Mark Pincus

Mark Pincus is an American internet entrepreneur best known as the founder of Zynga, the social gaming company behind FarmVille, Words With Friends, and other major online and mobile games. He previously served as Zynga’s CEO and chief product officer, co-founded Reinvent Capital, and is an investor in technology companies.

Winning Products Copy Proven Behavior and Isolate What Is Actually New

Mark Pincus, the Zynga founder behind FarmVille and Words With Friends, argues that founders are usually right about the human need they sense and wrong about the first product they build around it. In a conversation with Shane Parrish, Pincus lays out a product doctrine built around copying what is already proven, isolating the genuinely new risk, and testing for “heat” before teams spend months building respectable products nobody wants.

The Knowledge Project PodcastJun 2, 202621 min read