Bing Gordon
Advisor & Chief Product Officer, Kleiner Perkins. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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.
1shows
1appearances
20statements
2resolved
1supported
0contradicted
50%fully supported
29said about them ↓ Everything Bing Gordon said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
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…”
Gordon: No successful startup investor completely ignores valuation
“I don't know any successful investor in companies who invest that way.”
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?”
Gordon: Great investors optimize for expected value, not loss avoidance
“And Mark, I think great investors think about expected value, not loss avoidance.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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 …”
Gordon: Human-powered robotics will be a spectacularly big industry
“And in general, I think human powered robotics is going to be spectacularly big.”
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…”
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 across the shows. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 14Severin Hacker 4Joe Fernandez 4Luis von Ahn 2
Statements about Bing Gordon, by other people (2)
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 …”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 27
2026 3 mentions in 1 episode
2025 5 mentions in 1 episode
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
2018 15 mentions in 3 episodes 5 per episode
- 20VC: How To Analyse Platform Shifts Effectively, The Effects Of Not Having Free and Open Distribution & The Right Way To Think About Board Composition with Neil Young, Founder & CEO @ N3twork
- 20VC: Why Serial Entrepreneurship is Overrated, Why You Will Get Fired If You Listen To Your Board & How To Construct Investor Update Emails The Right Way with Joe Fernandez, Founder & CEO @ Joymode
- 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
2017 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Duolingo's Luis von Ahn on How CEO's Can Scale With The Company, How VC Herd Mentality In The Valley Really Works and How Chatbots & AI Play A Role In The Future of EdTech
- 20VC: Why Convertible Notes Are Ridiculous, Why Party Rounds Are Bad For Both Founder and Investor & Why Pro-Rata Rights Are A Mess with David Waxman, Founding Partner @ TenOneTen Ventures
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Bing's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Advisor & Chief Product Officer, Kleiner Perkins | 1 | 20 | 50% 1/2 | full record on 20VC → |