Why Jeff Bezos Started Amazon — the Mindset He Built His Wealth On
Written by
John Csiszar
Edited by
Rebekah Evans
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As CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos is one of the richest people in the entire world. He has already. been a billionaire for close to 30 years. This means that Bezos has been a billionaire for the entire lifespan of Generation Z.
But before he was a billionaire, Bezos was just an entrepreneur starting a company that many envisioned as crashing and burning, even as it enjoyed initial success. In those days, even Bezos wasn’t looking to become a billionaire. Rather, he was wanting to live a life without regret. What did Bezos mean by that? Here’s how the tech guru has explained his mindset.
Bezos’ Mindset: Regret Minimization
In a 2001 speech given to student delegates at the Academy of Achievement Summit in San Antonio, Bezos made the following comments:
“The framework I found which made the decision incredibly easy was what I called — which only a nerd would call — a ‘regret minimization framework.’ So, I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, ‘OK, now I’m looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have.’ I knew that when I was 80 I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried.”
In other words, Bezos didn’t set out to become rich. In fact, he already had a successful career as an investment banker before he decided to risk it all on his new idea. But Bezos felt that just having a successful white-collar job would lead him to regrets. It might be hard to think of it now, but in 1994, the internet was just getting going and most people didn’t even know what it was or what it could become.
At that early age, the forward-thinking Bezos knew that hitching his star to the internet was a great idea. And looking back, it’s almost certain that Bezos would indeed have regretted his choice if he hadn’t gotten involved — as would the millions of customers who now rely on Amazon to send them whatever it is they need.
What Else Drove Bezos?
Bezos surely wasn’t the only person to think, “I should get involved with the internet” back when it was just starting out. But Bezos was the only one to create a company that has grown to become the largest online retailer in the whole world. So, how did it all happen and why did Bezos start with books?
The answers came in an interview Bezos gave in Berlin when he received the Axel Springer award in 2018, as reported in Business Insider. According to Bezos, even growing up, he would always look at things and wonder how they could be improved.
Ultimately, those thoughts led to books because he saw that there were more than 3 million books in print in 1994, but even the biggest book stores could only hold about 150,000. Thanks to the internet, he realized that he could offer universal selection, better than any brick-and-mortar bookstore and including even out-of-print books. While there was a lot more that obviously went into the process, that was the initial thought process.
Bezos Was a Visionary
It’s hard to think of Bezos as anything but one of the richest people in the world, but it wasn’t a drive for wealth that made him so. He may not have become a billionaire working his job as an investment banker, but he certainly would have been well off, so he didn’t “need” to start Amazon, at least financially.
But Bezos was a visionary who saw an opportunity that he would regret if he didn’t participate in and that was his primary motivation. Coupled with his knack for serving a need and improving existing services, he has turned Amazon into the world’s biggest seller of retail products.
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