Jeff Bezos and Andrew Ross Sorkin
Insightful interview from the NYT DealBook Summit
One of my favorite things to do is to enjoy a thoughtful interview filled with insights and fresh perspective.
Jeff Bezos sat down with Andrew Ross Sorkin this week at the 2024 New York Times DealBook Summit to discuss what’s next for Amazon and Blue Origin, share business insights, and more. Bezos doesn’t do a lot of interviews but when he does he delivers. This is so good. You can find the full hour-long interview here, with some of my favorite parts below (paraphrased).
Advice for building businesses at scale: One observation I would have is that I think it’s generally human nature to overestimate risk and underestimate opportunity. I think entrepreneurs, in general, would be well advised to try and bias against that piece of human nature. The risks are probably not as big as you perceive, and the opportunities may be bigger than you perceive….The second thing I would point out is that thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
People wonder why the United States has so much tech and business success and dynamism. There are many reasons but the biggest is that we have an incredible risk capital system that is very hard to duplicate in other countries. You can raise $15MM of seed capital to do something that only has a 10% chance of working — and that’s crazy! But the investor’s expected value is still positive.
The world is so interesting right now. We are in multiple golden ages at once, including robotics, where I’m a big believer.
On spending time between Amazon and Blue Origin: I’m really lame at this retirement thing. I’m in meetings from 9am to 7pm and then read technical documents. Ninety-five percent of my time with Amazon is in AI. AI is like electricity - it will go everywhere into every application.
Big leaders have to do just a few things — they have to identify big ideas; they have to enforce execution of those ideas; and they have to develop the next generation of leaders.
You have to have optimism and energy to be a founder. I don’t know how you can be a glum Eeyore-type founder.
I gave up on being well understood a long time ago. It takes a lot of energy and I would probably fail, as a public figure. People overfocus on wealth in our culture and they think I’m focused on it. I don’t wake up asking myself how I will exercise my power. I consider myself an inventor and a wanderer. I’m a tinkerer, and having a whiteboard and a group of people around me to invent makes me happy.
On Blue Origin: I think it’s going to be the best business that I’ve ever been involved in, but it’s going to take a while.
