Profile: Matt Gordon

Meet Matt Gordon. Founder and CEO, Bingo Dog Insurance.

Name: Matt Gordon

Job: Founder and CEO, Bingo Dog Insurance

City: Columbus

Hometown: Columbus

Q: What do you do at Bingo?
Bingo offers dog insurance, which covers vet bills, through our mobile application. I spend most of my time building internal context, removing obstacles, and driving the product vision so the team can do their best work towards our audacious goals. 

Q: What’s a problem that you are working to solve? 
We are trying to solve the problem of increasing vet bill costs by building a technology driven financial services product. More specifically, Bingo strives to interpret lifestyle data for more accurate pricing, predictive treatment, and virtual consultations. It has been challenging to identify causal links and implement new models in a heavily regulated industry. Another obstacle is how to collect user data, to deliver a better product, in a way that is unintrusive. 

Q: What’s a lesson you’ve learned that has helped shaped your work? 
Stay focused on the bigger picture and break down the milestones needed to get there. I am constantly discussing what is Urgent and Important from the Eisenhower Matrix. The goal is to spend 80% of our time doing things that are Important. This requires everyone to understand what will drive our business forward (the forest through the trees) and to triage their projects accordingly.  

Q: What’s a trend in technology or innovation that you believe doesn’t get enough attention? 
2nd Mover Advantage. Everyone aims to reach the market first, but that only matters if you can build significant defensible barriers. By rushing to market, startups often have an imperfect product, fail to understand distribution, and have to convince capital to take a significant risk. In contrast, 2nd movers can innovate under the radar with a lower obstacle to capital understanding and achieve product-market fit. 

Q: What’s one moonshot idea that could help make Ohio a world leader in technology and innovation? 
Ohio must win the education game. It needs to encourage continuous learning for adaptation to new and novel problems. My moonshot idea is that anyone who obtains an undergraduate degree from an in-state public university should have access to all online courses in perpetuity with degree-granting privileges for free. This is easy enough to pilot with a small group of students and my hypothesis is that it would have huge returns. 

Q: What’s a recent book, podcast or news story that you found interesting? 
I always recommend Zamyatin's We. It is a dystopian novel from the 1920s that showed a particular prescience for technology and social dynamics. Innovators must concern themselves with the second- and third-order consequences of what they build. 

Q: What's your favorite place in Ohio? 
Miami University (Oxford) in the fall. Walking through campus while the leaves change creates a sense of utmost calm. Such an environment lends itself to the imagination of new ideas. It is a little bubble that remains still through time. 

Q: What makes Ohio special to you?  
The pace and perspective of life. I have lived in a variety of places and that is what differentiates and makes Ohio special. Ohioans have the best temporal sense - we don't rush through life or let it pass us by. Our approach balances a desire for future improvement, an appreciation for the present, and a reverence of the history. Also, Go Browns!

Connect with Matt on LinkedIn.

And for more information on Bingo, you can find them on the App Store, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.