would actually track that?
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B
Yeah, yeah, well, we'd, we, you know, we couldn't, there wasn't a metric. We couldn't, you know.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Monitor you to see if you got married. But people, our fans would tell us, you know, I met, there was a couple from New York and London that met in words with friends and, and eventually got married and fell in love through the words they created.
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A
So you said so you're waking her up. And Bill Clinton, I think, was president during the emerging Internet era. George Bush took over, and there was the crash, the bubble burst. I remember right in 2001 when he took over. Where were you in all that?
- [05:34]
B
You know, I was in the middle of this. I was building this boring enterprise software company, support.com. we named it dotcom because every CIO was told to buy Internet infrastructure, and we worked on the Internet. So we said, let's call it support dot Com. And it helped sell a lot more software, oddly. And then we went public on the last day of the dot com IPO window, only because we were a real company with 170 million in revenues. And so I lived in the middle of this thing. And I'll tell you that my peers and I thought it was crazy. When we were in the middle of the bubble, we were not the biggest believers. We were saying, this is not gonna end well.
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A
So when I remember very succinctly, when President Trump took over the first time, he set up a business community, like a business consulting group, like all the lead business leaders, he put them together. Elon Musk was on it, and Jamie Dimon. And then they had the stuff that they had, one controversy just crop up, and they end up disbanding it. But I always thought that the tech companies and the way they were handling the political environment was whatever's left works. Remember the Zuckerbucks and the way they went everywhere to make sure that Trump lost in 2020, but then he becomes president in 2024, and it's a different approach. You actually went through a transformation yourself. Can you bring us through your personal one with the one that we all witnessed from above?
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B
Sure. So, yeah, I grew up in Chicago. I was just your basic pragmatic Chicago liberal. Like a lot of mainstream America, we were conservative economically, fiscally, but liberal in terms of social policies. And really, I think the ethos underneath it was libertarian, and it was about freedom. People just want freedom to live their lives without government involvement. And the Democratic Party seemed to align more with that for a long, long time. And you just put up with the bad fiscal policy and the no understanding of economics. You kind of held your nose and you had to make a choice. And then they went through this amazing shift. And it was kind of post. It was during the pandemic and post pandemic I saw, and I got close to Obama and thought, and he loved tech and was very pro tech and seemed very mainstream. But then I found, starting in 2023 and then 2024, that all sudden the script for the Democrats just really went oddly far left. And also there was this divergence happening at the same time between what was actually like what you could find out with primary data and what was being told to us by mainstream media and by Democratic leaders, including Obama. And my real red pill moment was I remember reading an Atlantic article, and the Atlantic is a very progressive magazine, and they covered how odd the coverage was of Trump's Charlottesville speech and how it was clipped and edited and.
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A
And by the way, Charlottesville is when the business council broke up for the White House. That was the moment where they go, okay, we can't work for the Trump, but go ahead.
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B
Yeah. And I was just like, this can't be true. And that they wouldn't clip it this much and make it sound like the opposite of what he said. And one of the reasons we were supposed to hate Trump was the Shawnesville.
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A
He's a racist. Right? He had good people on both sides.
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B
Yeah. And that's like the tag you give to destroy someone, cancel them as Nazi. And so then I went back and found the original footage and watched and I was like, holy shit. They really did. They intentionally misrepresented it. And that just kind of destabilize me. And then at same time, very soon after, I saw Biden move to these strange places. And all sudden, the script for the Democrats, I don't know who was writing it, but all of a sudden they started talking about these socialist policies, like, here's the way we're gonna stop inflation. We're going to put price caps on grocery stores and food and tax unrealized gains. And I was like, wealth tax. Well, that was even before wealth tax. You know, now that's hot. Now they're on wealth tax and it's. And these are anti freedom. I mean, they're. The idea that it's a bright line when the government starts confiscating private property. That is not part of, in my mind, a free society. And there's. And they. What they do, it's a Trojan horse. You start with the billionaires or in Illinois, just crypto. And then once we're across that line, in fact, they wrote the California wealth tax bill, or the proposition, in a way that a simple majority of the California legislature can apply it to every California tax.
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A
They have a super majority.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And they have a super majority. By the way, our guest is Mark Pincus. If you're not tuning in or watching the stream, billionaire founder of Zynga. He's got a brand new book out called Life at the Speed of Play. Launch products people love. I want to play into what you said. There was a turning point. Are you centervo center left, which we thought Joe Biden was his career right. Pro against crime and other things. He ends up being extremely left. But listen to what Brad Lander who won last night said turned it for him. Now he's a socialist who cited Venezuela and Cuba as models. Crazy, right? Listen to this.
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B
Cut to Our party needs to admit that Joe Biden's hug Bibi strategy was a catastrophic failure. I believe it made us complicit in genocide. Bombs we paid for killed over 70,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children. Tanks we sent made over a million people homeless. Humanitarian aid is still not getting in.
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A
Mark, Almost everything he said is wrong.
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B
What he said is wrong. Selective morality.
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A
They were on October 8th against Israel who were attacked October 7th. They were prepared for this argument before they put one IDF soldier into Gaza.
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B
Yeah, we're in this odd moment of selective morality and selective facts. It's just. Yeah, the DSA was organized in San Francisco on October 8th. They led marches in New York. And yeah, before they even the terrorists were even stopped before so, you know, there was any response. And yet. And then they're saying things that they know are not true. When they say 70,000 people, mostly women and children. I mean, even the UN doesn't say that. So it's really strange. I mean, I've never lived through a moment like that because it's like someone
- [12:57]
A
else on the outside is manipulating it. And George McGovern, they said, was basically almost a socialist. He was extremely left, but I never thought he was. I thought that was his economic philosophy. You know, I was too young to. But if you look back on the fight and how he lost every state, 49 states or whatever it was, you go, well, America didn't want extreme left socialist tendencies, but I didn't think he was ever anti American. I think with the socialist economic philosophies come an anti Americanism or resentment. We don't hear the resentment towards our enemies. Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, it is towards, I guess the Republicans and Israel.
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B
Yeah, it's. It's really bizarre. And. And when you start attacking Israel, like the most similar country in the world to us in terms of values, they're
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A
more progressive, strong, military, democratic. It's a democracy.
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B
Yeah. And in a lot of ways, you know, it's like, if you really want to compare back to the 1930s, it's like they're Britain, and they're already in this fight against these enemy forces and starting with Iran, an extreme Islam. And. And are we gonna partner with them and. And support them or, you know, turn and say, actually, Germany's not that bad. Britain is the problem. You know, it's, it's.
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A
And that turned you. And I wrote.
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B
Yeah, so. So In July of 2024, I wrote a post in the Free Press that I wasn't supporting Trump yet. I just questioned, I said, I proposed that maybe Biden is even riskier bet for the country than Trump. And that unleashed real intense anger and hatred from the left.
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A
Friends or just people?
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B
Yeah, friends. I mean, people like Kara Swisher, who I'd been friends with for decades, said, you know, wrote a really personal, vindictive, you know, hateful post about me. So, yeah, it got personal really quickly.
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A
So Kara Swisher, who just left, is trying to leave CNN because Oracle founder, the Ellisons bought it. You know, bought it, and they're going to be changed. She goes, I'm out. She wants to break her contract. So she's an extreme left Trump hater. And Trump, you know, that would be Trump derangement.
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B
Yeah, yeah. And there's. And I think most of Silicon Valley is just independent minded and we're trying to look at primary data.
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A
Would you say, Mark AI is a little bit different than the, than the Silicon Valley? Like the AI men and women who are pioneering that seem to be a little less political, more towards entrepreneurship and free enterprise, and less like Democrat or Republican. So Trump wants to do business with him, and they see Trump as an opportunity. Cryptocurrency. They say, well, President Trump wants to rich himself. No, he says, listen, I didn't understand it then, I understand it now. You guys, I'm gonna give you some room to grow. I'm gonna put David Sacks in charge of it. He understands it. Understand that if you get out of control, you're gonna hurt yourself. But I'm gonna let it grow. I'm gonna let AI grow. You know, people are wary, and we got some things. I have a few more questions on the other side. Do you have a few more minutes?
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B
Sure.
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A
Okay, great. So Mark's gonna stick around, pick up his book, Life at the Speed of Play, launch products people love. Back in a moment.
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B
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A
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C
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B
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C
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A
Mark Pinkus is here. Billionaire founder of Zynga, among other companies. His book life at the speed of play. Launch products people love. And right now, this is going to be around AI And I just was reading you, Mark, what was in Axios today? That five Eyes, our intelligence alliance, is worried about the speed of Japan and China's progress along with ours, that they are capable in a matter of months of really creating havoc with governments and businesses. Can you put that in layman's terms?
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B
Yeah. We are in a race not just in America, but worldwide. And it's not even that we need to get to AGI or get to the AI Win point first. We have to stay in the lead and keep staying there. And what we just saw with Mythos, because it's an American company, they could go to our government and say, you need to fix everything because we just broke into everything. Our model could break into everything. You know, in a few hours, they turn themselves in. Yeah.
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A
They said, look what I did.
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B
China isn't going to do that. Right. They're not going to say, hey, CIA, guess what? We just broke all your shut your
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A
lights and shut your water.
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C
Right?
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B
Yeah. And so it's so vital that we continue to move faster. And it's important for the salvation of the free world.
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A
But you also wrote this book because you want people to know this is an opportunity now using AI to create that company.
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B
Yes. My message to any of your listeners out there, what I wrote this book for is it's an invitation to say if you've had an idea, something, you've just thought, why isn't there this product or this thing out there? Now is the best time ever for you to actually build that. And you can do it with no engineers, nobody else.
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A
You could ask AI to do what
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B
Your idea is ask AI how to do it, to be your Thought partner and then ask it to be your factory. And now is the best moment. You don't need to quit your job. You could just do this as a side hustle. And this book is a how to. Like, what do you do next?
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A
You did it.
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B
Yeah.
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A
How many companies have you started?
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B
5 that have.
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A
Did you have any that didn't work?
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B
Yeah, I've. I've had failures the whole way through. Part of succeeding is failing a lot. Failing really quickly.
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A
Maybe not using that word right. It's just like, okay, I haven't won yet, you know?
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B
Yeah. My dad used to say you're in between successes.
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A
You know, that's. I would love to spin that. Just like, you can never say I can't.
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B
Yeah, right.
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D
It doesn't work.
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A
It gives the wrong signals. Pick up Mark's book. He's lived the life that he writes about life at the speed of play. Launch products that people love. Mark, thanks so much for coming in.
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B
Yeah. I love talking to you about all this.
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A
Yeah, great. You listen to Brian kilometo.
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D
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