My firstminute is a series of informal talks with global leaders sharing stories about the earliest days of their career, how they overcame some of their toughest challenges, and how they now enjoy supporting the next generation.
On Monday 4th May 2020, we hosted a special My firstminute session with David Helgason and Bing Gordon.
We covered everything from the earliest days of their careers, as founder and CEO of Unity Technologies for David and Chief Creative Officer at EA for Bing, to how they now enjoy helping and backing founders. David is a founding Partner at Nordics Makers, a group of ten top Nordic angels, and also has his private vehicle, Foobar.vc. As for Bing, he joined Kleiner Perkins in 2008 and serves as Chief Product Officer for the firm. He also leads Kleiner Perkins' sFund, the investment initiative to fund and build applications and services that deliver on the promise of the social web.
David Helgason's bio:
I'm a technologist, founder of a wonderful technology company, non-exec director to others, and a restless entrepreneur with a passion for creating feedback loops between innovation and teams and products, applying new and old business models to changing industries, and pushing people to do the very best they can do.
My background is in programming, an assortment of university dabbling, creating companies, and helping entrepreneurs. I served as CEO of Unity Technologies since co-founding it in 2003 and until October 2014, with an unflinching vision to democratize game development, and to develop technology and business models for the next phase of the games industry. We've done well thus far.
Bing Gordon's bio:
Bing Gordon joined Kleiner Perkins in 2008 and serves as Chief Product Officer for the firm.
Bing also leads Kleiner Perkins' sFund, the investment initiative to fund and build applications and services that deliver on the promise of the social web.
The sFund, launched in 2010 with strategic partners Amazon.com, Facebook, Zynga, Comcast, Liberty Media and Allen & Co., has made 16 investments to date, including four seeds. Bing serves on the board of directors of Amazon, N3twork, Zazzle and Zynga.
He was also a founding director at Katango (acquired by Google 2011), ngmoco (acquired by DeNA 2010) and Audible (acquired by Amazon in 2008). Before joining Kleiner Perkins, Bing had been a long-time executive at Electronic Arts, beginning with EA’s founding in 1982 with initial funding from Kleiner Perkins.
He was chief creative officer at EA from 1998 to 2008 and previously headed EA marketing and product development. Bing drove EA’s branding strategy with EA Sports, developed EA’s pricing strategy for package goods and online games, created EA’s studio organization, and contributed to the design and marketing of many EA franchises, including John Madden Football, The Sims, Sim City, Need for Speed, Tiger Woods Golf, Club Pogo and Command and Conquer.
Bing was awarded the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011, and he held the game industry's first endowed chair in game design at The University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts.
He earned an M.B.A. from Stanford University and his B.A. degree from Yale University, where he serves on the President’s Council.
Bing's favorite games of all time are World of Warcraft, the Sims, Diablo, Pogo, Civilization, Columns, Freecell, Farmville and Cityville.
