Life at the Speed of Play

The best founders build from first principles. Mark has done that his entire career. He believes great products are shaped by taste, speed, and the courage to act. Life at the Speed of Play is essential reading for anyone who wants to build products that people don’t just use, but depend on. – Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb

Mark has taught our YC founders that intellectual honesty is the foundation of a successful company. You have to be willing to kill your losing ideas to make something people want. Read this book and change your odds of success. – Garry Tan, President of YCombinator (YC)

Today, the only bottleneck to building great products is knowing what to create. Mark is an expert at this. – Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI

Mark is a pioneer, one of the absolute greats at building products that people love to use. His ethos and ideas are mandatory reading for anyone trying to craft top-tier consumer experiences. – Shayne Copeland, CEO of Polymarket

Mark’s insight that your instincts are likely right, but your ideas are likely wrong–and how to manage that conflict–is invaluable. His framework for innovating on entirely new surface areas is important and timely. A must-read for all founders. – Fred Wilson, venture capitalist & co-founder of Union Square Ventures

Most product books tell you to move fast and break things. Mark Pincus extends that idea, challenging you to build ‘failure machines’ and build your ideas at a velocity that wasn’t possible until now. This is the playbook for anyone building in the age of AI. Plus it includes a killer Spaghetti Bolognese recipe. – Ethan Mollick, Wharton associate professor, AI researcher, and author of New York Times bestseller Co-Intelligence

Ambitious founders strive to create internet treasures: products so essential we can’t imagine life without them. Mark Pincus reveals how his relentless focus on user experience drove Zynga’s audacious growth. Life at the Speed of Play is Mark’s operating manual for building legacy companies, from OKRs to Bold Beats and Weekly Roadmaps. – John Doerr, venture capitalist and founder of Kleiner Perkins

Mark Pincus is one of the tech industry’s most prominent entrepreneurs, known for repeatedly spotting and shaping the internet’s biggest hits. He is best known as the founder of Zynga, the pioneer of social mobile games.

Pincus graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in economics from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and earned his MBA from Harvard Business School.

A deeply committed father to five kids, including a special needs son, he lives in San Francisco. When not building products and companies, he can be found in the ocean, surfing.