The hidden pattern behind successful products | Mark Pincus (FarmVille, Words with Friends, & more)
If you're truly ambitious, burn your resume.
如果你真的有野心，烧掉你的简历。
You have all these amazing contrarian perspectives on how to build amazing products.
你对如何打造出色产品有这么多令人意外的反常见解。
Your instincts are right
你的直觉是对的
95% of the time.
95% 的情况下。
Your ideas are wrong
你的想法是错的
75% of the time.
75% 的情况下。
We've seen so many founders who just stoically, heroically stick with a losing idea.
我们见过太多创始人，就这么沉默地、英雄主义地死守一个失败的想法。
How do you know if this is just the wrong path you're following?
你怎么判断自己是不是走在一条错误的路上？
If you're asking whether or not your product is an A, it's not [music] an A.
如果你还在问自己的产品是不是 A，那它就不是 A。
When you have lightning in a bottle, when you have true signal, everything works.
当你手里有了宝贝，有了真正的信号，一切都会运转起来。
Most products are better versions of things that existed before.
大多数产品都是对已有产品的升级版。
Talk about how you get over that hump of copying.
说说你是怎么跨过那道"复制"的心理门槛的。
It's almost a moral arbitrage.
这几乎是一种道德套利。
You became a founder, an entrepreneur because you wanted to go be an innovator, but you're trying to win the hearts and minds of nurses in Indiana like for Farmville.
你成为创始人、创业者，是因为想去做个创新者，可你却要赢得印第安纳州护士们的心，就像 FarmVille 那样。
You're not trying to win awards and respect from your peers.
你不是在追求同行的奖项和认可。
Define your ambition in the eyes of your consumer.
用你的用户的眼光来定义你的野心。
Building a consumer social app, very few people have successfully done it and built something durable.
打造一款消费社交应用，真正成功过、而且做出持久产品的人寥寥无几。
We have beyond a latent demand for social.
我们对社交的需求远远超过了已有的供给。
It's lost the adrenaline.
它已经失去了那种肾上腺素。
People are proud to tell you they're not on Instagram.
人们甚至以不用 Instagram 为荣。
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They're not missing the party.
他们觉得自己没有错过什么。
If you want to reinvent social, look for where the cocktail is.
如果你想重塑社交，先找找鸡尾酒会在哪。
We know it when we see a great cocktail party.
看到一场好的鸡尾酒会，我们一眼就知道。
You feel you're like, "Oh, I'm so glad I'm here."
你会感觉："哦，我好庆幸我来了。"
Today, we're all hanging out on our Claude on our GPT, but there's no cocktail [music] party.
现在我们都挂在自己的 Claude 或者 GPT 上，但没有鸡尾酒会。
My challenge to your listeners is figure out how to make it rowdy.
我对你的听众的挑战是：想办法让它热闹起来。
Today my guest is Mark Pinkinis, founder of Zingga, [music] who has arguably created more successful consumer products than anyone else in history, over a dozen both within Zinga and before Zinga.
今天我的嘉宾是 Mark Pincus，Zynga 的创始人，他创造了比任何人都多的消费者成功产品，在 Zynga 内外合计超过十二款。
And over the past 5 years, [music] he has been working on a book that synthesizes all of the things that he's learned about building successful consumer products.
过去五年里，他一直在写一本书，把他所学到的关于打造成功消费产品的一切都浓缩进去。
It's called Life at the Speed of Play.
这本书叫《Life at the Speed of Play》。
It's coming out in a few weeks, and it is so good, and it's also a really quick read.
这本书再过几周就出了，非常好，而且读起来很快。
In a quote for the book, Sam Alman, the co-founder of OpenAI, said that today the only bottleneck to building great products is knowing what to create.
书中有一段推荐语来自 OpenAI 联合创始人 Sam Altman，他说如今打造优质产品的唯一瓶颈，就是知道该做什么。
Mark [music] is an expert at this.
Mark 是这方面的专家。
And after reading this book and having this conversation, I could not agree more.
读完这本书、经历了这次对话之后，我深有同感。
In his book and in this conversation, Mark shares a really clever [music] and counterintuitive framework that he's developed for coming up with successful product ideas.
在书里和这次对话中，Mark 分享了一个他开发出的非常聪明、反直觉的框架，用来想出成功的产品创意。
Why being less ambitious is often the path to coming up with the most ambitious ideas.
为什么「野心越小」往往是通往「最大野心创意」的路。
why you need to kill your hope before your hope kills you.
为什么你必须在希望毁掉你之前先杀死希望。
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Why your instincts are usually right, but your ideas are usually wrong.
为什么你的直觉通常是对的，但你的想法通常是错的。
Also, what he's learned about raising kids.
还有他对如何教育孩子的心得。
He's got five.
他有五个孩子。
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And so, so, so much more.
还有非常非常多。
This episode is for anybody who is building a product or thinking about starting a company.
这期节目适合所有正在打造产品或正在考虑创业的人。
Before we get into it, don't forget to check out lennisprod.com for a free year of the hottest and most well-crafted AI products in the world, available exclusively to Lenny's newsletter subscribers.
在正片开始之前，别忘了去 lennysprod.com，那里有免费一年的全球最热门、最精心打造的 AI 产品，专供 Lenny 通讯订阅者。
With that, I bring you Mark Pinkis.
好，有请 Mark Pincus。
Mark, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.
Mark，非常感谢你来，欢迎来到播客。
I've been a [music] big listener.
我一直是个忠实听众。
Oh, wow.
哦，哇。
And I'm excited to
我很期待
I'm excited to finally be on.
我很期待终于能来上节目了。
So,
所以，
I'm excited to finally have you on.
我也很期待终于能请到你。
You just put out a book.
你刚刚出了一本书。
It's coming out around the same time that this podcast is coming out.
差不多和这期播客同期出版。
It's called Life at the Speed of Play.
叫《Life at the Speed of Play》。
There's uh so much here I want to talk about.
有太多我想聊的内容了。
I want to start with this framework that you developed uh called proven better new and the framework is basically designed to help you come up with and refine your product ideas and your startup ideas to basically increase the odds that your idea is a good idea and that it will work.
我想从这个你开发的框架讲起，叫做 Proven Better New，这个框架基本上是为了帮你想出和打磨产品想法、创业想法，从根本上提高你的想法是个好想法、能真正跑通的概率。
Uh it is such a clever idea, such a simple idea with so much depth.
这是个非常聪明的想法，极其简单但有很大的深度。
Um I want to spend a bunch of time on this.
我想在这上面多花点时间。
Um, so first of all, just give us kind of the the overview on this framework, what it is, how people might use it in coming up with ideas.
首先，给我们大致介绍一下这个框架，是什么，人们可以怎么用它来想创意。
Sure.
当然。
Well, this is a framework that we got to early on at Zingga and it became like a religion and the fundamental the the core principles and engine behind how we did product management at Zinga.
这是一个我们在 Zynga 早期就摸索出来的框架，后来成了某种信仰，是我们做产品管理的核心原则和引擎。
And it's was so fundamental to the book that for three of the four years writing the book we called it proven better new but then I was like oh that's too dry a name and I I love this concept of life at the speed of play which we can talk about but is the bigger gestalt to the book.
它对这本书太重要了，写书的四年里有三年我们都叫它 Proven Better New，但后来我想，这个名字太干了，我喜欢「Life at the Speed of Play」这个概念，我们可以聊聊，它是整本书更大的格局。
So, but proven better new is this core um philosophy that I've had around products since I started Zingga, which is that we have these the we have these instincts like in our gut, these human level instincts that are pretty much always right.
但 Proven Better New 是我从创立 Zynga 起就对产品一直秉持的核心理念，就是说我们人类有这些本能，这些根植于直觉的、几乎永远正确的人类本能。
And then we put these ideas on top of the instincts that are usually wrong.
然后我们在这些本能之上叠加了各种想法，而这些想法通常是错的。
And my rule of thumb is your instincts are right 95% of the time.
我的经验法则是：你的直觉 95% 的时候是对的。
Your ideas are wrong 75% or at best right 25% of the time.
你的想法 75% 的时候是错的，或者说最多 25% 的时候是对的。
The framework of proven better new takes that philosophy and says okay what do we do with that?
Proven Better New 这个框架承接了这套理念，然后问：好，我们拿这个怎么办？
Okay let's let's isolate your innovation zone.
好，让我们把你的创新区间单独隔离出来。
Let's isolate that thing you have in your gut and let's just test many many ideas around that and let's fail for the right reason not the wrong reason.
把那个你直觉深处的东西单独拎出来，然后围绕它密集测试很多很多想法，让我们为正确的原因失败，而不是错误的原因。
It might be I mean at Zingga we'd see new game launches.
可以举个例子，比如在 Zynga 我们看过很多新游戏发布。
Sid Meyers like the you know godfather of game design who's the most revered game designer.
Sid Meier，你知道，游戏设计界的教父，最受尊敬的游戏设计师。
He came out, I think, a a social civilization on Facebook and we thought, "Oh god, here comes like the ultimate game designer."
他在 Facebook 上发布了一款社交版文明游戏，我们当时心想："哦天哪，这是终极游戏设计师来了。"
And 10 minutes after the game came out, the Zinga PM's emailed around their analysis and they said, "It's dead on arrival because his Fatoule, his first time user experience, was so many clicks and so bad that no one was ever going to see his great game design."
游戏上线 10 分钟后，Zynga 的产品经理们发了一圈分析报告，他们说："死透了，因为他的新手引导、他的首次用户体验点击太多、太糟糕，根本没人能看到他精彩的游戏设计。"
Even Sid Myers tripped over what were understood by the most junior product managers at Zingga was the best of breed approach to onboarding a new user to the first-time user experience on the Facebook platform.
连 Sid Meier 都在这件事上翻车了，而这件事是 Zynga 最初级的产品经理都明白的，就是在 Facebook 平台上引导新用户完成首次使用体验的最佳实践。
But because he didn't perfectly copy that, he didn't do the proven right, his innovation never got seen by anybody.
但他没有完美地复制那套做法，没有把 Proven 做对，结果他的创新从来没被任何人看见。
This episode is brought to you by our season's presenting sponsor, Work OS.
这一集由本季首席赞助商 WorkOS 为您呈现。
What do OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, Versell, Replet, Sierra, Clay, and hundreds of other winning companies all have in common?
OpenAI、Anthropic、Cursor、Vercel、Replit、Sierra、Clay，还有数百家领先企业有什么共同点？
They are [music] all powered by work OS.
他们都由 WorkOS 驱动。
If you're building a product for the enterprise, you've felt the pain of integrating single signon, skim, arbback, audit, logs, and other features required by large companies.
如果你在为企业客户打造产品，一定深有体会：单点登录、SCIM、RBAC、审计日志，以及大公司要求的各种功能，集成起来有多痛苦。
work OS turns those deal blockers [music] into drop-in APIs with a modern developer platform built specifically for B2B SAS.
WorkOS 把那些拦路虎变成了即插即用的 API，基于专门为 B2B SaaS 打造的现代开发者平台。
Literally every startup that I'm an investor in that starts to expand up market ends up working with Work OS.
我投资的每家初创公司，只要开始拓展企业市场，最终都在用 WorkOS。
And that's because they are the best.
因为他们就是最好的。
Whether you are a seedstage startup trying to land your first enterprise customer or a unicorn expanding globally, work OS is the fastest path to becoming enterprise ready and unblocking growth.
不管你是正在拿下第一个企业客户的种子轮初创公司，还是在全球扩张的独角兽，WorkOS 都是你走向企业级的最快路径，也是解除增长封印的钥匙。
It's essentially Stripe for enterprise features.
它本质上就是企业功能领域的 Stripe。
Visit works.com to get started or just hit up their Slack [music] where they have actual engineers waiting to answer your questions.
访问 workos.com 立即开始，或者直接进他们的 Slack 频道，有真人工程师等着回答你的问题。
Workos allows you to build faster with delightful APIs, comprehensive docs, and a smooth developer experience.
WorkOS 让你用令人愉快的 API、完善的文档和流畅的开发者体验更快速地构建。
Go to work os.com to make your app enterprise ready today.
去 workos.com，今天就让你的应用走向企业级。
And so the con the point of proven better new is to say let's take all the proven off the table.
所以 Proven Better New 的核心意义就在于：把所有已验证的东西先从桌上拿掉。
If you want to build the AI Snapchat or the AI camera, there's so many of those I see now, AI cameras.
如果你想做 AI 版 Snapchat 或者 AI 相机，我现在看到好多这样的产品，AI 相机。
Fine.
好吧。
Let's start with what you're not innovating on.
先从你不打算创新的地方开始。
You're the icon.
你是那个图标。
Um the maybe just the way a camera works.
也许就是相机的使用方式。
look for where that's the best of breed proven, whether it's Apple or Snapchat or Instagram, and copy those legally and with hopefully some taste.
找到那个行业最佳实践的 Proven，不管是 Apple、Snapchat 还是 Instagram，把它们合法地复制过来，希望还带点品位。
We can get into like great copies and bad copies, but but be a master of the proven first.
我们可以聊聊好的复制和差的复制，但先把 Proven 做到极致。
Get your PhD in proven first.
先在 Proven 上拿到你的博士学位。
And I like to say we we don't we haven't earned the right to innovate on the camera until we are the world's leading PhD on the best mobile cameras that already exist.
我喜欢说，我们没有资格在相机上创新，直到我们成为全球已有最佳移动相机的顶尖博士为止。
And then better is usually we can't find better.
然后 Better 通常是找不到的，