Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed: Bing Gordon
by Scott Edward Walker on January 11th, 2012To Our Clients & Friends: Welcome to our weekly series “Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed.” Each week, we share a favorite video of a successful entrepreneur, investor or business leader on a variety of topics. This week, we present Bing Gordon, a partner at Kleiner Perkins, the Chief Creative Officer at Electronic Arts from 1998 to 2008, and a very smart investor.
In this interesting, twenty-five minute speech, Bing discusses how to be a great CEO at a consumer internet company, and his advice includes the following:
- Be curious and data-driven;
- Be a visionary (“you’re the spokesperson in chief, the communicator in chief”);
- Build a company that’s missionary, not mercenary;
- Be a coach (“define objectives and be around to help”);
- Be fast (“be the fastest person in the company”);
- Have a great executive assistant;
- Put your office in the middle;
- Set expectations for the Board members;
- Encourage your best people to be taking risks;
- Instill confidence in everyone that everything is going to be okay;
- Be as hard on yourself as you are with your young employees; and
- In addition to being the CEO, you must be the Chief Product Officer.
I hope you enjoy it. Many thanks, Scott
Tags: Bing Gordon, Electronic Arts, entrepreneur, entrepreneurs, helping entrepreneurs, Kleiner