The hidden pattern behind successful products | Mark Pincus (founder of Zynga)

0:00If you're truly ambitious, burn your resume.

0:02You have all these amazing contrarian perspectives on how to build amazing products.

0:06Your instincts are right 95% of the time, your ideas are wrong 75% of the time.

0:10We've seen so many founders who just stoically, heroically stick with a losing idea.

0:15How do you know if this is just the wrong path you're following?

0:18If you're asking whether or not your product is an A, it's not an A.

0:21When you have lightning in a bottle, when you have true signal, everything works.

0:26Most products are better versions of things that existed before.

0:29Talk about how you get over that hump of copying.

0:31It's almost a moral arbitrage.

0:33You 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.

0:43You're not trying to win awards and respect from your peers.

0:46Define your ambition in the eyes of your consumer.

0:50Building a consumer social app.

0:52Very few people have successfully done it and built something durable.

0:55We have.

0:56Beyond a latent demand for social, it's lost the adrenaline.

0:59People are proud to tell you they're not on Instagram.