“The earlier we are in a platform shift, the beginning of the internet, beginning of mobile, the beginning of AI, the less new you should pursue. The platform is new. AI is the new thing. … In my not so humble opinion, you're being too clever.”

The Growth Podcast · Product & Design · October 2026

Context

The Zynga founder was explaining his "Proven, Better, New" framework, using Supercell's Hay Day, which he calls almost a straight copy of FarmVille 2 rebuilt for mobile. Early in a platform cycle, he argues, users are in discovery mode and want familiar things made with the new technology.

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Transcript

The Growth Podcast Around 19:24 into the episode

Mark Pincus

…I'd be like, hey, Akash, do you want to hang out more and be better friends? If so, talk to my social secretary, which then asks you to connect your Google calendar and surfaces to you, places that you and Mark could hang out. You know, that'd be a proven better new again. Proven new, no better.

Aakash Gupta

…And one of the examples you wrote about in the book was how Supercell, they did great with almost no new at all when they copied Farmville into mobile. Yeah. So maybe we could create another row here. We can analyze what they did there without any new at all. So that seems like the hardest part.

Mark Pincus

…ago. Yeah. Okay, it's a new idea. So it's okay, but let's be intellectually honest about what we're doing. So it's got to be a religion. You got to be intellectually honest. Number two, you've got to be aware of the context. Where are we in this platform cycle? And that gets to Supercell with Heyday or Zynga with Farmville, which is here's the other paradox that fucks with our brains, okay? The earlier we are in a platform shift, the beginning of the internet, beginning of mobile, the beginning of AI, the less new you should pursue. The platform is new. AI is the new thing. It's like AI weather app, do you want it? It's not AI app you've never used in your life. In my not so humble opinion, you're being too clever. Right now, at the beginning of a cycle, beginning of a platform, people are in a discovery mode. They're like, oh, really? There's an AI weather app? Tell me more. An AI camera, tell me more. An AI Craigslist, there's a thing you've always been doing now…

Aakash Gupta

Yeah.

Mark Pincus

And we brought out Farmville for mobile and it was not built for mobile. What did that mean? They loaded faster. They also had shorter crop cycle times. They had touch. All right. Was touch new or better? You could make a case. Like, they optimized for the touch screen. The reason I'd say better is…

Aakash Gupta

So how do you figure out what type of product you should be building? Should you be building a product at the beginning because it's in the beginning of the AI cycle that has a lot more new or a

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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