The Interview: From Amazon to Space — Jeff Bezos Talks Innovation, Progress and What’s Next

[Music] [Music] [Music] please please welcome Andrew Ross sorin and his guest founder and executive chairman of Amazon and founder of blue origin Jeff Bezos Jeffrey Bezos everybody Jeff thank you so much for being here uh we always try to save the best for last and uh we couldn't be more thrilled for you to be here um I said it at the beginning of the day um and I'll say it again in front of you Jeff Jeff is one of the world's most successful entrepreneurs uh we talk a lot about people we've talked about it all

day about people of consequence on this stage and there's no question uh that Jeff has changed the way we live really um and it's rare to be able to say that about anybody um in 1994 he founded Amazon uh which started as an online book seller you know the story right out of his garage in Seattle today Amazon's one of the most five valuable companies in America now he's focused uh far beyond Earth to outer space through his company blue origin he's racing to the moon and then to Mars his new Glenn heavy lift booster

rocket expected to launch any day now any day now and uh meanwhile back here on Earth his Bezos Earth fund granting $2 billion so far and of course he also owns the stored Washington Post which has put him in the headlines in recent weeks as well it punches above its weight in that regard um and we're going to talk about it we're going to talk about all of that and more um and in fact what I want to do if you'd indulge me is actually start there yeah with the Washington Post and the reason I

want to do that um because I think as we all saw the election play out and we saw the decision uh not to endorse a presidential candidate prior to that it became I think a microcosm of so many different things in our society uh that decision it became a r Shack test for people and their politics it became uh a question about trust in the media about influence about business interests and so many other other things and so I was hoping maybe just to sort of help us with this story which we all read about

if you could just in your own words take us back to the two weeks before the election when that decision was made and what happened and what was going through your mind at that time well it was the time when uh for some number of years about that time when the Washington Post would uh you know make an editorial decision and endorse a presidential candidate for many decades the post uh very studiously did not endorse presidential candidates the the kind of founder of the modern post guy named Eugene Meyer whose words are still inscribed on

the in the lobby as you walk in was against the idea because he thought an independent newspaper shouldn't be uh endorsing presidential candidates and so they didn't do it after Watergate the post started uh endorsing presidential candidates and so we're talking about this in that time frame um it hadn't come up before and um you know we just decided that you know it wasn't going to help for well first of all it wasn't going to influence the election either way you know there we we didn't believe there's no evidence that newspaper endorsements influence elections there

no independent voter in Pennsylvania at that time was going to say oh is that what the Washington Post thinks well then I'll do that so that wasn't going to happen and at the same time um you know we're struggling with the issue that all uh traditional media is struggling with which is a very difficult and significant loss of trust and you know the trust surveys have been done for many decades now and the media has been going down in those surveys four decades they've always been able to hang on to the one you know small

positive that they're always above Congress and this year they lost even that um falling below Congress which is not easy to achieve um Congress was thrilled by the way not to be at the very bottom of the list and so we just decided that um the the pluses of doing this were very small and it added to the perception of bias you know the newspapers and media in general if they are going to try and be objective and independent they have to pass the same requirement that a voting machine does they have to count the

votes accurately and people have to believe that they count the votes accurately both requirements are just as important for a voting machine and media is similar and there is a there's a strong per not all of it is the media's Fault there's a lot of uh a lot of external factors involved too but where we can do something we should okay let me ask you and you you know that there was blowback uh I just want to read you this is Marty Baron who was your former editor of that paper he said this is is

cowardice with democracy as its casualty David remnick said if Jeff Bezos had said two years ago that he thought the editorial page should get rid of endorsements all of them you could argue the case one way or another but he was effectively suggesting that given this scenario with the timing of it look at if I had had the pressions to think about this topic at all two years before that would have been better for perception reasons but uh in fact we made this decision uh it was the right decision I'm proud of the decision we

made and it was far from cowardly because we knew there would be blowback and we did the right thing anyway okay so let me ask you about that though there was blowback I think uh 250,000 people canceled their subscription so did you think when you were doing this that some people were going to say that actually creates less Trust in Media I mean right part part of it was it was it was aimed at creating more Trust in Media and at the same time clearly there were other people saying maybe there's less Trust no I

don't follow that logic you don't mm and so what did you were you surprised at the not really we knew there would we knew that this was going to be uh perceived in a very big way as I said you know these things punch above their weight and we worried about that at all I mean this you can't worry you can't do the wrong thing because you're worried about uh bad PR or whatever it is you want to call it so you this is this was the right decision we made the right decision um I'm

very proud of the decision so let me just uh ask you ask you one related question um which is this um you said in your um opinion piece about all of this I thought it was fascinating um you said when it comes to the appearance of conflict I am the not not the ideal owner no I'm a terrible owner of the post for the post from the point of view of appearance of conflict I there is you know probably not a single day goes by where some Amazon executive or some blue origin executive or some

Bezos Earth fund leader right isn't meeting with a government official somewhere and so there are always going to be appearances of conflict and is that a pure newspaper owner who only owned a newspaper and did nothing else would probably be from that point of view a much better owner now the advantage I bring to the post is you know when when we uh you know when they need Financial Resources I'm available kind of uh you know I'm like that I'm the doting parent in that regard um I think embedded underneath the the fundamental question is

this and the wall stre Journal wrote about at the New York Times I've been writing about it it's whether and this was I think the question that people had which was whether you had any worry in your mind about your other businesses about uh Trump uh and whether he would ultimately Target an Amazon or Target a blue origin as retaliation against negative coverage given that you had lived through that no I don't think so that was certainly not in my mind and I'm also uh very aware that the post covers all presidents very aggressively is

going to continue to cover all presidents very aggressively and uh you know the endorsement or non-endorsement isn't going to you did not think that was going to change miss a drop in the bucket anything so no won't change anything if he likes you he likes you and if he doesn't like you he's not going to like you anyway well I don't know I mean that that's a different question um but you if we're talking about Trump I think it's very interesting I'm I'm actually very optimistic this time around that uh we're going to see I'm

very hopeful about this his he have a lot of energy around reducing regulation and my point of view if I can help him do that I'm going to help him because we do have too much regulation in this country this country is so set up right to grow by the way all of our problems all of our economic problems like if you look at the the deficit and I mean you know the debt the national debt and how gigantic it is as a portion of GDP these are real problems and they're real long-term problems and

the way you get out of them them is by outgrowing them you're going to get you're going to you're going to solve the problem of the national debt by making a smaller percentage of GDP not by shrinking the national debt but by growing the GDP you have to grow the denominator and that means you have to grow GDP at you know 3 four 5% a year and you know let the national debt grows slower than that if you can do that this is a very manageable problem so we need a growth orientation in this country

this is the most important thing a growth mindset and we are the luckiest country in the world we have all these natural resources including energy Independence we have the best risk Capital system in the world by far so you know people get confused about why does the United States have so much Venture success so much entrepreneurial success why are the big tech companies here and not somewhere else what's really going on with all this dynamism in this country compared to what we see around elsewhere in the world and the prime there a bunch of reasons

for that but the biggest one eight of 10 points there is that we have better risk Capital it's not the banking system you know we have a good banking system but so does Europe right what's different here is that you can get you can raise you know $50 million of seed Capital to to do something that only has a 10% chance of working that's crazy and but the people who are giving you that seed Capital know that the that their expected value is still positive in many cases or they're at least gambling that that's true

that risk Capital system that we have in this country is turning out to be very hard for other countries to duplicate so we have that we have you know we speak English and English is turning into the linga Fran of the whole World it say you know there's so many advantages here but we are burdened by excessive permiting and regulation you can't build a bridge and all these things you know what they are we see these examples all the time we need to be able to build solar fields and everything your optimistic I'm super about

this President and the reason because very optimistic that that President Trump is serious about this regulatory agenda and I I think he's going to I think he has a good chance of succeeding what about the idea that he thinks that the Press is the enemy well I I I think he I'm going to try to talk him out of that idea I don't think the Press is the enemy and I don't think you know he he's also I you've probably grown in the last eight years he has too like it's you know this is not

the case the Press is not the enemy I hope you're right I hope I'm right too have you let's go persuade him of this no let's but you and I should go let's go talk to him if we could try I I really don't I I think that this is absolutely um uh he I I don't think he's going to see it the same way but maybe I'll be wrong was that always your your always your thought by the way what I've seen so far is that um he is calmer than he was first time

and more confident more settled um let me ask one related question that I want to actually get into space but it actually is an interesting segue to space because we were talking earlier this morning to Sam Alman about Elon Musk um and Elon musk's relationship with the president interestingly and there's been a lot of questions about whether there could be the possibility that Elon given his proximity would make things difficult for people who are his competitors Elon in the space context is your biggest competitor yes does this concern you well they're certainly very able competitors

I mean this is an arena where um I have the oh no no I know he's a great competitor no I'm saying does it concern you his proximity no I was headed there oh but I'm just saying there they're certainly very good competitors and you know uh no doubt about that um uh I don't I I I take it face value um what has been said which is that you know he is not going to use his political power to Advantage his own companies or to disadvantage his competitors I think that it face value again

I could be wrong about that but I I think it could be true I think he probably is trying to uh you know I think this department of government efficiency and that he and VC are helping Trump with and so on again I'd like to take I have a lot of I've had a lot of success in life not being cynical and I've very rarely been taken advantage of as a result it's happened a couple of times but not very often and I think that cynicism you know why be cynical about that let's go into

it hoping that the statements that have been made are correct that this is going to be done you know above board in the public interest and if that turns out to be naive well then we'll see but I I actually think it's going to be great I'm hoping I'm I'm glad you could address it uh it's something I think we all want to know one by the way before I even get to space uh Washington Post question just because there's a lot of media people here um the big plan to uh save or fix the

Washington Post is you've been a great innovator as it comes to Amazon and everything else do do you have a a big idea about how the post is going to change newspapers are going to change I have I have a bunch of ideas and and and I'm working on that right now and I have a couple of small inventions uh there so we'll see I you know we saved the Washington Post once this will be the second time I would um I'd like to it was saved let's see 2013 so 11 years ago it took

a couple of years it made money for six or seven years after that in the last few years it's lost money again and um it it needs to be put back on a good footing again and um the first time we did it by transitioning away from advertising to subscriptions and also away from being a local paper to being a national paper and there are many more details to it but that was the basic formula that was used and it was very successful and uh we have a few other ideas so stay tuned we'll see

okay um here's my question to you about space which is I think a lot of us watched you this was weeks just weeks after you stepped down as a CEO of of Amazon uh you went aboard new Shepard uh as its first crew flight um and I remember watching it on TV just like everybody else this is 2001 and I know this is something you wanted to do literally since you were a kid I mean I went back and looked there were articles and letters and people who who said that when you were a child

you were talking about this and so I was just curious if you could just take us back to that morning and what that felt like because you have now put all of your eggs now in the space basket um and and what that what that was like and and how that might have even shifted your thinking about this you put all my eggs in the space basket well you mean you have a huge investment in space yes but it's not all my eggs not all of them yeah no I I still have a huge investment

in Amazon I still spent a lot of time there too I've I've actually never worked harder the the this retirement thing I've turned out to be extremely lame at um and so I'm I'm uh you know I'm waking up every morning and and doing meetings from 9 to 7 and reading documents and uh I most of it is blue origin but quite a bit of it is still Amazon too I um uh that morning um we're going to space and uh and I'll tell you about the overview effect which everyone goes we've now sent 6%

new Shepherd is our tourism vehicle it takes people up in space the whole journey takes 11 minutes you're in space for 4 minutes um you go up above the Carmen line 100 kmers up you see the curvature of the Earth the thin limb of the Earth's atmosphere it truly is a lifechanging transformative thing every astronaut everybody who's ever been to space has felt this and it has a name it's called the overview effect um Jim level the uh Apollo 13 astronaut and uh uh and later moon walker has a beautiful quote um you know when

he saw the Earth from space he looked back and said I realize um you don't go to heaven when you die you go to heaven when you're born and that's how beautiful this planet is and you may have seen uh William Shatner when he flew on new Shepherd and he came back he saw everything the Blackness and how it's there's the nothing and he described it as death and said look this is the one little pool of life that we in this entire solar system it's truly incredible and you get it is a profound uh

experience that's hard to describe but that morning something else happened to me that is was very personal um we're getting ready to go at 4:45 in the morning and you know uh my whole family is there some close friends extended family 35 40 people there and by the way I'm going on the first human flight of this vehicle and uh so it's never flown people before um and my poor mother uh what's worse is I'm bringing my brother with me so uh it's me and my brother and we wake up getting ready to go to

the launch site and and kind of you know we weren't really expected but everybody of course is awake and there to say goodbye but they thought they were saying goodbye forever and which was surprising to me I I wasn't expecting this but they were genuinely terrified for us and but it was paradoxically for my brother and and and me we it it felt really good to us because we got to see how loved we were and it was very you know my kids and my my sister and my mom and my dad and um these

close friends it it's easy to know what's going on inside your own head it's easy to know that you love people it's not really it's not to know how much you're loved by others is not always as obvious and to so to see that concern was was very meaningful very emotional that was a kind of an unexpected the overview expect I talked to astronauts I knew I was going to in store for something special but it was very interesting to have that feeling from my family too did that change the way you've thought about everything

you're doing with this with blue origin in terms of what this is all about you've said that the reason we've got to go to space in my view is to save Earth is that is that come from being up there and looking at that was that were for whatever reason since I'm a teenager and in fact there's a high school newspaper article my Miami Palmetto Senior High the they they wrote an article about my space plans which I would tell everyone who would stand still long enough about and um the those plans included um what

I still think what I still working on which is moving all polluting industry off Earth and so my view but I know that sounds Fantastical so I I I I beg the Indulgence of this audience to bear with me for a moment but it's not Fantastical this is going to happen and we need to lower the cost of access to space low enough and that's what new Glenn our orbital vehicle is all about um that's the big super heavy launch vehicle that's so now it's literally on the pad now waiting for regulatory approval it needs

its final regulatory approvals to to launch so we're very very close and uh if we can lower the costs enough and we will I mean it may take who knows how many years it will take but we can set up the preconditions where the Next Generation or the generation after that will be able to move pling industry off Earth and then this planet will be maintained as it should be and you know can kind of be can sort of think of a zoned residential and Light Industry and if you want to use large amounts of

energy and large amounts of pollutants and so on you go do that off Earth and so we get the best of both we get to have this energy intensive civilization and use ever more energy per capita and get all the benefits that we get from that which are many by the way you don't want to go back in time and it's it's really important to think about you know when people talk about the good old days that is such an illusion you know that we're almost everything is better today than it was you know infant

mortality is better you know Global illiteracy is better uh you know Global poverty is far better every things really are better today um there's one exception to that which is the natural world the natural world if you go back in time 500 years we had prestige oceans pristine Rivers pristine forests and that is uh you know that's part of the trade we've made is we're kind of you know we're we're using up the natural world here but space has infinite for all practical purposes Infinite Energy infinite raw materials so that's it's a very interesting philosophical

choice because one of the things you're talking about trying to save the Earth and I was going to say that a number of other people including I think musk and others say that we need an escape hatch from Earth right we need to all move to Mars because Earth is not going to be saved do you do you see that no we have to save so so first of all there is no plan B we have to save Earth so we've sent robotic probes to all of the planets in this solar system this is the

good one um and um and we must save it we cannot look we can live we can Cho how we want to live we could it is not impossible if you think about climate change and so on some of the issues that we Face here because of the way way we're doing things currently um you could imagine a world with enough technological sophistication where we can turn Earth into sort of a giant spaceship you know like air condition Fantastical no I know air no but I'm saying air conditioned planet and you know kind of pav

the whole thing and turn it that that's a bad future we don't need to do that that turning Earth into you know take the whole thing and turning it into a human construct and destroying this natural ecosystem when it's so unique and such a gym that's not the right way to do it so we should move all that off Earth and and and we will because we won't do it the wrong way and you know why we won't because humans value Beauty and art I have a ranch in West Texas it's actually also where the

launch site for the suborbital vehicle is the and on that ranch you can in many different places you can go and find uh uh you know arrowheads and ancient pottery and the son of the pottery is 7,000 years old and it is you know and that was a Hard Scrabble subsistence level life and that Pottery is decorated so here are these people who are in a desert environment scraping for water food and yet they're taking the time to paint their Pottery what does that tell you about our values and what we you know humans Value

Beauty and art we're not going to destroy this planet um let me ask you two other related space questions I had the opportunity to go tour blue origin uh in the fall and one of the things that everybody down there talks about is this idea of going getting the moon and then using the moon in fact the phrase that one of your colleagues did was uh we're going to use the Moon the Moon is going to be like JFK uh the airport because no like JFK the airport because we're going to send stuff to the

moon and then from the Moon then we're going to go to Mars we're it's like a pit stop on the along the way and I thought that was sort of a very interesting uh yeah there process there's a very strong argument to be made that the Moon is a good stepping stone to the rest of the solar system and the reason for that because of the moon is has a much much lower gravity level than the earth and because it has a lot of very important minerals and also water in the form of ice in

the permanently shadowed creators at the poles of the Moon and ice can be uh uh converted water can be converted into hydrogen and oxygen which are happen to be the very best uh highest performing rocket propellants and so you can uh it takes if you to raise a kilogram of Mass from the Earth takes 28 times as much energy as raising that same kilogram from the moon so to the degree that you can get raw materials from the Moon which is again we're talking about a couple of generations in the future but to the degree

that you can get raw materials from the Moon instead of from Earth those materials will allow you to build spaceships into fuel those spaceships and to build solar arrays and all these other things that you want to do but using lunar resources instead of Earth Resources and then it would provide a very convenient stepping stone to the rest of the solar system um Dave limp who DET tired uh to uh to run blue origin for you um as a CEO said apparently when he was interviewing with you he said Jeff is blue origin a hobby

or a business yeah what did you tell them it's a business it's it's it's not a very good business yet we're investing no it'll I you know look I think it's going to be um I think it's going to be from a business point of view from a financial returns point of view 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 so bigger than Amazon yeah so let me ask you a different question which is I remember just being down there the scale

of everything I wish I I wish you could all just go and see it is so remarkable you sort of look at the scale and you can't even understand understand what is happening around you it's sort of so hard to Fathom uh just the size of it all and it made me think um about confidence we were actually talking to Serena Williams earlier today about confidence and I was thinking to myself it's easy for her she just has to be the best in the world well but and but this is going to go to you

too which is you know when you started Amazon that was a business that had to scale and you had to see the scale to work I remember for years I I was covering it I would be writing about when you were losing money left and right in center everyone thought this whole thing was crazy and the scale lost money for 11 years the scale of it it people think I thought it was insane yes and if you go down to Florida to Cape canaval and you see the scale of this thing you say to my

God this is insane Tom broka interviewed me one time about Amazon's losses and he said he looked at me and he said do can Mr Bezos can you even spell profit and I said yes p r o p h e t so so where do you think that where do you think your confidence though comes from to create a business that requires such scale most people like to you know they take one foot and they put the other foot and then then they and they want to be able to see where they're going and I

would argue with in in the case of Amazon in the case of space you can't see where I mean maybe you can see where you're going but a lot of people actually struggle to see it well I think I this first of all a very good question very interesting question and I'm not sure I know the right answer or maybe there are many answers so let's start with that but I one observation I would have is that I think it's generally human nature to overestimate risk and underestimate opportunity and so I think on rurs in

general uh you know 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 and so you're when you look at when you you say it's confidence but maybe it's just trying to compensate for that that um accepting that that's a human bias and trying to compensate against it the second thing I would point out is that you know thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy now when do you think you learned this though because

you were doing this at a very young age I this is not something this is something maybe a wise and old man would say but I I I only say because I remember it's very early I remember watching I remember watching on 60 Minutes um this is maybe 1999 and at the end of the interview um they were asking asking you about whether this whole thing could work or not um and you said it is it it's not a fear that it can't work it's a fact that it might not work right that is true

and no no but I remember I remember seeing that thinking and you just said it in the sort of matter OFA kind of way which is to say did you say to yourself there's a massive risk this is not really going to happen I to to raise the first million dollars of seed capital for Amazon so I I sold um 20% of the company a $5 million valuation I sold 20% of the company for a million dollars to 22 Angel Investors 50 roughly $50,000 each and I had to take 60 meetings so whatever you know

roughly 40 of them said no and and a little 20 20 22 or so said yes and um it was the hardest thing I've ever done this was 1995 is 1995 and um the first question was what's the internet everybody wanted to know what the internet was and um and by the way the 40 NOS were hard-earned notes like they weren't just no they were me you know multiple meetings working really hard trying to get people to write that $50,000 check and the whole Enterprise could have been extinguished then and what I do remember in

those meetings I would always tell people I thought there was a 70% chance they would lose their investment and I in in retrospect I think that might have been a little naive um but I thought but I think it was true in fact if anything I think I was giving myself better than better than the odds better than the real odds what do you think the real odds are in space with blue origin well blue origin is um H you know has doesn't have the same level of financing risk so you know because I can

Finance blue origin um with my Amazon stock so it's it I think am blue origin has a lot of Runway blue origin is going to do some very amazing things here and and uh it's you know and by the way Amazon is doing amazing things I saw some of our announcements yesterday I hope but you know the the Nova foundational models are are truly incredible they're I you know it's there's a bunch of stuff going on the world is so interesting right now we're in multiple Golden Ages at once and you know I'm also very

interested in robotics I'm I'm not doing that directly but I'm doing it I'm investing in a number of Robotics companies I'm a big believer in it that I I think there's never been a more extraordinary moment to be alive we're so lucky I want to go back to Amazon for second um well actually I want to go back you just mentioned the fundraising for Amazon the at the outset yes one of the things that I noticed recently um and you may you you'll infer why I'm even asking you this is throughout your whole career at

Amazon it appears to me like you paid yourself about $80,000 a year in total yeah cash comp and never took additional equity in the company the entire time no I never did and I asked the comp Committee of the board not to give me any comp and I the my view was I was a Founder I had I already owned a significant amount of the company and I just didn't feel good about taking more I felt um I had plenty of incentive it was you know I owned you know more than 10% of the company

you know more earlier you know before it was diluted by various things more than 20% of the company and it was I just felt how could I possibly need more incentive than owning such a you know most Founders own big chunks of the company they don't really need they're more like owner operators the way they increase their wealth is not by getting comp you know more Equity they just want to make the equity they have more valuable and uh and so I never I I just would have felt icky about it and uh it I

really I'm actually very proud of that decision I I I sometimes wish that there were a um and maybe you can do this Andrew or maybe the Washington Post will do this but somebody needs to make a list where they rank people by how much wealth they've created for other people and so instead of the Forbes list it ranks you by your own wealth so you know Amazon's market cap is 2.3 trillion today I own about you know 200 billion is of it so if you take 2.3 billion and subtract out the piece I kept

from myself then you know I've created something like 2.1 trillion of wealth for other people that should put me pretty high on some kind of list and uh and that's a better list you know what uh how much wealth have you created for other people you know people like Jensen Nvidia he's going to be very high on that list and uh that would be a pretty cool list somebody should do that list I think that is a very cool list how does that how does the idea of your own influence sit with you do you

do you think about that do you appreciate that that you are one of the most powerful people in the world frankly given your connection to Amazon given what you're doing with blue origin given all the other things that you're investing in and can do the Washington Post you know I don't it's it's a fair question but I don't I don't think about it that way I don't wake up and think you know how am I going to exercise my power today you know um it's it's I wake up and follow my curiosity I've always been

a Wanderer and uh I even organize our you know our I was on meetings this way I want crisp documents and messy meetings and I want the meetings to wander uh the only meeting I'm ever on time to is my first one because I won't finish a meeting until I'm really finished you the boss what about everybody else they have to wa for me but but that you know this is um uh you know it's but I and I actually would and I I try to teach like really wander in the meetings there's certain kinds

of meetings that are like a weekly Business review or something where it's like a set pattern and you're going through it that can have an agenda and it can be very Crisp that's a different kind of meeting but most of the meetings that are useful we do we do these six-page memos we do half hour study hall we read them and then and then we have a messy discussion so I like a the memo should be like Angel seeing from high it's so clear and beautiful and then the meeting could be messy how messy can

it be and I completely no no I asked that because culturally right now and there's so many people in the room here who go to meetings and we don't know how messy they can be no I I mean that because you don't know whether you really can raise your hand and say this totally this idea is completely insane and should not be happen in fact I am very skeptical if the meeting is not messy one time it doesn't happen very often because it's kind of verboten um at Amazon and but it I could I could

tell in the meeting that that the team had rehearsed the meeting that happens and I would and I I I could just feel it like I could you can tell the little tiny cues and I I turned to them said did you guys rehearse this meeting and they were like uh yes I was like don't do that again you don't need to because here's what maybe you would rehearse a sales meeting right if you're going you know if if you're going to go visit you know a a customer and you're trying to sell them a

new product or something maybe you want to have all your ducks in a row and you want to put your best foot forward but that's what people do you're seeking truth not not a pitch I don't want to be pitched and you don't want any of your senior Executives to be pitched you want and that's why messy is good and and uh and you also want to be early it's like you don't want the whole thing to be figured out and then presented to you right like you want to be part of the SAU Mage

making like show me the ugly bits like and I always ask you know are there any dissenting opinions on the team you know who what you know I want to try to get to the controversy like what let's make this meeting messy Help Me Help Me Make It messy um how hard was it for you to leave Amazon I go last too oh you yes I've heard about this everybody we try to go in kind of seniority order so the most Junior person goes first the most senior person goes last and it helps with group

think because if you say what's going to happen What happens if you have already come up with your view though well I don't want to torture people so in that rare case where I actually know that nothing can change my mind I will just say look guys nothing here is going to change my mind so like let's not waste a lot of time I don't want to it shouldn't be a charade um but in but that those aren't that's a very rare case I've actually personally very easy to influence something I've realized later in my

life over just maybe starting 10 years ago or so I realized I'm a very easy person to influence I changed my mind a lot you know people talk to me and I taken the information and I to change I can be easily but a couple of percent of the time no force in the world can move me because I'm so sure of something there were you know I I can't tell you how many people tried to talk me out of fulfillment by Amazon as an example and I just I just knew and I was like

you guys you w never talk me out of this we're going to do this I will do this through sheer force of will if need be do you think that you have that this is actually um something that I think a lot of people contend with do you think you have to project confidence no I I don't I you know I've gotten um well I guess a little bit of a personal story way but I have gotten um more intimate I would say in the last you know as I've gotten older so maybe the last

10 or 15 years and uh my my in my my upbringing I have you know I have really supportive family and um but in our family there were some unspoken rules which I think probably most families have unspoken rules of one kind or another and in mine uh all the positive emotions were allowed optimism you know happiness Joy uh and but only really the only negative emotion that was kind of tolerated in that unspoken family Dynamic and only occasionally was anger sadness fear uh anxiety these things were looked down on and that's probably in this

in a scheme of things kind of probably pretty helpful for founding a company you know it's like you you probably mostly want to be focused on positive things anyway um and you need optimism you know without optimism optimism and energy I don't know how how some glum Eeyore type founder could ever lead a company to success I mean you've got to have some optimism you got to have some energy it's got to be a little contagious there's going to be a lot of bad days you got to lift people up um so you need that

um but what you what I have figured out over the last you know sort of like especially I started with my own family uh and my close relationships my children and my brother and sister and parents and so on is I realized like I'm not really being intimate with them if I'm not sharing when I'm sad or sharing when I'm scared or these kinds of things and so I started working on that uh with them and found it very meaningful I could deepen those relationships very significantly and then I realized those were valid emotions at

work too and so it's it turns out like they're more precise all of your emotions are sort of a early warning system you know if you're stressed for me that's a a kind of an early you know a radar that is detecting that I'm that there's something I'm not taking action on there's it's a it's a it's an important indicator and and it turns out if you're if you're channeling all of your negative emotions into occasion into frustration or anger or something like that you're you're not being very precise it it's much better now like

I've had you know I'll have a meeting and I listens for a while and when it's my turn to talk I'll say I'm scared and that's more effective people are like you're what are you scared of and then you can start talking about okay what is what's making you scared that's um you get more in touch it actually help you probably not with your family relationships your close Intimate Relationships but I think it helps you at work too let me ask an Amazon question uh Amazon is your baby and for sure um you stepped away

from that yeah um what did that feel like how hard was that for you and what is it like now well um I even when Amazon was a tiny company for whatever reason I always had in my mind that I wanted to build a company that would Outlast me and so I've always been thinking about it in that framework and uh how it could could could kind of grow up into a young adult and be set off into the world uh successfully and independently um and that's very different you know um you there you can

do things you can build companies in different ways you don't have to do that you know you can there's you can have be the genius with a thousand helpers you can and that's also can be very successful there's nothing wrong with it it's just it wasn't what I wanted to do and and I you know it was I felt like a parent sending you know or maybe like with your kids become go off to college or maybe when they graduate from college and you're hoping that you've created this independent child you know now adult young

adults who can go off in the world you don't you don't want them to be dependent on you if they are you've failed and I've also I've always preached inside the company and to myself that no one is indispensable I think it's most important for CEOs to look at themselves in the mirror every day and see I'm not indispensable and if you if you so I I want Amazon to go off without me and I'm still at Amazon by the way I haven't left fully and I am a parent and I will but I'm a

60-year-old man and my mom and dad still worry about me right so you never stop being a parent my heart is in Amazon my curiosity is Amazon my fears are there my love is there I'm never going to forget about Amazon I'll always be there to help um and right now I'm putting a lot of time in it because it's Al I you know I can help and it's super interesting so why not but this is the right way in my view to think about this you know big leaders only have to do a few

things big leaders have to identify the Big Ideas they have to enforce tough execution right against those big ideas and they need to grow the next generation of leaders okay so two that's really it so two things um and so my job part of my what one of my jobs right now is to make sure Andy you know Andy jasse and the whole leadership team are successful I take that job very seriously that's what I was going to ask as a parent yeah your parent kids can go off but sometimes they do things you don't

want the kids to do absolutely I just my I've got kids in college age and just out of college and I still have to vend more the money every once in a while just happened just um we we'll talk about what you subscribe and save to in just a moment on your app but um help us help us with this you just said you're very you're very involved with it right now what is it that you're doing at Amazon ai ai yeah so I mean there are a few things but small but it's 95% Ai

and where do you it's just so because there we are literally working on a thousand applications internally so AI you have to remember AI modern AI is a horizontal enabling layer it it it it will it it can be used to improve everything it will be in everything um this is most like El electricity art I went to a um Brewery in Luxembourg many years ago now in fact this trip was one of the little tiny catalysts for the founding of AWS the and the brewery was 300 years old this company making beer for 300

years a lot of the oldest companies of the world are breweries by the way I don't know why this is and they were very proud of their history and they had a museum and in that museum was an electric power generator 100 years old and because when they wanted to improve the efficiency of their Brewery with electricity there was no power grid so they had to build their own power station so they made their own electricity and at that time that's what everybody did if a hotel wanted electricity they had their own electric generator and

I looked at this and I thought this is what computation is like today everybody has their own Data Center and that's not going to last it makes no sense you're going to buy a compute Off the Grid that's AWS we had we were doing it internally in Amazon for ourselves and the apis were created there's that that's a very interesting story in its own right but the this is you know these kind of horizontal layers like electricity and compute and now artificial intelligence they they go everywhere there isn't I guarantee you there is not a

single application that you can think of that is not going to be made better by Ai and where do you think Amazon is in this we've been talking about large language models yeah uh all day we talked to Sam we talked to Sundar um clearly AWS has a a big opportunity but on the language model piece it doesn't have its own does it matter you've been so busy yeah Andrew that you did not see I did see yester our announcements yesterday I did see the announ about Nova yes well that is a large language model

and it is our own and do you believe that that model is competitive with yes these other models it it is absolutely competitive so it is um uh benchmarks extraordinarily well it's a worldclass foundation model it's a Frontier Model um and and it's very very price performant do you think that all these things we were talking about it earlier become commoditized though the models themselves I don't think they'll be exactly commoditized but I think there will be I think models will end up being specialists at certain they'll be better at slightly some will have lower

latency uh you know some will be you know better at calling apis there's there's a there will turn out to be a bunch of flavors just like you you might not consult you know if you're phoning a friend and Consulting somebody you're not always going to consult the same person for everything it won't be exactly like that because this kind of intelligence that we're creating is a little alien it's very different uh from Human intelligence in certain ways these these these Transformers these large generative AI um and uh you know so there I think even

you know even even a single application is likely to call multiple AI models depending on what you know some of them will be lower cost because they have a small number of parameters and then every once in a while you'll have to call the really big model the big models are mostly going to be used I don't know yeah probably mostly but they'll certainly be often used as teacher models so you know this is what we announced yesterday was Nova there are four classes of model there's the the giant you know Frontier Model but that

model you know we just still down to the smaller models that are more cost effective have lower latency and can and provide different levels of intelligence so that's a really you know this whole thing is is fascinating it's by the way also one of the way it's very interesting to think about how alien this kind of it's it's um you know in some ways these models are already harder than humans because they're more multidisiplinary right um it's very difficult for a human to you know be an expert in you know even if you're a doctor

you really have to specialize you know you can be does it excite you or scare you oh it excites me I'm not are you no I'm no I'm not scared I just want I do we do talk about sort of uh human you know what it's going to mean to be a human when this is all well I you know so I've had this conversation about with various people about what it means to be human and and people say well you know if AI is smarter than us better than us at various things won't that

take the meaning out of your life or some you know some question along those lines and I said look I consider myself to be a very good writer but I know people who are much better writers than I am and in fact I don't think there's any single thing that I'm the best in the world at if I go down if I'm being really honest with myself there I can always find something I I know people who are better than me at math I know you know people who are better than me at dancing that's

for sure so you know there like literally I go right down the line and I can always find somebody better and and yet that doesn't take meaning if you're if meaning only if you only get meaning because you're the best in the world of something then very few of us are going to have meaning in our lives there isn't going to be a lot of meaning and really your meaning is coming from your relationships you know how uplifting people so like if you if you think about by the way that uplifting can be very local

think it's like if you're just uplifting your brother and sister you're uplifting your kids you're uplifting you know your friends and and the people in your community you're going to get meaning from that do you think technology has made that better or worse we were talking to Prince Harry earlier he clearly thinks it's social media and I don't are you on social media I am on social media sometimes and you say sometimes well I I am not addicted to social media I go in and look and and um I try to mine it for ideas

sometimes and and it it it is uh it's a lot of work to find the little nuggets of there where there are some like I I follow a bunch of people who I think are really smart and uh and if I some if I can stay just on those but invariably the algorithm captures my attention and takes me down a different path you're I've seen you you're very good at compartmentalizing meaning I you will put the phone down I never I never pick up my I'm is that a natural act though it's easy for me

I'm very I'm a um I'm a Serial multitasker so I'm very very focused when I was in monor school they told my mom that um I was problematic because I wouldn't switch tasks and my teacher would have to pick my whole chair up and move me in my chair to the next task and so I you know it's it's easy for me if I'm at dinner with friends I'm at dinner I do not want I don't it's not hard for me that is not hard for me I'm a good focuser that's hard for me um

two other things before we go uh there are these different buckets obviously we've talked about blue origin which you spent a lot of your time on now and Amazon and then I see you making investments in robotics and Ai and other things and obviously um uh the Earth fund how do you how what is the day like for you what do how do you sort of see it I I I work from about 9 to 7 in meetings I mean it's meetings from 9 to 7 it's um and then I have a bunch of documents

I read outside that um I get energy from that it is um I've always done that um you can't you know you can't start a company unless you're will to work really hard and not all the work is fun that's why they call it work um a lot of it is fun but I always people if you get half your job to be fun you're crushing it um you know that you got to have your expectations set right if you if you come out of college and think like 100% of your job is going to

be fun you're setting yourself a disappointment um here's my final question for you you don't do this that often you mean do these interviews interview very frequently very rare and I'm curious because I do you must read about yourself occasionally um a little bit through social media oh I definitely see things sometimes like with the non-endorsement decision that wasn't very nice of some people so that was so I'm actually just I'm curious what you think the world misunderstands about you we all read about you all the time uh we see you in pictures and all

sorts of things everywhere um and I'm curious what you think when when you sort of see the projected version of Jeff basos and the real Jeff basos it's actually the reason I wanted you to be here today U because I've had the opportunity to get to know you over the years um I'm curious though from your Vantage Point what you see as the thing that that the public doesn't well what an interesting I wasn't expecting any questions like this let me think about this it's [Music] um I you know I I gave up on being

well understood a long time ago I kind of thought I I realized it was a um It's kind it would take so much energy and you'd probably still fail you know be understood to be understood is too difficult it's as a public figure it's hard enough by the way to be well understood by your loved ones you know by your kids and your and your and your close family members and your closest friends even that is difficult like you know it takes a lot of energy and I think to be well understood by the world

I my I would POS it to you that if you think you understand any public figure you probably don't is there may be some exceptions where the people I don't know maybe like Oprah when she had her show because she really was you you're talking you saw her so often and and in so many different circumstances that maybe you got a real sense of her and you know I know her and she does seem like the woman on her show like it so there I think there are these rare cases where people end up defining

themselves but mostly you end up defined by a small set of things that catch ATT as a public figure that catch people's attention and um and they they tend to they just dominate the entire conversation you know like I you know in my case it would be wealth or something like this people would would say you know it's very hard if you're you know um I had a a very funny moment on stage with Bill Gates once uh it was shortly after I had become the wealthiest person in the world and I had taken that

title from Bill a title which I had you know I tell you I promise you I had never sought and um and uh we were being interviewed the Two of Us by I remember who the moderator was but he said uh uh Bill how do you feel about this guy stealing your number one uh wealthiest person title and before bill could answer I looked at Bill and said you're welcome um because of course it's not it's actually just a uh that particular thing is tends to be dominant in our culture it kind of people over

focus on it and then they think you're focused on it which isn't really true um it's you know in my case I think of myself as an inventor that's what I am and I wake up every day and I follow my curiosity and I explore and I really am an inventor I'm very good at that I'm a very good lateral thinker and I love problems and I love a whiteboard and I love having a team of other smart people and we work together and we find unusual solutions to things and that's how I think of

myself so like if I could somehow have a forbs list of inventors and if I could climb my way to the top of that inventor list that's what would make me and then I'd be understood or at least in part but I don't somehow I think it you have to decide too as a public figure how much energy do you want to put into being understood because you can spend a lot of time and it probably still wouldn't work so you know it probably helps to do an occasional interview like this I did Lex I

did Le Freedman and um I've done a couple of things and so you don't want to be so mist serious nobody ever sees you and they you know you want to be the uh the the Howard Hughes or whatever you don't want to be a reclose completely but I also I really value my time I work very hard I care deeply about the things I work on and every minute I'm doing something like this is a minute I am not doing something else not that I'm not happy to do this I am and and I

have enjoyed it and you're very good at it um thank you Jeffrey Bezos Jeff Bezos thank you so much uh thank you for your time today we very very much appreciate that was a spectacular conversation thank you so so much um