Portrait of Bing Gordon
At the end of our recent session, I had the pleasure of welcoming my good friend Bing Gordon as a guest speaker. Bing is renowned for being one of Silicon Valley’s first creative directors during his tenure at Electronic Arts. Additionally, he forged a significant career as a technology venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and served on the board of directors of Amazon for 14 years, where he notably coined the term ” Prime” for one of Amazon’s flagship services.
Bing shared his ideas about MIT students’ pursuit of “first principles,” sparking an engaging discussion.
Curious about his encounters with other tech luminaries, I asked him if he had ever encountered Sam Altman, Steve Jobs or other Silicon Valley figures, and if he could share any observations about their subject. Bing responded by drawing a parallel with historical figures such as Thomas Edison, suggesting that those who become famous are often as good at self-promotion as they are at their achievements.
Bing Gordon Presentation Series
Then he made this interesting contrast between MIT and Harvard:
“People at MIT aren’t as good at self-promotion…MIT tends to be very good at thinking about principles upfront and building from the molecular level. Harvard students are the best at self-promotion, they sort of recruit for it.
“MIT students, your job is to always learn first principles,” he added, suggesting that by contrast, Harvard students are trying to “learn modesty” by seeking to balance this self-effort. -promotion. “You have to (also) embrace self-promotion. And the self-promotion process has become very technical. So this is the perfect time for an MIT mindset to become good at this. Because it’s not TV anymore. These are online media, which are very, very technical in nature.
For those who don’t know, first principles are an Aristotelian concept of finding axioms or ideas that do not follow from any other proposition, theory or hypothesis.
Later, as a former chief marketing officer, Bing used the example of Jeff Bezos’ career path to talk about the politics inherent in the industry. “I’m sure there’s a lesson in perseverance or insightful feedback that they can learn … and stuff that’s not in the books, that no one knows,” he said. “It’s a top secret thing.”
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA – July 9, 2008: The Great Dome of the Massachusetts Institute of … [+]
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA – June 24, 2022: Close-up of Harvard University logo on red background … [+]
Bing Gordon in action
He then delved into the nature of the relationship between a manager and a board of directors; see if you can follow this line of advice:
“When you start a business, don’t optimize for valuation, maximize for mentors on the board. Most investors are not helpful. And they will all claim to be useful… (the winning strategy could be to) take a lower valuation, to attract people who will be useful.
Bing Gordon
Delving deeper into the dynamics we’ve seen in Fortune 500 companies, Bing didn’t hesitate to analyze leadership positions in depth:
“Never hire an intelligent but immoral CFO,” he said. “A CFO can use numbers to lie.”
On the other hand, he also outlined some board thoughts that could play a role in the companies’ problems.
“Board members tend to have this concept of ‘adult supervision,'” he said.
“And that’s another way of saying they want to fire you.” Board members, when they call for “adult supervision,” hire people with big resumes, who almost always fail.
Interesting stuff.
This is another one of those moments where our students received incredible practical, real-world advice from someone with great credentials in the field, as well as opportunities to think about their careers in a new way. We’re going to hear more about this course soon, but Bing’s speech, I thought, packed a lot into just a little bit of time.