Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Don't lose sight of user delight.
I've been good at product entrepreneuring.
I seek out a lot of advice from other CEOs.
I’ve grown a lot, and I’m learning every week.
I've grown a lot, and I'm learning every week.
Video games and outdoor sports - that was my childhood.
Not having a clear goal leads to death by a thousand compromises.
My approach is that you have to earn the respect of people you work with.
I need to aspire to be a great CEO and not just a great product engineer.
Get five or six of your smartest friends in a room and ask them to rate your idea.
The strength of your company is how wide a variety of people can be successful in it.
My only agenda is, I would like to see mainstream America more empowered to set an agenda.
We did anything possible just to get revenues so that we could grow and be a real business.
I think you're defined as a company by what you choose to do and what you choose not to do.
Zynga made social gaming and play a worldwide phenomenon, and we remain the industry leader.
You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers.
The more you can be self-aware and honest about yourself, the more you can cultivate that in other people.
Clearly as you move to being a public company, probably even more than growth, there is a huge value based on predictability.
In my early career, there were more negative lessons than positive ones. But I don't think I was looking for the positives enough.
You are as good as your product. When you are used and loved by everyone, your brand equity is high. When you are not, you're not.
If you give people really big jobs to the point that they're scared, they have way more fun and they improve their game much faster.
The only way people will have the trust to give their all to their job is if they feel like their contribution is recognized and valued.
It takes sometimes years in the market to get the tuning to the right place where your game is as compelling at level 100 as it was at level 10.
I got involved early on in social media - I created one of the first social networks - and for me, social gaming was a natural evolution of that.
I like to bet on people, especially those who have taken risks and failed in some way, because they have more real-world experience. And they’re humble.
I like to bet on people, especially those who have taken risks and failed in some way, because they have more real-world experience. And they're humble.
There's a lot of opportunity for game developers to show value to people, things they want to spend money on. I think offers are just another kind of ads.
I was in banking because it was high-paying, intense, a real meritocracy, and the afterwork part was fun, but I found everything to do with banking so boring.
As an entrepreneur, you can have an instinct, and your instinct is right, but your idea you're substantiating that into is wrong, and the world is not ready for it.
I think it is rewarding to manage, but it is not what I am passionate about. Managing more than 200 people, maybe 150 people, isn't fun to me and is not my skill set.
People were hanging out in these places, and just like at cocktail parties, they needed something to do together. I thought, 'How can we fit games into someone's life?'
You can manage 50 people through the strength of your personality and lack of sleep. You can touch them all in a week and make sure they're all pointed in the right direction.
I think we live in a unique time - the verbs that make up our online and mobile lives haven't been completely invented or imagined for us. That was kind of a life path I was on.
The first rule (of investing) for me is don't have rules. You find one amazing investment and that's all that matters. If you pick the right body of water, you might not need a boat.
In a world of shared data services, where you have third-party networks selling ads on your behalf and displaying them in real time to your users, it's very difficult for you to control everything.
When you go to our political system, I feel like it's intentionally kept in the last century. In every other facet of life, we turn to social media for instant response time, complete transparency.
From the beginning... I wanted to build a company that could sustain not for two years or four years or even ten years but be something that really matters over time the way Amazon and Google and others have.
There are people who have formed guilds in 'World of Warcraft' who may have played together for years before actually meeting, but because of the adventures they had together, they formed really deep-rooted friendships.
We need a modern people's lobby that empowers all of us to choose our leaders and set our agenda. Imagine voting for a president we're truly excited about. Imagine a government that promotes capitalism and civil rights.
We're busy people; we need media that's multitask-able. I want games I can play while I'm watching television. 70% of Americans are on the Internet while they watch TV. We all multitask now, and we need media to reflect that.
I believe in the opportunities for social gaming. It's overlapping with mobile gaming and lots of video gaming, but it's still different. It's all getting more blurry as hardcore games and console games talk about being social.
I think failing is the best way to keep you grounded, curious, and humble. Success is dangerous because often you don't understand why you succeeded. You almost always know why you've failed. You have a lot of time to think about it.
I'm fearful the Democratic Party is already moving too far to the left. I want to push the Democratic Party to be more in touch with mainstream America, and on some issues, that's more left, and on some issues it might be more right.
When I entered the workforce, I was frustrated. When you're starting your career, somebody else is 'The Man' or 'The Woman.' They go into a room and make the decision, not you. You don't feel empowered. I wanted to break through that.
Even if I'd wanted to work at Goldman Sachs, they weren't going to hire me, because I was saying things like, 'That's a dumb question' when I was asked something stupid in the interviews. I just didn't have a lot of respect for authority.
We can't wait until elections to fight for what we care about. We can't hope for a benevolent leader who may choose to listen to us. We need a network that lets the best ideas and leaders rise to the top through an open, inclusive democratic process.
I think I give myself high marks being an entrepreneur and entrepreneuring a big idea about how popular social gaming could be. But I learned a lot of hard lessons on the CEO front... and do not give myself very high marks as a CEO of a large-scale company.
The art of it is, the more we can bring complex game mechanics to a mass market, the more engaging the games will be. But at the same time, we have to simplify everything: the mass market has a lower attention span; they're not seeking that experience from the outset.
I regularly encourage employees to break rules. I also say to employees that leadership starts with complaining and dissatisfaction. But it doesn't stop there. It comes from saying you're dissatisfied with something and then fixing it and making it better for everybody.
There are people who want the comfort and structure of a job where they're given tasks and told what to do. I think it's actually a minority of people. The majority of people don't want that, but I'd say that the companies I've built are full of people with something to prove.