Zynga Founder: Consumer Is Not Investible Right Now - Thats Why You Should Build It
Y Combinator · 40:42 · 3 weeks ago
Although investors currently consider consumer technology uninvestable, the present moment offers a massive opportunity for founders to build revolutionary products. By leveraging AI to make services free and abundant, and by staying deeply involved in product details, founders can create the next generation of internet staples.
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Proven, Better, New — A framework for minimizing risk and maximizing product impact:
- Proven — Copy established, successful features to save development time .
- Better — Improve speed or ease of use, ensuring an immediate upgrade for users .
- New — Add one novel feature to test, while remaining ready to discard it if it fails .
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Founder Mode — A leadership style where the founder stays in the room and involved in the details rather than abdicating to a management layer .
- It grants founders permission to trust their own instincts rather than just managing board expectations .
- It encourages an environment of intellectual honesty where the founder can pivot based on what they learn .
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The AI cost curve — Current struggles with AI adoption are largely due to inefficient usage and treating compute as a scarce resource .
- Building for the future means preparing for a time when compute costs essentially hit zero .
- Early experiments should be viewed as "squandering" tokens to find the next breakthrough .
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The power of free — Offering products for free has consistently disrupted markets, historically enabling companies to capture value where others charged money .
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How does the "Proven, Better, New" framework help product development?