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>> We're going to stay on technology and

how it continues to transform amid the

AI backdrop. And it takes us to someone

who's been innovating and disrupting as

well and remembers all too well the boom

and bust and changing landscape of the

dot era. He's best known as the founder

and CEO of Zinga, the social games

company that IPOed in 2011. But he's

built and invested in so much more. and

through every iteration of the internet,

the 90s boom and bust, the social media

boom of web 2.0, and now the AI era.

Carol, he's also a prolific investor.

>> He is indeed. He's invested, you'll know

these names, folks, Napster, SpaceX, and

he had he held on to his shares, his

$38,000 seed investment in Facebook, now

Meta, for about half a percentage of the

company would be worth many, many

billions of dollars right now. A smart

investment, I would say.

>> We're talking about Mark Pinkis. He's

got a new book out, and we know all this

thanks to the new book. It's called Life

at the Speed of Play. Launch Products

People love. Mark Pinkis joins us here

in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers

Studio. Welcome. Welcome. How are you?

Congrats on the book.

>> Thanks. Thanks. I By the way, I really

am happy about the memory stocks.

>> Well, why?

>> Well, for diving right into the AI

trade.

Let's not mess around. Uh I I'd say that

that it's it's a pretty simple trade at

this point. It's a belief and either you

believe that the AI infrastructure

investment is going to pay off and keep

playing out in which case all of these

companies are generationally

undervalued. It's a generational buying

opportunity if you're getting a a PEG

ratio of.3,

you know, or less.

>> Or you think that it's not going to play

out and then you should stay away from

all of it. So,

>> I'm a believer.

It's it's funny because we just spoke

with with Ted Oakley. He manages money

for Oxbow Advisors and and he sent us a

bunch of stocks and missing from there

were tech names and memory names. He

does own some tech, but he said

>> the memory got too expensive. And he

said, "I've been doing this for decade,

many decades. I remember the 1990s. We

sold Intel and I watched Intel stock go

up for the next 12 months before then it

went down." So, he understands these

cycles. Are we in one of those cyclical

moments right now?

Well, we'll know in the future, but the

it'll be it's only cyclical if this if

these AI growth rates and numbers don't

play out. If they play out, I think he

would even agree that they're still

undervalued.

>> You know, Mark, one of the things that

we thinking, we want to get into the

book and talk about the, you know, life

at the speed of play and what it all

means, but we are curious. You have been

in Silicon Valley for all of the

iterations of the No, no. Seasoned like

a great wine. Like that's how I think

it. Love talking with people who have

seen cycles, right? And can sometimes

figure out the silly from the stuff that

really matters. How do you like how do

we make sense? Like we see the money

going in.

>> Um we see the circular financing that

makes us a little uncomfortable. Um we

see the narrative around AI changing. I

get it. Disruption. This is what

happened. But help us understand like is

this a boom cycle with no bust or is

there going to be a a a breaking point

at some point or for only maybe for some

>> the if I had the perfect answer I I

>> you wouldn't be talking to us.

>> Yeah. Um I would have held my meta stop

too. Um

>> you did okay. You did okay.

>> Yeah.

>> Um

like how do you think some of this? I I

built a boring enterprise software

company in the middle of the dot boom.

You know, it was called support.com, but

it was actually an early SAS

>> company. We went public on the last day

of the IPO window.

>> I'd say that then versus now. We, my

peers and I thought it didn't make any

sense during the dot bubble. We we

thought it was crazy what we saw going

on

>> around us. And now my peers, my smartest

friends think this makes a lot of sense.

I mean, it's it was dark fiber then and

now it's like hot GPUs. I mean, it's

actually being

>> Yeah.

>> used. It was betting on a whole consumer

um that that didn't show up or or didn't

show up yet. And now the the the

investment the infrastructure is going

to enterprises who are bottom line

oriented and you know then it was uh

eyeballs and now it's ARR you know it's

it's actual revenue so it's definitely

not the same. I think what we do have is

extreme volatility and I think that the

volatility comes from where it's hard to

remember this level of growth market and

when there's this level of growth like

we've seen just this week and today when

there's a negative data point or even

absence of more positives

>> it starts to be run for the hills and

doom and bubble and then when we see

like microns numbers and guidance all of

a sudden everyone's bullish again and

we're going to keep seeing that that's

my take

>> one thing that you write about in the

book repeatedly is that

>> you know and you get into your whole

background Wharton Harvard Business

School going and working for some

investors that are household names to

the Bloomberg audience I mean Steve

Ratner uh John Malone I mean these are

these are

>> legends um

>> you are constantly saying you don't know

how to code you don't know how to write

code yet you built all these companies

What struck me about about reading that

was that

>> that kind of doesn't matter now in a way

that it that mattered when you were

building all these companies that you

write about.

>> How has the idea of like OpenAI's codeex

or Claude Code from Anthropic? How does

that completely change the game moving

forward? Well, if you pull the camera

back and even think more broadly like

how has the game of startups just

changed and how is this another step

function changed in each chapter? The

amount of capital that you needed to get

going has gone down, you know, not up.

When I was starting my first company, I

had to recruit these government um

mainframe programmers, have them learn

C++ and HTML and and I I needed a fair

amount of money to convince them to to

quit their jobs. And and each of my

subsequent companies today, you know,

you don't need that, right? You don't

need as much capital. You don't need to

go and necessarily recruit a whole team

of the world's best engineers. It's

being democratized

>> today really. Um there's it's more

possible than ever for somebody with an

amazing idea who's willing to move on it

now to really get somewhere um in a far

more capital efficient way.

>> Yeah. I mean I feel like we also saw

that in the pandemic of people just

being able to start things um while they

were home. Um I am curious about um the

speed of play because that is on your

book. Talk to us about that and the

importance of it.

>> Sure. So there was a lot of debate with

uh my my co-author Carly, my amazing

editor Hollis on the title to the book.

It was originally called Proven Better

New, which we can get into, but that's

this that's kind of some of the core

value in the book. And I eventually

said, you know, it's just that's not the

whole gist of the book. It's life at the

speed of play. And that's because it's

both it's both the the place that we are

moving into in this AI era. It's it's

really um I like I start the book by

saying that that this is Elon is the one

person who's already been living his

life at the speed of play. And it I

definitely think he's having more fun

than the rest of us. Okay.

>> He's also working harder.

>> I want to push back on this cuz Carol

and I talked about this a lot.

>> He doesn't always look like he's having

fun.

>> Yeah. He he really I mean I I think he's

been really public about having this

tortured existence and how difficult it

is to be Elon Musk and the challenges

that he's struggled with. Uh

>> personally, I think more so than

professionally. Do you actually think

he's having more fun than the rest of

us?

>> I do. He's He's got an amazing sense of

humor. He's Every time I see him, he's

joking, laughing. I I was with him um at

a friend's house one night and it wasn't

long after he had bought Twitter and it

was basically like an hour of the best

stand-up comedy I've ever seen. I mean,

he the way he talked about his

experience of coming in to Twitter um

and how insane the company was was just

was just really funny. So, so my point

of view, I mean, whether he's having

more fun, who knows? Um, I think that

that what I what we can see, you know, I

said maybe he's the one who solved the

simulation. What we can see is that he

can almost tweet something into

existence that he said there this

traffic in LA is terrible. There should

be a boring tunneling company and then a

few months later and a few billion

dollars raised. There was and my point

is to some degree we all are on the

brink of living a a a part of that. And

and the reason I called this life at the

speed of play is that to me what the

book is really about is a product

mindset. And and I think that every so

many of us have an idea but we don't

know how to pursue it or we are pursuing

an idea but the odds of success are too

low. Too many too many founders are

failing for the wrong reasons. So a good

idea is a good idea, but that's not

enough necessarily to run with something

and build something that lasts for

longer or has some significant impact.

Correct.

>> Yeah. And and it might be that you have

a good idea, but it's behind some some

like obvious mistakes that you're making

that the more junior a product maker or

founder is, the and the less experienced

they are, the more likely they are to do

too much new, to just reinvent

everything. Steve Jobs talked about

this. So the the point of the book is I

I like to think that this book is like a

cheat code that you can whatever it is

you're doing, you can change your odds

of success and getting to a hit. It's

the book I wish I had early in my

career.

>> So is this for founders? Like who do you

like think about? It sounds like it is

for people who have an idea or want to

run with something, right? This book is

every one of your listeners right now

probably has some instinct. They have

some sense. It's either a specific idea

or a sense that something could be

better. And the the book is the point of

the book is that they should what is

when you think what should they do with

that instinct? Very few of them will act

on it and and turn that into a product

or a company. and then their odds of

success will be so low because they're

going to take one shot on goal and it's

probably going to miss.

>> Well, I I like how you write about that

in the book because you use the idea of

Uber as an example in the book. You you

had the idea for Uber in 2002. Uh SMS

dispatching to a cab. Uh you're not

Travis Kalanick. Uh you did not start

Uber.

>> No.

>> So you you you make this argument that I

think a lot of people everybody has

these ideas.

>> I had that idea. Just because you had

that idea doesn't mean you actually

create the company. Why did Why was

Travis able to do it but Mark Pinkis who

was in Silicon Valley in 2002 wasn't

able to do it?

>> I can't tell you why Travis was but I

can tell you why I wasn't. I didn't.

First of all, I looked at the world as

it existed, not as it could exist the

way that Travis did. And and by the way,

in 2002, there wasn't a mobile, you

know, smartphone then. And I thought

about it in these conventional ways. Oh,

I'm going to deliver your order to the

taxi broker who will call a cab. I

didn't ever think Travis's idea of the

gig economy, I'm going to let anybody

become a driver and have a driver within

a minute of you.

>> That was that was brilliant. But but I

had an instinct an instinct that we

should be able to order a phone through

our order a taxi through our phone. And

you know the the the importance the

point I'm trying to get people to focus

on in the book is that if you assume

your instincts are right you know 95% of

the time and your ideas right at best

25% of the time what would you do with

that information you know it's like a

time machine.

>> You write about these instinct veins

deep sources of insight about human

needs and behavior that can spawn

multiple product ideas even whole new

industries. Is that what AI is right

now? Like what we're doing? Is that what

that is? Or is that

>> AI is beyond an instinct vein. I mean a

AI is is a fundamental shift in in

computing. I mean the way that the

internet was and so so I wouldn't

>> it's not apples to apples. Yeah. Yeah.

No, it's interesting. Um you know, one

of the things that I find also is some

of the things you talk about like

leadership. You talk about

micromanagement is beautiful. And I

think about how many times when you

think about leaders that it's like don't

micromanage people.

>> Yeah. I was told that so many times,

>> right? No, think about it. Like you

bring in, you know, you know, experts or

consultants and they're like don't

micromanage your people. Why is it so

important?

>> Why is it so important that you do do

that you do micromanage? Yeah. Because

the the point I'm trying to make here is

that at the end of the day, what matters

most is your customer experience.

>> Yeah.

>> Not how you delivered it. And so the

point to me is deliver the best possible

customer experience any way that you get

there. And if it's through

micromanagement, if if you can guarantee

the quality, if you can guarantee the

delivery because you micromanaged,

>> then by all means do that. I'm like, I

don't care that McDonald's served 15

million burgers today. That doesn't make

mine any better. I if I want the colonel

cooking mine, you know,

>> yeah,

>> individually.

>> Well, that that's a major theme in the

book is is sort of throwing out this

idea of the minimum minimal viable

product. Yeah. I'm not going to repeat

what the chapter's called because no,

>> we're FCC regulated here, but um

>> we're a family.

>> Well, that chapter you can say was MVP

trap. So,

>> other chapters know.

>> Okay, cool. Maybe. Yeah, great. There it

is. Um why what we've been sold this

idea though of iterating and Silicon

Valley sort of throws something, sees,

you know, see if what sticks and

iterates on that over and over again.

Why wasn't that ever right for you?

Well, the the original concept that Eric

Reese had of minimum viable product and

moving fast and being in the market is

is a great concept. It's just that we

now we don't the the point I make is

that we no longer have time to go wait.

The the learning is too slow. If we

build a minimum viable product, there's

hope in the word viable that this might

be your launch product and then you're

going to invest more in that product

than you should. And I like to say just

build it wrong before you build it

right. Just build to learn. be whatever

gets you signal from your customer the

fastest is is and and in the age of AI,

we can prototype something or test

something so much faster, but it's

dangerous. What I'm seeing with AI is

less that people are using AI to test

and learn faster, but more build faster.

And so if I can build something now in

three months instead of three years

that's so alluring that I might go do

that but I don't have three months to to

learn I'm wrong.

>> Does that make sense? So I don't have

that makes sense. So the viable word is

is tricky.

>> Well I think you you had also shared in

the book uh the example of Twitch and

building you know the founder of Twitch.

their team was was changing their

product every two or three days at that

point and

>> yeah, they were twitchy

>> and that was that ended up being a good

thing for them.

>> Yeah,

>> they got immediate feedback.

>> Yeah. Well, they I I don't even know if

it was getting any customer feedback.

The feedback was just from themselves.

It was I don't like this product idea

anymore. Let's switch. And so that's

also important. And part of I guess part

of the the what makes it so hard to be a

founder to be a CEO is that we're

supposed to express confidence when we

don't personally feel confidence, right?

And so how do you come in on Monday and

what if you just what if you learned

something in the past week that just

said this product isn't quite right or

it's finally part built and you're like

I'm just not that into it.

>> Right? Do you go to your team on Monday

and say, "Guys, I know I I got you to

work nights and weekends for this, but I

don't think this is right anymore." Or

do you say, "Well,

I don't want to demotivate my team, and

so I'm just going to continue on this

path for this whole product cycle, or I

can't I'm afraid to tell my investors

who backed me that I was wrong." Right?

And so the question is, are you more

committed to the intellectual honesty or

to harmony? I would say intellectual

honesty. I mean,

>> most people would not most people would

not act on it.

>> I know. I know. But it's like I don't

know. At some point you need to to be

doing that. Hey, we're talking with Mark

Pinkis, founder of Zingga. He's got a

new book out. It is entitled titled Life

at the Speed of Play. Launch Products

that people um love. Are there products

I mean the product cycle is it getting

shorter or or longer? Especially when it

comes to technology because I feel like

there are things that people are so into

and then they move on to the next thing

and there's so much out there. from a

consumer standpoint.

>> Well, I I say in the book that I think

there's a metric that I don't know

anyone but me who focuses on it and my

former teams day 365 retention. So, if a

100 people were using your product

today, you know, or a year ago today,

how many would still be using it today?

And and it's such a hard thing to build

against because we don't have a year to

wait,

>> right? But you never would have made

your own that that maybe works from a

product perspective of building a

company but from a venture capital

perspective that doesn't work. You write

about what attracted you to Mark

Zuckerberg when he was a teenager still

was that they were able to sign up you

know schools 20% on the first day the

next 80% the next week like that

happened instantly.

>> Yes. I didn't know but but it turns out

that this is um necessary but but not

necessarily complete and sufficient is

that that if you have 60% engagement 60%

of your users show up every day which

has been true to this day with Facebook

>> the likelihood that you have high day

365 retention is is highly correlated.

It may not be the case um but it's

highly highly correlated.

>> Did you knew know the minute you like

spoke with him that this was just

something remarkable meaning Facebook?

>> Yes. Yes. And and by the way so would

you both of you so people who point to

the fact that they invested you know

early on in in Facebook or these

companies as a sign that they're a great

investor. It's it does not necessarily

mean that they are a great

you know that their judgment is so great

because we all would have said yes their

access is very impressive you know

>> that that they had and you didn't have

so um I but but but here's what's so

painful if you think about it that story

is less like kudos to Mark that he

invested and it's more like like Mark

how is it like think about this how is

it that in 2004 before when I met him um

I was doing tribe I was doing one of the

first social networks right before I

started before he did

>> how did I manage to fail it's an act of

willpower that I failed it wasn't just

Facebook there was eight or nine social

networks there was BBO tagged MySpace

>> Fster which I invested in they all

worked I had I had to pick one idea that

didn't work and and stoically,

heroically stick with it no matter what.

I don't care.

>> We are with Mark Pinkis. He's the

founder of Zingga. He's the author of

the new book. It's out this week. Life

at the speed of play. Launch products

people love. I want to pick up with a

headline that we just heard from Amy

just now. It's coming from the New York

Times about how Open AI is leaning

toward waiting until next year for its

IPO. Rob Copeland and Mike Isaac writing

this over at the New York Times saying

that they're holding off on their

initial public offering until next year.

Three people involved in the company's

deliberation said uh it punctuates an

uncertain future for fast rising AI

giants. That's again coming from the New

York Times. Mark, you're an investor in

in open AI. You understand also what

it's like to take a company public. You

did that with several companies in

different periods of your professional

life.

>> Timing is everything sometimes, right?

>> Sure. Yes. Like the last day of the com

IPO window. Yeah.

um just your your thoughts on on Open AI

and its path to becoming a public

company.

>> I I

I'd say

I I the one hand I'm I'm not sure how

much the timing matters other than if it

changes their access to capital. So I

don't think they can afford to get you

know significantly behind in the you

know capital and buildout race but it's

not clear that you know you have to

necessarily go public these days if you

look at the the sizes of investments. So

I I think OpenAI is just an amazing kind

of generational

>> company and I think people who count

them out uh and say this is all

anthropic uh are shortsighted and I

think that OpenAI

has to catch up on the coding side. I

think we'll see that happen with codeex

and they have an they have a clear

advantage on the consumer side which I

think is currently being under uh

weighted. I think people wrongly think

this is all just about coding and

enterprise

>> and I just think that is where the

action is right now. That's where the

most revenue growth is right now. But

there's no question to me that consumer

the consumer side of AI will be just as

big if not bigger. So, so I know CO2 put

out a report calling a $6 trillion

market. And I thought it was interesting

that they they capped consumer at 500

billion consumer AI out of 6 trillion.

That doesn't make sense to trillion just

for the engineering the coding side. No,

I I that doesn't make any sense to me.

That's that's not the way we've seen the

internet play out. You seem to be

someone who can think super big about

things. Like how should we be thinking

about AI and how it changes our word

world as consumers? Like how is it going

to at home, at work, at play? Like how

is it going to change our our world? Or

is it just another amped up way of

communicating online?

>> I don't know. What is it? How do you

think about it?

>> It's not a way to communicate online yet

because it's still oddly a single player

experience, right? We're not we're not

>> in the AI, we're not in the GPTs and the

chats

>> together. But but if you break your

question down, I think first if you

think, you know, how will it impact uh

our jobs and the job market, I think

we're very very quickly

uh transitioning from a knowledge worker

economy to something else we don't have

a name for, but it's going to be, you

know, a prompt worker. It's going to be

about

>> being generative and we're going to be

uh whatever our job is, we're it's going

to be very quickly. I mean it's probably

changed a lot for you guys and right the

amount that we have to rely on the AI

but the amount of leverage we get and

the amount of that it's it's moving from

a value on knowledge to a value on

questions and curiosity

>> but you also have to have knowledge to

ask a smart question for sure right like

and we're learning too and we talk about

this a lot that um I forget who the one

of the interviews we recently had that

like a really good question with AI is

going to be several paragraphs long,

right? like if you really want to get a

a smart useful information

>> you guys both impressively read my book

and you have great questions and I think

if you'd relied on the AI it you know

and I'll say even writing the book I had

this lovehate relationship with AI that

if first it's magical and you're like oh

my god it can take this long talk I just

gave and condense it or can or editing

is so painful word smithing and then you

start reading it and it's getting it

starts to get homogenized and it's like

it starts to feel soulless and it's like

where do my voice go in this and I even

tried a style guide and I'm like I want

you to sound like my voice and

eventually I was like I don't want you

to change my words unless you absolutely

have to. And then eventually I said you

know what it's really helpful for some

things. It it's part of a process to

take a long talk track and condense it

to make it more organized. But I started

to really kind of like a vinyl record

appreciate the imperfections of how I

talk and say, you know what, that's

that's my voice and that's how you know

it is me,

>> right?

>> You know, a major theme in the book is

is making decisions that your future

self will respect. You have this this

framework, the book of life, um, which

is, I think, a really important way to

set up the book. I I want to talk about

that just in the last couple minutes we

have in the context of you being so

public in 2024 coming out and saying

after so many years and so many millions

of dollars donating to Democrats I am

now coming out in support of President

Trump. It was surprised I think a lot of

people to see you do that. How did your

your book of life framework and your

idea of like looking back at that

decision inform that decision at the

time?

>> It's it's such a good question. you

know, it's it's definitely not something

I signed up for in my book of life.

However,

it's it is important to me. intellectual

honesty is important to me and being

willing to take an unpopular stand and

and I feel like if if I can't do that,

if I'm so scared because of group think

and the consequences of being uh taking

a very unpopular position in my, you

know, a lot of my communities,

>> then who can and and it was actually my

daughter Georgia. I I I didn't decide

until the Sunday before the election

that I was going to vote for Trump. I

decided I was definitely not going to

vote for Kamla and I had lost faith in

the Democrats um and the mainstream

media establishment

um that that I stopped trusting in that

whole process and and I but I was also

being very transparent and public on

Twitter. I I started I wrote a post in

the free press saying not that I

supported Trump but that that Biden at

that time in late July of 24 felt even

riskier than Trump was right. And that

alone started a chittor storm if I can

say that word.

>> It's out there.

>> Okay. So it's too late to take it back.

But but Georgia came to me on a Sunday

before the election. She said, "Dad,

you know you're going to vote for Trump

at this point." And I said, "Yeah, I

think you're probably right." And she

said, "Then you have to tweet that

because you've been so open and

transparent." And I said, "Yeah, you're

right." And so then I I wrote a whole

post. Um, it was I think the most viral

post I've ever put up because I think it

was it was a oddly a touchstone for a

lot of people because I was kind of like

this

>> de big Democratic donor and breaking

ranks, you know, was and I'm kind of

like, it's funny to call it, but I'm

kind of like part of the like rank and

file Silicon Valley founders. Um, and so

it was, I think, a little um, scary to

some of the establishment to see this

crumbling.

>> Um, and and I put the post out and I put

my reasons out and it was on the front

page of the New York Post like the next

day. I didn't think it would be news.

Um, and you know, and it it really

really uh was much louder um, than I

anticipated. Um, and but I was like, you

know what? If if I'm going to do it, I'm

I'm I'm not gonna It's silly that we

should have to hide our political views

because we're tagged with an identity.

And and I'll just say this.

>> I'm not on any team. And I said that

throughout. I said, I'm not on team

Democrats. I'm not on team MAGA. It

sounds cheesy. I'm team America. I'm

team my family community. And in this

environment where we just saw three

pretty extreme left Democratic

socialists win in New York, I don't know

that any of us can really say we're

identified with one party because the

who the party is is really shifting. I'm

a Chicago liberal. That's I've always

been that. I'm, you know, socially

liberal. I want people to have their own

rights and freedoms. And I'm fiscally

and economically

conservative. I want to see a

responsible government. I think I'm

stating some obvious things here that

80% of people 100, I don't know, 90% of

people agree with. And so for that to

then define me as being right, you know,

far right. And to hear journalists say,

I need to get a I couldn't find a far

right founder in San Francisco. Can I

interview you? And I'm like, you want

me? I'm far right. I'm like, I I'm still

here. Nothing's changed. So

>> weird. Yeah.

>> Yeah. It's so it's and and the

partnering with my future self is I I

even though it was painful and there was

some dislocations and I did um lose uh a

couple of dear friendships over it. Um I

I am happy that Mark 2024 No, I'm happy

Mark 2024

uh took a stand.

>> God, I feel like that's a perfect place

to to wrap. We don't really want to

wrap. We hope you will come back.

>> This is really fun and I was not

expecting you guys to have read my whole

book and have all of these uh really

insightful questions. So I I hope you

guys uh follow the the you know the

format my book. I hope that you take an

idea, prosecute it and as a side hustle

you build a huge business and then this

becomes your hobby.

>> I love it. I love it. Um, you give us a

lot to think about and I I have to tell

you, we still have a bunch of questions.

So, you like I mean it. Please come

back. We would really love it. Um, Mark

Pinkis, founder of Zinga, of course,

founder of several companies. Um, but

his new book is Life at the Speed of

Play. Launch Products People Love. Um,

there's a lot in here and a lot of great

stories.