20VC: Kleiner Perkins' Bing Gordon on Lessons From Serving On Amazon & Zynga's Board, Why The Best Investors Are Good Listeners and Sceptical Optimists & The Most Important Value Add A VC Can Provide
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 27 November 2017
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bing Gordon is a Partner and Chief Product Officer @ Kleiner Perkins, one of the world’s most prestigious venture funds with prior investments in the likes of Google, Amazon, Twitter, Square and Airbnb just to name a few. At Kleiner Bing has either worked with or invested in the likes of Spotify, Zynga, Amazon, Twitter and Magic Leap, just to name a few. Bing also serves on the boards of Zynga, Zazzle, N3twork and until March this year, Amazon. Prior to Kleiner, Bing had been a long-time executive at Electronic Arts, beginning with EA’s founding in 1982 with initial funding from Kleiner Perkins. He was chief creative officer at EA from 1998 to 2008 and previously headed EA marketing and product development.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Bing made the move from Chief Creative Officer at EA to Partner @ Kleiner Perkins?
2.) What were Bing's biggest lessons from sitting on the boards of Amazon and Zynga and working with Jeff Bezos and Mark Pincus? What is the most important value-add that a VC should bring? What question must all new board members ask themselves?
3.) Why does Bing believe there are two types of investors in VC? How does Bing determine whether it is right to fix losers or ride winners? How does Bing look to balance between being the cheerleader or critical analyst to the CEO?
4.) What are the signs of truly great and productive board meetings? From Bing's vast experience, which VCs does Bing most like to sit on a board with and why? Which board meeting sticks out in Bing's memory as being of particular significance and why?
5.) What mentality do all great investors have when entering deals? What are the two commonalities of people that are largely right in their choices? How important a role does valuation play for Bing when evaluation potential opportunities?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Bing’s Fave Book: Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking)
Bing’s Most Recent Investment: N3twork
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Bing on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Starting today with some very exciting news. The 20 minute VC now has its very own app. |
| 0:04.9 | After many thousands of requests, there's now a centralized home for all things 20 VC. |
| 0:09.7 | So you can easily access the resources mentioned in the show. You can tag episodes into themes and |
| 0:14.3 | firms, so you can always go back to them. And most importantly, for me to bring you better shows, |
| 0:18.7 | you can rate the episode. And then I can learn what you really like and what you don't, and bring you the best content consistently. |
| 0:24.3 | That's really important for me. All you have to do is search for 20 VC on the app store, and you |
| 0:28.9 | can find it, and this is all due to the brilliance of Mr. Jason Humphreys, a phenomenal developer, |
| 0:33.2 | and we're so grateful to him for all he's done in putting this together. However, to the show today, |
| 0:41.9 | and what a phenomenal guest we have in store. You might remember we had Mark Pinkus on the show last Monday. If you haven't listened to that, then that really is a must. But that show was all due to the |
| 0:46.0 | intro of this individual, Mr. Bing Gordon, partner and chief product officer at Kleiner Perkins, |
| 0:50.9 | one of the world's most prestigious venture funds, with prior investments in the likes of Google, Amazon, Twitter, |
| 0:56.6 | Square, Airbnb, just to name a few. At Kleiner, Bing has either worked with or invested in the likes of Spotify, |
| 1:02.8 | Zinger, Amazon, Twitter and Magic Leap, just to name a few. And Bing also serves on the boards of Zinger, |
| 1:08.0 | Zazel and Network, and until March this year, Amazon. |
| 1:11.2 | Prior to Klinek, Bing had been a long-time executive at Electronic Arts, beginning with |
| 1:15.1 | EA's founding in 1982, with initial funding from Kleiner. |
| 1:18.5 | He was chief creative officer at EA from 1998-2008 and previously headed EA marketing and product |
| 1:24.4 | development. |
| 1:24.8 | I'd also want to say a big thank you to write at Outpost Games |
| 1:28.0 | for the intro to Bing today, without which this episode would not have been possible. But before we |
| 1:32.2 | dive into the show today, as I've said before in past episodes, after I had Josh at Raden on the show, |
| 1:36.7 | I bought a Raden, and we've discussed some of their awesome features previously, but there are also |
... |
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