“If you want to really boil down what I am - I am an inventor” Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos sits down and does a podcast interview with Lex Fridman. This long and detailed conversation is the first of such a thing he has done. There is an in-depth discussion around Blue Origin (Bezos’ space technology company) and how that has now become his major focus in life. When Bezos started Amazon, he didn’t have to worry about building already established infrastructure such as the postal service, payment systems and the internet. He built on top of these things, saving him billions of dollars in capital investment. The way he now thinks about space is with a focus on helping to build the infrastructure for the next generations to start space-type companies from their dorm rooms. What seem like very futuristic concepts including relocating heavy industry to other planets and how sustainable life will work on the moon are other projects Blue Origin is currently working on.
The interview then turns back to Amazon and some of the business principles that have propelled him to be one of the most important people in modern history. Amazon has a culture of quick decision making but segregates between ‘one way door’ decision making to ‘two way door’ decision making. The ‘Day 1’ mentality is the main principal Amazon was built on, meaning it is never ‘Day 2’. That mentality has been very powerful in driving the company forward into new areas. What is also remarkable is Bezos’ recollection of telling the early investors of Amazon that there was a 30% chance of getting your money back, implying a 70% chance they would not. I wonder what odds he gave investors that Amazon would become a trillion-dollar company?!
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