lessons from bezos, pincus, young

CEO 2.0

Bing Gordon Nov 2010

Why Web 2.0 CEO is different

More jobs than people Design by Darwin
Analytics is the new DNA

Built for speed Gamification, mobile, social

Personal role

Visionary
Strategy on one slide or poster
Bezos: the flywheel Pincus: three boxes (07, 08, 09) Young: the triangle

Missionary, not mercenary

Focus on customer, not competition

Personal role

The coach, not the dictator

Give ownership and meaning Scope work, then help
Im turning into an advisor

Install okrs You killed it Inputs vs outcomes

Personal role

Set the pace

Weekly, not quarterly
College students can do anything in a week Sunday night reports, Monday meeting/breakfast

Personal time management

Consistency Match hours to priorities

Abolish 1 on 1s

Other ideas
A great exec assistant or two Personal technical advisor Put your office in the middle
And move regularly

Board of directors

Get value from your board

Whats on my mind
2/3 of each board meeting

Monthly pace Weekly email updates Energize your board

Roles and assignments
creative guy, values person strategy, finance, admin, PR

Feedback and fun

Board management

Governance not pre-money

Pincus: rookie entrepreneurs maximize valuation, instead of control, and get the wrong advisors. Bezos: go public as late as you can. Bing: dont join a board you wouldnt pay to eat dinner with (because you do).

The scalable organization

Hire HR early
Hire for recruiting and cultural leadership Direct report to CEO No later than first 50 employees
Employment agreements, job definitions Culture and values clarity Avoid employee lawsuits

Scalable Org

Golden people
3 direct reports dominate their jobs.
Set high bar for others Allow CEO to double down elsewhere Bezos 6 whose judgment I trust totally

Demand perfection in perfectable jobs

Overhire for CFO, Ops, Net ops, Security, legal

Plan management capacity like server capacity!

Scalable organization

Onboarding is crucial
Colleges focus on freshmen! First week:
Monday:
company orientation Job definition and personal OKRs. What it takes to kill it in your new job. Bings rule of 7/10.

Friday: check in
Zappos: $2000 to leave at this point.

First quarter:
Probation. No harm, no foul.

Scalable organization

Promote from within

Level up
Zynga goal of 15% per quarter! Promotion or raise From 50 to 2000+ people.

Job challenges, not performance reviews

Bigger job or horizontal move.

Scalable organization

Entrepreneurs AND managers

Management:
People and careers Grow organizational value Added value coaching

Entrepreneuring:
Innovation and judgment Inventors! Do the impossible Burn hot, possibly burn out Small groups (5-20)

Scalable organization

Golden Processes
Golden process:
lasts for 2+ years Aim for 3 Templates and language Organizational R&D

Examples:
EA: Product review, Product Status Meeting Zynga: Weekly roadmap, P1s, greenlight, bold beats, Zynga Playbook All hands. Daily scrums. Hackathons. Design hackathons.

Scalable org

Focus on culture
Values on the wall
Transparency

Merit not politics

Performance metrics

Be a CEO Shadow of the leader

Do what I do, not what I say

Ambitious Infrastructure Goals

Use Amazon AWS
1 net-ops outage per decade is the goal

Data warehousing
1 petabyte of click data per day

Early product P+Ls Analytics

Recommendation engines Offer engines a/b flow testing

Personal role

Fill one line exec role, too

Chief product officer is highest value

CEO of Gamification

We can all be heroes

(+25% $$$)

The power of badges!

2x hours/week!

Interface toys
the wants and fears spinner

UGC: 100M Uploads in 3 months Spore

Virtual assets can 3x customer life

Ultima Online
House owners- 3 years

Career score
Big value, small engineering

CEO of Social

Key learnings from social

Social disruptions
Newsfeed Requests and comm channels Relevance and likes Privileges and Privacy

Profile Pics mean social

Social obligations create lock-in

Madden:
You cant convert the whole fraternity.

Guilds:
Appointment gaming Peer pressure and privileges Marriages (and divorce)

Key learnings from social

Emerging techniques
Gifting, not competition Harvest mechanic Virality and incentives

CEO of Mobile

29

Key learnings from mobile

New use cases

Something to do at Dont Walk sign The new compass-connected GPS Shoppers friend SMS without parents

Key learnings from mobile

Emerging techniques
The patchless patch Cross-promo and CPI App icon = package

Proven product leader metrics

CEO Performance
Current quarter x2
Profits, revenues, other drivers

Next quarter
Forecast vs long-term goals

IP value
Mark to market

Technology/innovation
Mark to market. Inputs vs plan.

Operations
Cost of friction, bad surprises

Thank you.
bgordon@kpcb.com bingfish@twitter.com