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March 30, 2013 05:13 pm GMT

Bing Gordon's Founder Checklist: Animal Energy, Blind Confidence, And A Toupee.

Editors note:DerekAndersenis the founder ofStartup Grind, a 40-city community bringing the global startup world together while educating, inspiring, and connecting entrepreneurs. As anElectronic Arts’ intern eight years ago, I asked Bing Gordon then the chief creative officerand the only remaining early founding team member, a question about vision. How can I know where the puck is going to be? While he delivered a satisfactory response, two weeks later I received an email from Bing saying, I answered that question poorly a few weeks and I wanted to try again. A few weeks agoBing joined meat Startup Grind in Silicon Valley where he delivered some videogame history and founder advice. In 2010Mark Pincus called KPCB general partner Bing Gordon(look for a bald guy on the front row) one of the worlds great CEO coaches supporting founders on the boards of companies like Amazon, Zynga, Klout, and Zazzle. Hereare some excepts from our recentinterview. Derek: Tell us about your family and where you grew up? BING: So I grew up in a suburb of Detroit. My dad was a first generation Scotsman and his dad was a janitor. And he was somebody that believed the grass was always greener and didnt have, kind of, context or resources. Thanks, Dad! We were the first to move in to a subdivision built out of farmlands surrounding Detroit, so I grew up kind of in the creek. Playing sports with my brother who remembers growing up in the House of Pain. So I had a good Midwestern upbringing. I didnt work in an office before going to Stanford business school, but I did think I was a pretty damn good teenage caddy. I played hockey and lacrosse at the university level and played both, kind of, for most of my adult life. Derek: What was your plan heading to college? BING: Well I went to Yale thinking I was going to be a math major and a writer, and I got there and Yale was lousy at math and it seemed socially irrelevant, so I kind of became an athlete-near-college-dropout. I realized I was flunking a third of my classes going into the final. My proud accomplishments in college other than sports achievements was I wrote poetry. Kind of light verse, in a coffee shop, and Peter Faulk when he was doing Columbo came, and liked it so much he took me out drinking that

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