How Leaders Lead with David Novak · 2026-10-01 · 69 min · 12,262 words

#311: Mark Pincus, Founder & Former CEO, Zynga – Trust your instincts, but vet your ideas

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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of How Leaders Lead with David Novak. Today's guest is Mark Pinkis, the founder and former CEO of Zynga. Now in 2007, Mark had a gut feeling that adults would play games on their phones if they were just woven into their daily lives. On that instinct, he founded Zynga and built the biggest games of the early internet, including Farm Bill, Words with Friends, and Zynga poker. Four years later, they had over a billion.

users. So it's safe to say that Mark's instincts were right. In this conversation, you'll learn exactly how Mark got there and all the lessons and mistakes he's learned from along the way. Enjoy this conversation with David and Mark and I will see you at the end of the episode for the debrief. You've spent a great deal of your career making games played by hundreds of millions of people.

But I understand, you know, that that that the the only game you really play these days is chess. Why is that? One thing I try to do is is just never, I never want to force myself to use an app or play a game. I don't want this to feel like work. I want it to always feel like play.

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