Podcasting is lousy with guests who peddle advice about starting businesses, building careers, and living full lives. Few of these gurus have actually accomplished anything. Fewer still have advice that comes anywhere close to revelatory.

Mark Pincus is the rare exception.

The founder of 10 companies, Mark is best known for Zynga, the gaming juggernaut behind FarmVille and Words With Friends. At its peak, Zynga was valued at more than $12 billion and accounted for 20% of Facebook’s page views. It was so big, in fact, that Mark Zuckerberg once admitted to Mark Pincus, “Zynga is the only company that is capable of being an actual Facebook competitor.”

Across his 30-year career, Mark — Pincus, not Zuck — developed a cheat code for building products people love and living a life anyone would admire, and that cheat code winds its way through his new book, Life at the Speed of Play.

Today, he shares how he learned to trust his gut, why most founders build too much and test too little, and how failure taught him to move faster, pivot sooner, and search for real signals instead of hope.

📖 CHAPTERS:

(02:22) The Fight That Changed His Life

(08:25) The Startup Decision That Matters Most

(17:00) The Fastest Way to Make People Care

(20:42) The Day Mark Zuckerberg Proved Him Wrong

(31:59) Why Most Startups Build Too Much

(40:11) How The Founder Is Employee #1

(43:39) The Culture Hack That Scales

(51:37) The Framework Behind FarmVille

📱 This is part one of our conversation with Mark. The second installment will be out on Monday. If you can’t wait until then, you can listen right now in the Next Big Idea app.

🎥 The Next Big Idea is now on YouTube! You can find our episodes ⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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