In 1996, David Recycray Bill Gates told him that he was leaving his administrative role in MicrosoftThen, already one of the largest companies in the world with an annual revenue of about $ 8.7 billion, to take a job in a “small small library on the Internet”, called Amazon.
“It was not a completely rational step,” Recycher, CEO of Lyft, admitted in an episode of PodCaster Next Fortune, which was broadcast on September 30. Risher served as the first Vice President of the American Retail Trade in 1997 and 2002.
In fact, Bill Gates tried to talk about Rececher outside the step, as he said in the podcast, to remind him that he was “successful” in the largest company, where Richar has developed the first product of a database from Microsoft, called Access.
The gates – then the richest person in the world, with a clear value that Forbes appreciates in 18 billion dollars In September 1996 – I was surprised that Rece would like to leave Microsoft to start online. I reported only annual revenues 15.7 million dollars In 1996, just two years after the establishment of Jeff Bezos company.
“Things are going well (here),” Gates said at that time. You mean to tell me that you are leaving this company to some small small internet library that no one has ever heard … this must be the most stupid decision that I have ever heard. ”A Gates spokesman did not immediately respond to CNBC, making the request for comment.
Riccher said that, while Richeer understood the risks inherent in leaving a firm technical giant to start a much smaller and unintended employment, the Amazon founder has made a convincing case.
“We will be a billion dollar work” by 2000
Risher has already met for the first time Bezos on the phone a year ago before joining Amazon, when the founder called him to check a work reference for another new employee that Bezos was rented.
“” 2015 interview.
By 1996, Risher became so admired by Bezos and Amazon to the extent that he started conducting interviews with a job to start the young man. He said that there were two things about Bezos, who convinced Riccher that he was making the right decision. The first was the Bizos obsession with customer experience.
“The idea that you personally can improve the lives of millions of customers if you take responsibility very seriously,” he told Newnham.
The other part of the Bezos Stadium, which defeated Richar, was the businessman’s confidence that Amazon could be the following huge technology company.
At that time, Amazon had a “relatively small work” Initially focused on selling books. However, Bezos had a clear vision that would start with books and eventually expand to more and more products categories until Amazon became “”Everything is a store“It is today.
“I think if we do everything correctly, by the time when we are in 2000, we will be a billion dollars work,” said Bezos, according to Richcher.
“Very convincing” opportunity
Riccher clearly bought Bizous’s vision of Amazon. He found the opportunity to be at the forefront of this kind of rapid and rapid growth to be “very convincing”.
He told Fortune: “I thought about myself:” How many times do you get to be in a company that is right in this crazy intersection of technology and culture and all these different things, and building something that could be a billion dollars? “
He said that Amazon ended up defeating Bezos’s prediction for one year, as annual revenues amounting to $ 1.6 billion in 1999. The role of Risher has included Amazon’s expansion in a variety of new products categories, including music, movies and games.
When Risher left the company to become a commercial professor at Washington University in 2002, Amazon’s annual revenues amounted to $ 3.9 billion.
Now 60 years old, Risher Lyft has led since 2023 and is still taking inspiration from the leaders of his former presidents, The Billions Gates and Bezos, Richer often says. He also remembers the pride of excitement for the first years of Amazon.
“It was truly a rocket ship, and it is always fun,” said Richcher. “This building was not previously built on this scale very exciting.”
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