Jeff Bezos, every mention

Amazon.com · Acquired Aug 16, 2022 · 100 mentions

• ▶ 1:36:42 David Rosenthal Jeff, I don't think is the kind of person who ever felt like he needed permission, but to the extent he did feel like he needed permission or that the right thing to do was to get big fast, which is one thing that he does that he makes…
• ▶ 1:37:30 Ben Gilbert Jeff and she meet, and she's completely turned around.
• ▶ 1:38:27 Ben Gilbert Just to keep going on Joy a little bit, we're going to talk about the Amazon letter, which many of you have read, that original 1997 letter to shareholders, which she wrote with Jeff.
• ▶ 1:38:48 Ben Gilbert That is, of course, attributable to Jeff, but is in large part a Joy Covey invention, too.
• ▶ 1:39:11 David Rosenthal Joy's telling Brad, I think about the early days and the level of clarity, vision, potential, and values that Jeff brought, and then I look at Amazon today, this is in 2013, and reflect on some conversations I have had with him in the…
• ▶ 1:39:49 David Rosenthal I think Jeff is one of the most capable and effective founders ever, and I think the Amazon juggernaut is still in its early stages.
• ▶ 1:42:25 David Rosenthal And they're like, so, like, begrudging backhanded compliments to Amazon and Jeff.
• ▶ 1:42:39 David Rosenthal And then, of course, like, we're telling this story, like, Jeff freaking new computer science, you know, back in the.
• ▶ 1:43:10 David Rosenthal So Joy joins right at the end of 96, right after the Kleiner round, and Jeff, definitely because he wanted to do it, and you know, is consistent with Get Big Fast, maybe it was also sort of like this test for his new high potential CFO,…
• ▶ 1:43:45 David Rosenthal Jeff also thought that it would be a great marketing event for the company.
• ▶ 1:47:08 David Rosenthal By Bezos Expeditions and Jeff Bezos himself, and of course many other great venture capital firms like Sequoia Capital Index and others.
• ▶ 1:50:08 David Rosenthal Jeff's like, we're gonna go public now.
• ▶ 1:50:32 David Rosenthal And we asked Tom on the Amazon IPO episode that we did, why did Jeff and Amazon choose Deutsche Bank over the gold-plated, you know, never get fired for choosing Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley?
• ▶ 1:51:04 David Rosenthal Now, when they file to go public, but before they actually do go public, just like Jeff was envisioning, this attracts a lot of attention.
• ▶ 1:52:24 David Rosenthal The Reggio brothers, when Amazon files for an IPO, they fly out to Seattle and they schedule a dinner with Jeff and Jeff brings along Tom is Tom.
• ▶ 1:56:05 Ben Gilbert I always think back on the Wall Street Wiz for Jeff Bezos.
• ▶ 1:58:51 David Rosenthal It would be hubris of Jeff and Joy and Mackenzie and everybody and Chell at Amazon to just say, okay, and not do anything about it, but this is Amazon and they know this is a problem.
• ▶ 1:59:06 David Rosenthal Jeff made in America is like his Bible.
• ▶ 1:59:16 Ben Gilbert We actually were gonna do this as the first episode of the season, and we got into researching Amazon and realized how much Jeff respected and borrowed from the Walmart strategy, and we're like, I guess we gotta tell that story first.
• ▶ 1:59:48 David Rosenthal And so Jeff, because of this, because he's read made in America, he knows that he can beat Barnes and Noble, but the way to do it is through distribution by building native.
• ▶ 2:00:21 David Rosenthal Jeff's like, we can do the same thing here, but we have to do it.
• ▶ 2:00:31 David Rosenthal So, in early 97, he and Joy together, I think according to Brad, it was very much a joint effort of both of them.
• ▶ 2:02:12 David Rosenthal So Jeff and Joy and John and the board these years were like, if we can get this guy, he's the key.
• ▶ 2:03:26 David Rosenthal Eventually, Amazon, Jeff, and Joy, and everybody, they convinced Rick to make the jump, and so right before the IPO in early 97, he joins, and Jeff knows they're gonna win at this point, so Brad writes in the Everything Store, Bezos had…
• ▶ 2:09:30 David Rosenthal Jeff obviously wasn't envisioning that specifically, but like, this is why they're gonna beat Barnes and Noble, and this is why they're gonna beat eBay, and this is eventually why they're gonna beat Walmart in e-commerce.
• ▶ 2:10:48 David Rosenthal Jeff and Amazon start hiring Andy Jassy, Jason Kylar, Victoria Pickett, Harrison Miller, Jeff Blackburn, blah, blah, blah.
• ▶ 2:13:32 David Rosenthal They fly up to Seattle to meet with Bezos and Blackbird.
• ▶ 2:13:43 David Rosenthal Jeff and Jeff take them on a tour of the Seattle Fulfillment Center, and Pierre's like, he's such an, like, engineer.
• ▶ 2:15:12 Ben Gilbert But Bezos is thinking in decades, and he's thinking,
• ▶ 2:15:43 Ben Gilbert They're both right on different time frames, and my favorite Bezos quote is, and this, I think, comes from that very first interview that I referenced earlier.
• ▶ 2:15:53 Ben Gilbert I mean, I've watched every interview Bezos has given in prep for this, but that one has all the highlights in, like, three to four minutes, and, you know, he's still got hair.
• ▶ 2:16:17 David Rosenthal What happens after this meeting with Meg and Pierre, I think really illustrates just how special Jeff and Amazon as a company are, because he makes a mental and emotional leap that I, I don't know many people could have made.
• ▶ 2:17:38 Ben Gilbert Jeff has all these quotes about how the customers, and I think this is in the
• ▶ 2:18:14 David Rosenthal So after the meeting, Jeff Bezos turns to Jeff Blackburn and is like, auctions could be the future.
• ▶ 2:19:32 David Rosenthal Bezos swoops in
• ▶ 2:22:03 David Rosenthal Now, Jeff, so they acquired accept.com to keep it out of the hands of eBay.
• ▶ 2:24:59 David Rosenthal Jeff and Ram kind of stay in touch, and even though they left Amazon, they're friendly.
• ▶ 2:25:04 David Rosenthal Jeff hears about Google, calls up Ram, and he's like, hey, I wanna come meet these guys.
• ▶ 2:25:13 Ben Gilbert And was Jeff interested in search yet?
• ▶ 2:25:24 David Rosenthal So Jeff and Mackenzie fly down to Silicon Valley.
• ▶ 2:25:36 David Rosenthal Ram, Larry, Sergey, Jeff, Mackenzie.
• ▶ 2:25:42 David Rosenthal Jeff takes Rahm aside, and he's like, hey, I want to put some money in these guys too.
• ▶ 2:25:45 David Rosenthal And Rahm's like, dude, the seed closed six months ago, and like, Kleiner, Sequoia, like, they're circling about doing a Series A, like, Jeff's like, I don't care.
• ▶ 2:25:53 Ben Gilbert And Jeff's like, I'm Jeff Bezos.
• ▶ 2:26:05 David Rosenthal So Rahm goes to bath for him, and he convinces Larry and Sergey to take another 250,000 dollars of Jeff and Mackenzie's personal money at the seed price.
• ▶ 2:27:07 Ben Gilbert Ram and Jeff, we should say.
• ▶ 2:27:11 David Rosenthal I think it is probably safe to say that Jeff and McKenzie owned at least one percent of Google.
• ▶ 2:27:38 David Rosenthal So Jeff has never commented, he's been asked, he's never commented on whether or not he and McKenzie sold their Google shares, but they wouldn't have even had a chance to sell before the IPO.
• ▶ 2:27:58 David Rosenthal That's how Jeff and McKenzie got wealthy.
• ▶ 2:28:24 David Rosenthal That was me laughing there, but you, listeners, you should just imagine Jeff Bezos laughing there.
• ▶ 2:28:34 Ben Gilbert So yes, even if Bezos wasn't selling any Amazon shares for a while, he had plenty of capital to work with for doing things like investing in crazy cool.
• ▶ 2:28:51 David Rosenthal Which also, I don't think it was the eBay fund.
• ▶ 2:29:03 Ben Gilbert What if Jeff still owns a percent of Google, whether Google Cloud wins or whether AWS wins?
• ▶ 2:29:11 David Rosenthal Especially now that Jeff's just a board member of Amazon.
• ▶ 2:29:50 David Rosenthal Unbelievable, bountiful windfall for Jeff and Mackenzie personally.
• ▶ 2:32:06 David Rosenthal The board gets pretty worried about the company, about Jeff.
• ▶ 2:32:15 David Rosenthal The board asks Jeff to bring in a COO to compliment him.
• ▶ 2:33:22 David Rosenthal Yeah, the Amazon board brings him into Amazon and simultaneously asked Jeff to go find a COO.
• ▶ 2:34:06 Ben Gilbert So Bezos does take this seriously.
• ▶ 2:36:11 David Rosenthal I think Jeff and everybody was too, but that absolves a lot of sins.
• ▶ 2:36:25 David Rosenthal And then eventually when Bezos started to step back and Jassy became CEO of AWS and Bezos was CEO of the whole company, Jassy's counterpart and CEO of Amazon retail was Jeff Welke.
• ▶ 2:38:29 David Rosenthal So, after the whole Gali incident, let's call it an incident, and Jeff kind of reaffirms
• ▶ 2:39:28 David Rosenthal He says, up until that point, I had seen Jeff only at one speed, the go-go speed of grow at all costs.
• ▶ 2:39:59 David Rosenthal Jeff though.
• ▶ 2:42:03 Ben Gilbert With everything that Bezos has been writing in his letters.
• ▶ 2:42:54 unnamed speaker In the fall of 2000, Meg Whitman and Jeff Jordan fly up to Seattle and they pitch Bezos on the opposite idea.
• ▶ 2:43:31 unnamed speaker I think from the last dance, um, I think Jeff took that personal.
• ▶ 2:44:19 unnamed speaker So, Jeff calls an emergency meeting of, at this point it was the S team, the senior leadership, it was the J team, the Jeff team, and then when Gali took over, and everybody reported to Joe, then it became the S team, the senior team.
• ▶ 2:48:20 unnamed speaker I remember the annual letter in 2018 when it eclipsed it, and Jeff proudly proclaimed that the third party sellers are kicking our butt.
• ▶ 2:48:31 unnamed speaker What a Jeff thing to say.
• ▶ 2:49:04 unnamed speaker I'm so in awe of Bezos doing this because he almost just got ousted out of his company.
• ▶ 2:49:45 David Rosenthal Jeff's crazy goal of the company is going to hit profitability.
• ▶ 2:53:36 David Rosenthal And Jeff, of course, through his very direct connection to Google, he saw this problem certainly before eBay, but you know, but before
• ▶ 2:55:37 David Rosenthal So, Bezos, Amazon, they see Google.
• ▶ 3:02:48 David Rosenthal I bet very few of you know who inspired the idea for Jeff and Amazon to pursue the Kindle.
• ▶ 3:03:42 David Rosenthal Martin Eberhard and Mark Tarpening inspired Jeff Bezos and Amazon to build the Kindle.
• ▶ 3:05:22 David Rosenthal They fly up to Seattle and they meet with Jeff Bezos.
• ▶ 3:05:37 David Rosenthal Jeff totally gets it.
• ▶ 3:06:10 David Rosenthal And Bezos also wants to do it, but he's like, look,
• ▶ 3:06:39 David Rosenthal They're like, Hey, we're talking to Jeff.
• ▶ 3:07:01 David Rosenthal And we know Jeff won't do the deal.
• ▶ 3:07:31 David Rosenthal Also, like, just wild that, like, if Amazon and Bezos hadn't acquired accept.com, like, probably no PayPal, which means Elon doesn't have the money, which means.
• ▶ 3:07:47 David Rosenthal So Jeff and Eberhard, they kind of remain friends through all this and like, just like, all right, you know, no hard feelings.
• ▶ 3:08:04 David Rosenthal And Jeff is always asking Martin, like,
• ▶ 3:08:48 David Rosenthal So Bezos and a couple other folks go down to meet with jobs after iTunes for windows launches.
• ▶ 3:09:34 David Rosenthal So Jeff calls Martin back up, but they've already started Tesla at this point.
• ▶ 3:11:30 David Rosenthal It had a wonky scroll wheel because Bezos was like, I've got a scroll wheel on my Blackberry and I want to a scroll wheel on my
• ▶ 3:11:51 Ben Gilbert And he's like, not only are you, you're going to take my design advice and you're definitely not giving me Jeff Bezos business model advice.
• ▶ 3:12:02 David Rosenthal E-ink technology, actually wireless, which was a Bezos thing.
• ▶ 3:16:51 David Rosenthal But Jeff changed, the company changed, they adapted and here we are.
• ▶ 3:20:59 Ben Gilbert And David, as I was preparing for this episode, again, I mentioned this earlier, but I tried to watch literally every Jeff Bezos talk, especially from the early days.
• ▶ 3:22:53 Ben Gilbert I'm not saying that Amazon only has this as one of the powers that enables them to achieve persistent differential returns versus competitors, but it was like Jeff was writing that part of the book as he was sort of giving the speech, and…
• ▶ 3:23:53 David Rosenthal Jim Senegal and Jeff are buds.
• ▶ 3:23:58 Ben Gilbert And at least Jeff credits a particular lunch with Jim from teaching him a lot of lessons.
• ▶ 3:24:10 Ben Gilbert And in particular, because as we all know, Jeff is absolutely laser focused on not gross margin percentage, but the absolute dollar amount of margin dollars over a full customer lifetime that you can sort of get.
• ▶ 3:24:36 David Rosenthal Which Jeff will go to great lengths at any point in time to talk about how he was doing business meetings in the early Amazon days, literally in his competitors' coffee shops.
• ▶ 3:25:11 David Rosenthal Like you gave a lot of key information to Jeff Bezos, who, you know, you became friends with, and then he certainly one of your biggest competitors and, you know, Jim's response is just like, this is retail.
• ▶ 3:25:41 David Rosenthal Yeah, so actually the purpose of the meeting was that Jeff wanted to pitch Jim on, uh, this was like early days when they were expanding the categories on Amazon, and there was a bunch of products that they couldn't get yet.
• ▶ 3:25:56 David Rosenthal So Jeff wanted to pitch Jim on Costco selling
• ▶ 3:28:28 Ben Gilbert What Jeff Bezos chose to do here was a little bit different, because I don't think he's running a breakeven retail business and just making money on Prime.