Life at the Speed of Play: Launch Products People Love!

An unconventional, hands-on guide to turning ideas into products that matter—and that people love—from the legendary Silicon Valley pioneer, founder of Zynga, and creator of Stanford Graduate School of Business’s product management course.

Mark Pincus has been at the forefront of each iteration of the internet. He built the original app company ahead of the mobile app economy and sold virtual goods to the masses long before in-app purchase generated $85 billion on smartphones. As the founder of Zynga, he brought us FarmVille, CityVille, and Words with Friends, launching eight hit games and reaching more than a billion users in four years.    

Pincus has turned hit-making into a repeatable system, birthing one of his favorite guiding principles that “all new fails”. Life at the Speed of Play is his framework for moving faster and massively increasing your odds of success. His insights and advice are essential in the new world of AI, where speed of testing and learning defines winners.

Bursting with wit, wisdom, and a core belief in tech’s endless capacity, each chapter of Life at the Speed of Play contains actionable takeaways based on Pincus’s unorthodox “Mark-isms” including “hire people with broken resumes,” “protect investors from themselves,” and, paradoxically, to “f*** scale” in favor of quality over quantity.

What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School for the twenty-first century, here is the essential “bible” for entrepreneurs, product managers, innovators, and anyone who has an idea—digital or analog—that they dream of turning into a reality.

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