‘Come, gamble with me on big ideas’, says Amazon founder Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos’ advice for entrepreneurs: “We need big failures. If we’re going to be moving the needle, we need to have billion-dollar scale failures and if we’re not, then we’re not swinging hard enough”.

From using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to deliver packages faster to helping developers build capabilities based on Machine Learning (ML) to delight its customers, Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has an advice for dreamers and builders: Come to me if you are willing to play the gamble with me on disruptive ideas.

Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has an advice for dreamers and builders(Bloomberg Photo)

The world’s richest man, in a free-wheeling firechat at Amazon “re: Mars” event here, said that he is very stubborn on big ideas.

“I’m flexible on the details but I don’t like to give up on things that that we’re working on. If you want to be an entrepreneur, the most important thing is to be customer obsessed, so don’t just satisfy your customers, figure out how to absolutely delight them,” Bezos told the gathering last week.

“The number one thing is passion -- whosoever your customers are. You have got to have some passion for the arena that you’re going to develop and work in.

“Otherwise, you’re going to be competing against people who do have the passion for that. And they’re going to build better products and services,” maintained the Amazon CEO who has just finalised a deal to buy three apartments in New York’s prime Manhattan area for nearly $80 million.

The good news is, he added, that at Amazon, “we still take risk all the time”.

“We encourage it. We talk about failure. We should be failing”.

For startups, he said that one should encourage their team-mates to take risks and be customer obsessed.

“All those things work just as well inside of the company as they do inside of the startup,” Bezos stressed, saying he pays great attention to people.

“I observe people who are right a lot and have detected some patterns. People who are right a lot, they listen a lot. They also change their mind a lot which is very interesting.”

When asked how he sees the future 10 years from now, Bezos said the humanity is going to see amazing developments in in biotechnology.

“I think that’s been an incredible field. And we’ll see dramatic progress there will continue to see lots of progress in ML and AI.

“In the e-commerce field, 10 years from now, people are going to want low prices and fast shipping,” he added.

Bezos’ advice for entrepreneurs: “We need big failures. If we’re going to be moving the needle, we need to have billion-dollar scale failures and if we’re not, then we’re not swinging hard enough”.