Jeff Bezos is devoting more time to his rocket company Blue Origin
Credit: Shuttershock
Former Amazon executives will tell you that Jeff Bezos likes control. The billionaire’s love of “six pagers” — a lengthy memo read out loud at the beginning of each Amazon meeting, along with his interest in every single nut and bolt keeping the $1.7 trillion company running made his bombshell decision to quit as chief executive all the more surprising.
“I won’t go as far to say he was a micromanager, but he was a micromanager” says Jon Reily, a former Amazon hardware executive who worked with Bezos for five years, and recalls the Amazon founder getting deeply involved in how menus worked on Amazon’s touchscreen tablets. “That is just his personality.”
Like Reily, many are already sceptical about how much power Bezos will relinquish even after handing over the reins to former Amazon cloud chief Andy Jassy. The 57-year-old will remain as executive chair of the Amazon board and as the company’s biggest shareholder.
Bezos has long been juggling a lot of plates. Stepping down will give him more time to spend on his space exploration company Blue Origin, his climate change initiative the Earth Fund and the newspaper he owns, The Washington Post. He will also have more time for the Day 1 Fund, a charity focused on educating children and helping low income families.
“The only thing that wealth cannot buy is time,” says Scott Galloway, author and professor of marketing at the New York University Stern School of Business. “The changes in the pace of time start to become glaringly apparent to men in their fifties.”
Bezos alluded to the ticking clock in an email sent to employees upon his resignation.
“Being the chief executive of Amazon is a deep responsibility, and it’s consuming,” he wrote. “When you have a responsibility like that, it’s hard to put attention on anything else.”
Bezos email to Amazon staff
A lot has changed in Bezos’ personal life since divorcing his wife in 2019 and going public with his relationship with former Fox news presenter Lauren Sanchez. Before the pandemic put a dampener on his social life the billionaire, who has a net worth of $188bn, last year was seen at a number of high profile parties: on boats with music mogul David Geffen next to supermodel Karlie Kloss and her husband Jared Kushner, and embracing Kim Kardashian at the Met Ball in New York.
He even made a trip to Wimbledon to watch the tennis from the Royal Box. On his Instagram account, a rare view into his personal life, he posts frequently about his parents, indicating that he may be hoping to spend more time with family.
Reily says it is likely that as his personal life became news fodder, he had already stepped away from the main role behind the scenes.
“I suspect over time and unbeknown to us, Jeff stepped away from the day-to-day and Andy [Jassy] has been running the ship in Seattle while Jeff is in New York running Amazon advertising or in Hollywood, on the red carpet”.
There have been comparisons to Bill Gates, who has forged a legacy far from his Microsoft roots. Like Gates, Bezos had shied away from charitable work until recently and gave the perception of being brutally business-minded.
“I believe Gates is going to be the role model for Bezos,” Professor Galloway says. “This is all about legacy and right now Bezos is leaving with the most impressive business mind in history. The only thing he can do right now is take that mind, his billions and apply them to a very big problem that needs to be solved”.
If Gates made it his mission to tackle global health, Bezos’ mission is to lower the cost and availability of space tourism through his self-funded space company, Blue Origin.
Blue Origin said last week it was “getting really close” to flying humans after the successful completion of its 14th mission into space in January. Bezos is competing against Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has contracts with Nasa to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is also chasing space tourism.
Amazon revenue
With fierce competition, there is always the possibility that Bezos might focus his heart on something closer to home. An 18-year-old Bezos told a local paper, which was interviewing him after being named Valedictorian of his class, that he wanted to colonise space.
“The whole idea is to preserve the Earth,” he said. If that idea has stuck, then perhaps his new initiative, the Bezos Earth Fund, might become just as important as taking tourists to the Moon. Last year, Bezos earmarked $791m for donations in his Earth Fund to environmental organisations who are working "on innovative, ambitious, and needle-moving solutions".
Under Bezos, Amazon announced billions in donations to prove that the company cared about the environment, following years of criticism over the carbon footprint of the sales it makes every year. Bezos set a goal of powering all of Amazon’s operations with 100pc renewable energy by 2025 and ensuring Amazon shipments are net zero carbon by 2030.
Climate change will be higher on the agenda this year as President Joe Biden has outlined it as a priority for his admission. Bezos, who donates to the Democrats, may see an opportunity to work with the government to achieve their goals. He has previously welcomed politicians as guests in his $23m townhouse in Washington DC.
While he made good on his plan to control a printing press, Reily thinks the next step will be “uniquely Jeff”.
“He’s going to try and capture an asteroid or something,” he says. “Those are the kinds of things that keep him up at night.”
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