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Podcast

Silicon Valley OG Shares Crazy Stories From Zynga Early Days + 3 Business Ideas

My First Million

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  • Zynga’s Ninja
    • Siqi Chen joined Zynga as a Director of Product after his company was acquired.
    • A month later, his boss, Eric Schienmeyer, disappeared to become a ninja. Transcript: Sam Parr Because you sold a company to Zynga back when Zynga was the shit. Did you work with Mark Pincus? What’s he like? Give me a good Zynga story. Siqi Chen Okay, I have a great story, actually. How I came to report to Mark Pincus is actually itself a great story. I have so many good Mark Pincus stories. So yeah, Zynga bought my first company, and I joined as director of product owner in studio. Wait, can you give the background on Mark? So he marks like a Silicon Valley OG. Shaan Puri Did he help fund Facebook to get off the ground? Was that his first big hit? Siqi Chen He did. So he and Reid Hoffman co-owned, bought the Six Degrees of Separation patent from a company of Six Degrees. And he angel invested in Facebook and also licensed a patent, I believe, for more stock into Facebook. Sam Parr That patent was basically the kind of the social networking patent, right? Like how we’re connected six degrees of Kevin Bacon away from each other. And I think Reed, there’s some story where Reed and him realized that if this patent got in the hands of Microsoft or some big company, that they would be able to squish innovation by a Startup by like holding this patent over their head. So they bought the patent, I believe, and just decided we’re not going to use it to stop anybody. And then they, I think, parlayed it into getting extra shares in Facebook, which is amazing. Siqi Chen I think that’s what happened. Yeah. So when I joined, I was director of products, and my girlfriend and my wife, who I recently met, moved to China for some job work thing. And I was like three months into Zynga, and I was like, I’m not really feeling it. It’s not that fun. So I told them I was going to resign and move to China. And they said, hey, why don’t we just give you this new job? You know, you can report to Eric Scheinmeyer, one of the co-founders, and basically be head of product for the company. I said, no, that sounds fun. That sounds great. So I did that. So I reported to Eric Scheinmeyer. He was a co-founder of Zynga. And what happened is a month into the job, Eric Scheinmeyer stopped showing up to work. Like, wouldn’t respond to emails, wouldn’t go to work. And I was like, what? And basically, that’s when I reported to Mark. And I was the head of products. And later, the punchline of the story is, the reason why he stopped showing up to work is I later found out that he decided to become a ninja. (Time 0:00:47)
  • Zynga’s Growth Strategy
    • Zynga hired investment bankers as product managers, prioritizing growth metrics.
    • Mark Pincus saw competitors as free R&D, confidently copying and scaling their innovations. Transcript: Siqi Chen I mean, what’s interesting on Zynga is they hired a bunch of people who are used to be investment makers to be product managers there because it was just all about the numbers going up. It was highly analytical. So I went in and just the amount of knowledge I had about growth. One of the things that really blew my mind, I think about a lot, is when I first had a conversation with Mark Pincus early on, I think maybe during the acquisition, I asked him, hey, what Do you think about this industry? It just seems really low moat. It’s hard to have a competitive moat here because it’s just so easy to enter. You build a new game and for it to expand. And how defensible is it? And I think about his answer quite a bit because his, I was like, no, this is great. I want there to be more new intrants into the space because it’s free R&D for me. And I just like, okay, that blows my mind. That is next level because he was just so confident in his ability to execute that like anyone who’s going to come in with some new idea, they can just like fast follow it and do a much better Job of growing it, which is like what they did, right? (Time 0:04:05)
  • Slide Meeting
    • Siqi Chen recounts a bizarre meeting with Slide’s founders, Max Levchin and Keith Rabois.
    • They discussed the upcoming recession, buying cheap companies, and their body fat percentages. Transcript: Siqi Chen Doing i also have a max levich and slide story uh this goes back 17 years so i don’t think they’ll mind anymore but um when i this is when i first moved to the city and i had this app on Facebook Was blowing up. And so some guy who worked with Keith Raboy, Keith Raboy was, I think the CEO of Slide at the time, said, Hey, we like your app. You want to meet, you know, the team. I said, Oh my God, this is amazing. I’m a year out of college. It could be Max Lepchin. So I go in and we had a meeting at noon and I will go in the slide office and no one was there. Everyone’s out for lunch. And I talked to receptionists. I said, hey, I’m here to meet Max and Keith. And they’re like, oh, they’re at lunch. They’ll be back in half an hour. I said, okay. So we sit there for half an hour and then they walk in and they act like they kind of forgot there was a meeting. But we go in the meeting room and we just start talking about what I wanted to do with this app I built, whether I wanted to build it independently or maybe like join slide. And they asked me how much I wanted for it. I said, well, I have a co-founder. So $2 million, I would probably do it. The million dollars each, I kind of lasted the number. I’m like, what? Like I looked at the valuation on app data and like the amount of money we’re generating. It’s not a huge ass, but it’s fine. It’s too much. My friend that Heal built Superpoke, which I recently bought. And they said verbatim, you know, we bought Superpoke and he’s easily the 18th or 19th most important person in the company now out of a company of like 60 people. I said, okay, that’s a compelling offer. And then I said, and I said, yeah, this is probably not gonna happen. And I said, you know, we’re profitable. We were making a bunch of money from ads. So it’s cool if you don’t want to buy it. And they said, well, you shouldn’t confuse revenue for success. And at this point, I was just like really upset. So I said, well, you guys shouldn’t confuse the lack of revenue for success either. And then they got like kind of upset. So then it got really weird. Oh, I forgot to mention, like I just started a meeting. They said something like, hey, you know, there’s a recession coming up to each other. And they’re like, yeah, there’s a recession coming up. And then he said, I can’t wait to buy all these shitty companies for cheap. Like we’re in a room. And we’re like, what? What the hell? Shaan Puri Dude, this meeting goes in like the Silicon Valley Autistic Hall of Fame. Siqi Chen And then, at the end, Keith was like, hey, Keith, hey, Max, what was your body fat percentage in the PayPal days? And Max was like, 8%. And I was like, yeah. (Time 0:07:40)
  • Contextual Email Client
    • Build an AI-powered email client that allows prompt customization and training for contextual organization.
    • Current email categorization solutions lack effective training capabilities. Transcript: Sam Parr Jump in with ideas, opportunities. You’re an idea guy. What do you think are some cool ideas or opportunities that you would want to be working on right now? Siqi Chen So I built a Zapier and it’s categorizes my emails with GPT-4 into different labels. So I have this very long prompt in automation, and I also use a protocol SaneBox, which also does something similar to filters my emails. But there’s been no good version of email management software that I’m able to customize a prompt and train it. So I want to say, hey, here’s the things related to my kids. And there’s no keywords necessarily. You have to kind of read it. It’s like some email to my babysitter or an email from the school. And if it’s related to my kids, I want you to put it in this folder. And the idea is I want an inbox for like these different contexts. And so people are doing different kinds of email categorization. What’s missing is there’s no way to train it. So I think building some way for a product to understand all of the content about your life and organize your stuff, starting with inbox, will be really handy for me. And I’ve seen at least 12 companies do this, and no one has done a really great job (Time 0:14:20)
  • Fake Dating App
    • Create a fake dating app filled with attractive AI-generated profiles that are always interested in the user.
    • Monetize by linking these fake profiles to real Instagram accounts. Transcript: Siqi Chen Got a third one, which is a lot spicier, but this is not a venture-buckable thing, but just Character AI and Chai and all of these chatbots that people are using for sexy chats. I think someone could, and these things print money by the way, they immediately generate millions of dollars a month. I thought if I were just in it just to print money, the thing I would make is something that is kind of tender, but basically everything is AI generated. So it’s not like, oh you’re creating a robot, but it’s a fake dating app where everyone is attractive and is super into you. And then you can like, then you can go off of your Tinder app and go on Instagram and have an Instagram account on actual Instagram. It’s owned by the person that you met on your fake Tinder app. (Time 0:16:38)
  • AI in the Adult Industry
    • Siqi Chen reveals that many dating apps and webcam platforms employ outsourced men to act as women.
    • These companies possess some of the most advanced chatbot technology. Transcript: Siqi Chen Yeah, so transformative for OnlyFans, right? Like, I don’t know if you’ve read, but like there’s, you know, you’re a big influence for OnlyFans and you have an army of 100 people who are like typers or chatters, right? Sam Parr And the funny thing about them is they’re not just chatters that are flirting. They’re also basically salesmen. So what they’re doing is they’re chatting to try to upsell you until that get by this video, by this photo. I don’t know exactly by the subscription, whatever the thing is. But they’re they’re not just customer support. They’re actually sales, but they need to come across like they’re the original person, which is just hilarious. Siqi Chen What do you think that office environment is like? So I know someone who works in that, and it’s just normal. It is like the most boring, cubicle, normal office environment that you’ve ever seen. (Time 0:18:58)
  • Paywalled Research Access
    • Siqi Chen is conducting medical research and finds accessing paywalled articles difficult.
    • He suggested to Sam Altman that research agents should be able to use user credentials for full-text access. Transcript: Sam Parr Business ideas or opportunities that you think are exciting right now? Yeah. Siqi Chen I mean, I actually asked Sam Altman to make this, but I don’t know how long they’re going to take, but I’m doing a lot of medical research. What? Sam Parr What did you say? He asked Sam Altman to make this product, he said. Siqi Chen Oh, I thought you were like, oh, you had Sam Altman make a list for you to talk about. I was like, that’s… No. Oh, no, no. We’re not that tight. But no, I was doing a bunch of medical research and I noticed that you can’t access paywalled articles. And so I really wish someone would make a version of deep research that lets you enter your paywall credentials so you can get full-text access. And this goes further. I think there’s just so much data behind auth walls, paywalls, that you can’t get to. And you can only search on the open web. And the more private data you can get access to, the more useful these agents become. (Time 0:26:40)
  • Touchy Feely
    • Interpersonal Dynamics, known as “Touchy Feely,” teaches relationship building through two communication tracks (content and relationship).
    • Five levels of communication, from ritual to mutual emotional self-disclosure, deepen connections and build trust. Transcript: Sam Parr We do a quick detour? We were at a dinner once and you talked about some, I think it was a Stanford class you took called Touchy Feely, or that’s the code name for it. I don’t know. And it’s something about communication and relationships. And I remember you said this really great thing at the dinner. But this was now many years ago, and I don’t remember it exactly. But can you say that bit again? I want to hear it again, and I think a lot of people might benefit from it. Shaan Puri By the way, Siki, how old are you? I’m 41, I think. You look like you could be 22 or 41. I have no idea. Yeah, Asian no raisin. Let’s go. Siqi Chen Yeah, so I took, actually now twice, I took class again since we taught this class that was based on the Stanford Business School class called Interpersonal Dynamics, which is the highly Rated and most popular class in Stanford Business School. It’s taught by a professor called Carol Robbins, and it’s generally known as touchy-feely. And it’s famous for every participant at some point will like cry in the class. But Carol Robbins is now a co-founder of a group called Leaders in Tech, which provides the same class for tech leaders. So one of the things that you get taught in this class is, so the purpose of the class is to teach you how to relate to people and build connections with other people because people work With other people. And one of the most useful frameworks I got from that class is how to think about your connection with other people and how to develop that connection. And so the two frameworks to connect is one is the two tracks of interpersonal communication and the five levels of it. So when you’re talking with anyone else, there is two tracks. There’s a content track and there’s a relationship track. So the content track is filled with facts and a relationship track is filled with emotion and a relationship track is what is filled and what has to be filled for a relationship to become Closer and for trust to increase. And the way you fill each of these tracks is through the five levels of communication. And the idea is when you are talking to someone, there’s five levels at which you communicate of increasing vulnerability and death. So level one is what’s called ritual. And that is, hey, how’s it going? Hey, right? It doesn’t really say anything. We’re just, it’s just ritualized greeting. Level two is extended ritual. So that is, how’s the weather? How’s the game? Right? It’s a longer version of, hey, how’s it going? Level three is content. So these are facts. How’s the project? Is it late? What are we going to do with this particular idea? Level four is emotional self-disclosure. So that is when you say something that discloses how you are feeling emotionally at the time. I feel sad. I feel angry. And there’s a lot of thought about level four because people think they’re doing level four, but they’re not. And that’s a very common thing that’s unique to the English language, which we can talk about. That was a fairly interesting insight. So level five is the deepest one. And level five is mutual emotional self-disclosure. And it is when you are expressing the emotion that you have about the other person. I feel angry at you. I feel proud of you. I feel disappointed by you. That’s the deepest level of communication you can have with another person. And the content track is only filled by things from level one to three. And the relationship track is only filled by level four and five. And we are taught to really not use level four and five in professional settings, but if you want to build a relationship, level four and five is kind of the only way you can do it. And so a lot of the training is about breaking past the barrier, the uncomfortableness of engaging level four and level five communication. And you basically sit in a circle with 12 people for four days straight until you like, so you can observe the impact of doing level four or five and not doing level four or five and how you Are able to be closer to someone or further away from someone in emotional distance. (Time 0:53:28)
  • Expressing Emotions
    • The English language makes expressing genuine emotions harder because “I feel that” or “I feel like” preclude actual emotions.
    • Learn to express emotions directly using “I feel [emotion]” to foster deeper connections. Transcript: Sam Parr Of information. One question, Siki, you said something about the English language making it harder. What did you mean by that? Siqi Chen So what you start seeing when you’re in this class with these 12 people and you start realizing that, oh, like, I really only feel closer and I get to know someone better when they say I Feel emotion, I feel sad, I feel angry when this happened. And I feel distance when they’re expressing that emotion but not saying it. You can tell on their faces that they’re pissed off, and it becomes scarier. So then you start learning that, oh, I need to say I feel. The thing about the English language is that we say I feel often without expressing any emotion at all. And that’s sort of a quirk that’s kind of unique to English. So when you say I feel that or I feel like, it is actually grammatically impossible for the next word to be an emotion. I feel that you’re an asshole is not an emotion. I feel like this is fucked is not an emotion. I feel sad is an emotion. I feel happy is an emotion. And we’re not used to saying that because the word feel is used, has been disused, misused for other purposes. And so we just often is unconsciously, once you see it, you can’t only see it. People, I ask people, it’s showed emotion. And they say, I feel like, I feel that. And it’s never an emotion. And it’s very, very hard to change the habit. Do you guys do this where like, Sean, in particular, (Time 1:02:40)
  • Guerrilla Marketing
    • Siqi Chen held a billboard on a freeway promoting Runway, which generated viral marketing.
    • The billboard read, “Honk if you hate your finance platform.” Transcript: Sam Parr The story of this, Iki? Siqi Chen This happened last week. Our marketing team is run by Cal Freeze, who was a YC founder of a company called Taika. He was the COO there. And we also have this woman named julie uh fritas uh who was at shopify and uh i was in the office and i just saw them come out in a meeting kind of giggling and they got out this piece of cardboard And started like writing this i’m like what is this like oh you know how like you know you you didn’t want to do a billboard we decided just like create a bill for ourselves and just hold On a freeway. And I’m like, that is such a cracked idea. Of course, that’s going to go viral. And I said, I’ll do it. It’s like, you will? I’m like, yeah, I’ll do it. So they’re like, okay. So we walked outside. We found a freeway entrance. And I was just holding the sign. What does it say, by the way? It says, honk if hate your finance platform, getrunway.com. (Time 1:11:21)
  • ElevenLabs Growth
    • Siqi Chen highlights ElevenLabs, an AI audio company, as an example of rapid growth.
    • They achieved hundreds of millions in ARR within two years, impressing him with their commercialization speed. Transcript: Sam Parr AI and Chai, like some of these AI companies that are crushing it, just printing money right now. Are there any other companies that just have blown your mind in terms of how well they’re doing or how fast they’re growing right now? Like maybe AI, maybe not AI? Siqi Chen I love Labs. I’m just following that company, but they do basically all of the audio, translation, generation, sometimes defakes. And when I met them, there were like less than 10 people. They were just, they were ex-Google. They’re working on the foundation of all technology. And they are now, I don’t know what they last announced, but they’re in the hundreds of millions of AR in like a year, two, a year and a half or so. And what blew my mind is I never seen a group of very good technologists that were also so good at commercializing the technology so rapidly. Shaan Puri They’re at hundreds of millions? Hundreds, hundreds. I feel like this just came out. No, no, no. We should have invested in this. It’s a year and a half, right? They dubbed our podcast. Sam Parr Remember that clip where they were like, you’re speaking Hindi now? And it was amazing. And I DM’d them and we were like, hey, this is really cool. So stupid of us not to have pursued that more. Siqi Chen Yeah, there’s that graph, right, for Wwise and the fastest growing SaaS companies. And I think Cursor is up there. I am fairly convinced that Eleva Labs is actually faster than all of them. (Time 1:13:40)