Tribe

Tribe tried to do everything and never picked one use case. Mark Pincus's social network built around urban tribes had an idea people loved, but after seeing how big social networking could be he tried to do it all. D30 retention was terrible, and he calls it a sinking speedboat.

Zynga later began at what he calls a 1,000-foot ambition, a Facebook poker game, even though people thought it showed he had no dignity at 41. "The more ambitious you are, the more humble you should be and the smaller place you should be willing to start."

Sub Club▶ 25:55

Treat the new idea as probably wrong and keep several more ready. Pincus's rule of thumb is that instincts are right 95% of the time but ideas are right at best 25% of the time. He says a Tribe-era team that tested more ideas around its instinct would have changed its odds.

He imagines telling his 2003 self that one instinct was a year ahead of a $1.6 trillion company, and that the Tribes idea was effectively Reddit. His advice is to start from the premise that the new idea will likely fail and have four others queued to test.

Sub Club▶ 14:26