Bing Gordon

Advisor & Chief Product Officer, Kleiner Perkins · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

investorexecutiveacademic@bingfish ↗LinkedIn ↗kleinerperkins.com/people/advisors/bing-gordon ↗Wikipedia ↗

Gordon co-founded and served as Chief Creative Officer at Electronic Arts before joining Kleiner Perkins in 2008. Over several decades, he has backed and served on the boards of major tech and gaming companies, including Amazon, Zynga, Take-Two Interactive, and Duolingo.

20statements → 6claims → 2claims resolved → 3.85/5average certainty → 2.25/5average debate potential → 4.4/5argument clarity · the sources → 29said about them ↓

1 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 4 not checkable as stated how the 6 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 5 assertions · 1 opinion · 13 insights · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 6 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, and 4 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Bing argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported

Gordon: Amazon AWS, Kindle, and Prime were shaped in key board meetings

“I remember the board meeting on Amazon where we first talked About what become Amazon Web Services, AWS. I remember the first time, I remember a series of meetings that led to the presentation of Kindle. I remember a series of meetings that led to the presenta…”

Bing Gordon Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 11:58 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

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1

none yet certainty 2

100% certainty 3

75% certainty 4

none yet certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

4.4 / 5 directness 4.7 · coherence 4.5 · precision 4.3 · compression 3.8

answered every one of 12 assessed questions directly

This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →

How they sound: speaking style how? →

207 words/min while actually speaking · 18 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,060 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 2/10

pushed back at the host 2/10

setup questions received 65%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 14:57“I had Peter Fenton on the show recently, and he said, with regards to price sensitivity, never to turn down a company based on valuation with it being a mental trap. I'm intrigued …” ▶ 8:04“I'm always very confused with the dichotomy of being a VC and being a board member as to what extent you should be the cheerleader and to what extent you should be the realist. How…” ▶ 6:06“You said about kind of when things don't go right, there's not much you can do there. How do you address time allocation now with Kleiner in a portfolio?”

What they said20 What others said29 Episodes1

Everything Bing Gordon said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight

Gordon: Most boardroom attendees never say anything useful

“You know, my experience in boards, most people who sit in a boardroom don't say a single useful thing, you know, so if there's only five useful things, if the goal, the high watermark is five useful things in three hours, and when there's five board members, n…”

Bing Gordon Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 13:46 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

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Gordon: No successful startup investor completely ignores valuation

“I don't know any successful investor in companies who invest that way.”

Bing Gordon Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 16:20 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

Insight

Gordon: VCs cannot help failing CEOs, only help successful ones scale

“You can't much help them when they fail, but how do you help them scale when they succeed?”

Bing Gordon Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 5:43 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

Insight

Gordon: Great investors optimize for expected value, not loss avoidance

“And Mark, I think great investors think about expected value, not loss avoidance.”

Bing Gordon Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 6:59 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

Insight

Gordon: Only execute M&A deals if willing to pay double

“My math is never do a merger and acquisition deal if you wouldn't pay double. Because the ones that work, basically a year later, they're twice as valuable as you thought they were. And the ones that don't work, the amount you spend probably doesn't matter.”

Bing Gordon Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 15:19 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

Insight

Gordon: Overpaying by 2x cuts a VC fund's at-bats in half

“The negative about that is most of the things that you think you're big game hunting for don't work out, and if you can do 30 investments in a fund and you overpay by double, and there's x percent are gonna be big winners, now you've cut your at-bats in half.”

Bing Gordon Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 16:00 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

Insight

Gordon: Controversial startup deals are better VC investments than obvious ones

“The other thing that we've discovered is we go around the table and it's controversial. That's often a good thing. And at that point, we depend on one person being a fervent champion on behalf of the company. But if it's really obvious to us, it's probably obv…”

Bing Gordon Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 18:09 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

Insight

Gordon: Investor board members must be the primary guardians of cash

“The investor board members just half It has to be the most attentive to cash because creative people and strategists don't always think about cash.”

Bing Gordon Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 5:47 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

Insight

Gordon: Pure investors focus on riding winners over fixing losers

“Most people who are pure investors tend to ride winners rather than trying to fix losers.”

Bing Gordon Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 6:38 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

Insight

Gordon: Creativity requires confidence built on optimism and earned success

“Psychologists can prove that creativity is enhanced with confidence. And confidence is built with optimism and with earned success.”

Bing Gordon Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 9:17 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

Insight

Gordon: Board members must ask hard questions without being hostile

“So I'd say in general, it's ask hard questions, but don't be an asshole.”

Bing Gordon Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 9:30 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

Insight

Gordon: The hardest operator-to-board-member transition is relinquishing control

“Being a board member for somebody who's been an operator, the hardest thing to do is to realize that you're not in charge anymore.”

Bing Gordon Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 10:19 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

Insight

Gordon: Optimal three-hour board meetings yield five actionable management ideas

“Board meetings are rated most highly when people are energized and when the management team takes away a couple of good, useful ideas. So I think in a three hour board meeting, five ideas that the manager team writes down and tries to figure out what to deal w…”

Bing Gordon Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 10:55 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

Opinion

Gordon: Mike Maples provides game-changing insights in every board meeting

“So I love Mike Maples from Floodgate. He's been, I've been on a couple boards with him. What he does is so well, he has high empathy for CEOs. It seems in every board meeting, he says at least one thing that's game changing.”

Bing Gordon Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 13:24 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

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Gordon: Fred Wilson was crucial early at Zynga despite dialing in

“Fred Wilson is kind of the crown prince of New York venture capital and a great blogger. He was extremely helpful in the early days of Zynga, even though he was mostly dialed in. He's just such a crisp, sharp thinker.”

Bing Gordon Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 14:13 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

Assertion Partly supported

Gordon: USV led edtech discourse years before making edtech investments

“And then Albert Wenger, he created the meme of hacking education, which I'm a fanboy of. And that was probably in oh nine or oh 10. He convened leading thinkers. And interestingly enough, they didn't invest in any learning and Companies for several years after…”

Bing Gordon Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 14:27 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

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Gordon: Kleiner Perkins requires a single passionate partner to champion every deal

“And, you know, but for us, there's got to be one person who pounds the table.”

Bing Gordon Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 18:56 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

Insight

Gordon: Analytical strategy documents disable the creative process

“The way to hand off strategies to creative people is Was not to write an analytical doc. He said his secret was to write a short story. So I've taken that forever that I try to get creative people engaged in primary research, basically see customers that if I …”

Bing Gordon Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 20:48 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

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Gordon: Human-powered robotics will be a spectacularly big industry

“And in general, I think human powered robotics is going to be spectacularly big.”

Bing Gordon Nov 27, 2017 ▶ 22:50 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

Assertion Supported

Gordon: Amazon AWS, Kindle, and Prime were shaped in key board meetings

The other half of the tape: Bing Gordon's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 27 times in 8 episodes on 20VC. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 14 Severin Hacker 4 Joe Fernandez 4 Luis von Ahn 2

Statements about Bing Gordon, by other people (2)

Opinion

Hacker: Bing Gordon is a rare product-obsessed VC

“Bing is actually great. You know, Bing is, is, is a rare type of investor because he is very product minded. You know, he uses the product and he gives us a lot of feedback on the product. He's obsessed with product. Most investors are more, you know, they're …”

Severin Hacker May 19, 2025 ▶ 1:28:35 Duolingo Co-Founder, Severin Hacker: How AI Impacts the Future of Work and Education · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Disclosure

Zynga purchased its corporate headquarters despite non-obvious deal economics

“The company bought our headquarters, and Bing has been a big proponent of that, and every time that we were making the purchase, the economics were not obvious.”

Mark Pincus Nov 20, 2017 ▶ 8:49 20VC: Zynga's Mark Pincus on When To Ride Your Winners and Cut Your Losers, Why People With "Broken Resumes" Make The Best Hires & The 2 Biggest Lies Told In Silicon Valley By Founders and VCs