Dave Clark, CEO of Flexport and former CEO of Amazon Consumer, discusses the traits common to employees who consistently exceed ambitious goals.
Assertion Supported
Clark: One-hour delivery lacks a feasible, profitable business model
“There's not a real feasible, like one hour delivery profitable model. Yeah. Despite, you know, all the efforts, you know, all the subsidized, you know, funding processes to the contrary, there's not a lot of great profitable models for that.”
Opinion
Clark: A generation of VCs lost money on last-mile delivery
“In my personal opinion, yes.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Clark: Unscaled last-mile delivery startups will fail, not be acquired
“And the people without scale just won't make it. They'll go away. I don't expect a lot of acquisition, because there's not a lot of value in acquisition for those.”
Opinion
Clark: Amazon culture evaluates people solely on yesterday's performance
“Amazon's a fairly intense place, you know, and it's a you know, Amazon, I think you kind of, you know, it's very, you know, you're as good as what you did yesterday kind of thing. There's not a lot of longitudinal, you know, stickiness in that way.”
Insight
Clark: Hire for the job needed three to five years out
“And I think too many people look for somebody who's going to do what they're told. Like, you know, they want somebody who's going to fill the job of the now. And what I want is somebody who's gonna fill the job that's gonna be the job three years from now, or …”
Opinion
Clark: Jeff Bezos excels at context shifting and focusing on critical 10%
“He is one of the best simplifiers, if not the best simplifiers I've ever met, which is he can context shift incredibly well. You have a meeting, you know, this hour on AWS, the next hour on the consumer business, the next hour on labor, and be perfectly in the…”