Dave Clark, former CEO of Amazon's worldwide consumer business, describes Jeff Bezos's approach to time management and problem-solving during his 23 years at Amazon.
“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 mode in the moment, which a lot of people have trouble doing. And he can quickly sort out the 90% that isn't hard in this sort of, he doesn't need to worry about cause somebody will figure out and he can very quickly narrow down to the 10% or whatever it is, the small slice that requires sort of his level of intellect or a senior level intellect to figure out how to solve and what's most important. And so he's hyper efficient with the time and That he spends, because he doesn't waste time on the stuff that's easy.”
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More from Dave Clark
AssertionSupported
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.”
Dave ClarkJul 17, 2023▶ 13:08Dave Clark: Lessons from Leading 1M Employees w/ Jeff Bezos at Amazon to CEO of Flexport | E1036 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Clark: A generation of VCs lost money on last-mile delivery
“In my personal opinion, yes.”
Dave ClarkJul 17, 2023▶ 15:15Dave Clark: Lessons from Leading 1M Employees w/ Jeff Bezos at Amazon to CEO of Flexport | E1036 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
PredictionNot 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.”
Dave ClarkJul 17, 2023▶ 17:05Dave Clark: Lessons from Leading 1M Employees w/ Jeff Bezos at Amazon to CEO of Flexport | E1036 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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.”
Dave ClarkJul 17, 2023▶ 23:49Dave Clark: Lessons from Leading 1M Employees w/ Jeff Bezos at Amazon to CEO of Flexport | E1036 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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 …”
Dave ClarkJul 17, 2023▶ 8:18Dave Clark: Lessons from Leading 1M Employees w/ Jeff Bezos at Amazon to CEO of Flexport | E1036 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Clark: Amazon was late to ultra-fast shipping due to my hesitation
“Like things that we omitted, like I think we were late getting to the ultra fast shipping piece when we were at Amazon. And I think some of that was, you know, a decent amount of that was probably on me”
Dave ClarkJul 17, 2023▶ 12:51Dave Clark: Lessons from Leading 1M Employees w/ Jeff Bezos at Amazon to CEO of Flexport | E1036 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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