Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Bing Gordon's Talk at GSB

Bing Gordon, former Chief Creative Officer and co-founder of EA and General Partner at KPCB, came to speak at GSB last Thursday.

I met him when he and Marc Pincus (founder of Zynga) came to give a talk at Stanford's engineering school last quarter. I really enjoyed that talk and the concept of "digital skyscrapers".

Some great stories and tips from Bing:

When he graduated from Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), he had three goals in mind: developing people, designing organizational process, and making money. Not bad goals! What are my goals? I think they are: building amazing products that people love, building great organizations, making money, and make the world more fair.

I always have a love hate relationship with video games, sometimes feeling it's mental porn like the tabloids - a waste of time. At other times, I think they are good as long as they make people happy. Bing had an interesting theory. He quoted some research saying that games are a key driver of human evolution!

Bing also gave this great career advice that you want to join an org where everything is measured by metrics. You don't want to join a company that doesn't have any young people in the senior ranks.

He talked about games as a great educational tool to motivate students to learn. I've personally thought quite a bit about this. Given my boyfriend is working on it, I will do something different :)

when you come to think of it, gameplay has played a big role in making the most popular consumer web startups, ranging from Yelp to Twitter or Facebook. It's all about converting your social status and relationships into numbers. The numbers are more measurable and people can be obsessed with them - how many follow you, how many retweeted you, how many photos tagged you, how many friends you have, etc.

Bing talked about how games train people to test the edge of rules, to measure by data, and to cooperate - all key ingredients for a modern success in career!

Some interesting data he shared (don't quote me, I jogged down the data too quickly to verify): Zynga $10 ARPU, facebook $3, WOW $0.25/hour, and Google $35/hour! In Asia, games make $6-10/year.

The best are his tips to GSB students:
1) do 3 outside projects - not only build your imagination but also support it with facts. Well I did one last year in mobile payment space, then I got too busy with my own startup.
2) build personal relationship with one to several professors. yes, amazing profs at GSB!
3) write 3 business plans! - Ha, I guess I'm well on my way. have gone through 2 detailed plans and so many more briefer versions in my pocket.

Thank you, Bing, and sorry that I forgot to order lunch beforehand!

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