my wife pointed out that one thing she
loves but Amazon is you can look back at
your purchases yeah and it’s a really
great reflection of what’s going on in
your life at the time based on what
you’re buying and it occurred to me that
the reverse is also true that the
e-commerce journey that everybody
probably this room has gone on mirrors
what you and Amazon have gone through
first only selling books and now selling
everything is we’ve all kind of gone on
that journey together and I looked back
at my purchase history and in 2004 I
bought exactly one thing on Amazon was a
book by 2006 I had a 500% increase in
purchases for books and one Gillette
razor and which I use tonight and
hopefully a new one you’re the new one
and then by 2015 a year we had just
gotten married moved into a home got
dogs we bought everything for our dogs
we bought a TV but snow blower bought
allergy medicine and peanut butter I
look these things up literally
everything four days a week ordering and
so the question is at what point because
you realize you’d have the scale of
success with Amazon going from books to
where you are now is a company well I
have a question for you in 2004 what you
know what book it was you bought I do
remember it was writing screenplays that
sell and if it’s not I’m how does that
work out that I can watch your money
back I guess I could even return all
right I’ll take it back because that did
not work out I’m going to keep my day
job whether your question is you know
did I kind of anticipate what would
happen over the last 22 years at Amazon
and the answer is god no so you know
Amazon started as a very small company
it was me and a few other people I was
driving all the packages to the post
office myself in my 1987 Chevy Blazer
and when I raised money for Amazon I had
to raise a million dollars which I
raised from 22 different investors
$50,000 each they got 20% of the company
for for the million dollars and it was a
40 people told me no so I did take sixty
meetings to get 20 yeses the first
question was always what’s the internet
and I had to walk through that and this
was 1994 early 95 and so did I
anticipate you know fast forward to
today and and the current version of it
now it has been one foot in front of the
other and I think that that is true for
most businesses where you kind of
proceed adaptively step by step you
figure it out you have a success and
then you kind of double down on that
success and you figure out what what
else you can do what customers want
everything we’ve done and all the
success we have is at its root primarily
due to the fact that we have put
customers first
so those few people are probably kicking
themselves now that well it’s very
interesting the 40 people who did not
invest its kind of a study in human
nature I’m in touch with a few of them
still and some of them take it in great
stride and have they recognized that
they actually have ridiculously happy
lives others of them actually cannot
talk about it it’s just – it is actually
just too painful that’s human nature and
some people are better at rolling with
the punches I would be they do not talk
about it can’t probably good speaking of
talk I have the privilege of being able
to talk to a lot of people in Washington
but all of our member companies and
Amazon is one where I think people have
a very different idea of what Amazon is
some people see you as an e-commerce
company or retail or others see you as
an innovative tech company you have
Amazon Web Services and you have
original content and you have Alexa and
so many other things how should we be
thinking about Amazon yeah I do get that
that is something that people get
confused about some time what is Amazon
we do such a diverse array of things
from producing original content at
Amazon Studios
to Amazon Web Services where we sell you
know startups and enterprises
you know computing infrastructure to the
things that most people know about which
is our our consumer offering where we
deliver things in little brown boxes and
these things seem so disparate how is it
that we’re doing all them and the common
thread and really what it is is it’s an
approach we have a very distinctive
approach that we have been honing and
refining and thinking about for 22 years
and its really just a few principles
that we use as we go about these
activities at the very top of the list
it’s one I’ve already mentioned but
you’ll probably hear it 10 times
throughout tonight because it’s so
central and it is customer obsession its
customer obsession instead of for
example competitor obsession or business
model obsession or a product obsession
or technology obsession there are many
ways to Center a business and and by the
way many of them can work I know and and
and have friends who lead very
competitor obsessed companies and those
companies can be successful you know
that’s not a bad strategy
you have to be really good at close
following you identify winners when you
watch you watch your competitors very
carefully if they latch on to something
that’s working you duplicated as quickly
as possible it’s a very good strategy in
some ways because you don’t have to go
down blind alleys if you’re not
pioneering if you’re only closed
following and have some advantages but
it has some disadvantages too and I like
the customer obsession model I think
it’s the right one it’s better than
product obsession even a product
recession is not bad but I think
customer obsession gets you there in a
healthier way so that’s one of the one
of the principles one of the approaches
that we take in every single thing that
we do the second one is that we are
willing I would say even eager to invent
and pioneer so that is and that goes
along it marries really well with
customers session customers are always
dissatisfied they even when they don’t
know it even when they think they’re
happy they actually do want a better way
and they just don’t know yet what that
should be and that’s why I always warn
people customer obsession is not just
listening to customers customer
obsession is also inventing on their
behalf because it’s not their job to
invent for yourselves
and so you need to be an inventor and a
pioneer and the third one it’s really
central to the way we think about all of
our business problems and a bunch of
things that Amazon is we’re long-term
oriented so I ask everybody to not think
in two to three-year timeframes but to
think in five to seven year time frames
to not think about when somebody says to
me congratulate Amazon on a good quarter
which is a very common thing to say you
meet somebody they’re being nice they
looked at your financial results for the
quarter they like a quarter I say thank
you but what I’m thinking to myself is
that quarter all that those quarterly
results were actually pretty much fully
baked about three years ago and so like
today I’m working on you know a quarter
that is going to happen in 2020 not next
quarter next quarter for all practical
purposes is done already and it’s
probably been done for a couple of years
and so if you start to think that way
it changes how you spend your time how
you plan where you put your energy and
and your ability look around corners
gets better so many things improve if
you can take a long time by the way it’s
not natural for humans so it’s a it’s a
discipline that you have to build the
kind of you know get rich slowly schemes
are not big sellers on infomercials you
know it’s and so that’s something that
you have to sort of steel yourself for
discipline and teach
over time so that that’s what is Amazon
I would say really it’s a collection of
principles and approach and it’s an
approach that we deploy and and it’s
fine I danced into work me too
I’m not a good dancer we should get rich
slowly as a book I probably should have
gotten instead of this to finish a book
but by the way you know I’m one of our
award recipients earlier mentioned that
you mentioned that you were happy you
got rid of your bangs me too yeah I
hated my bangs so it clearly clearly you
do not take the success of Amazon
lightly and you’re very involved in the
company and one of the great things
about the internet many of your
competitors are in this room tonight and
competitions a click away
they’re probably people in garages
across the country trying to start a
next great Internet company like you did
for sure and so what does keep you up at
night when you think about the continued
success of Amazon well first of all I
I’m gifted but sleeping really well so
the Met particular metaphor doesn’t work
for me but I I know what you mean which
is what could go wrong and what are you
worried about and and for me the thing I
worry about the most is that we would
lose our way in one of those things that
we would lose our our obsessive focus on
customers or would somehow become
short-term oriented or would you know
and start to become overly cautious you
know kind of failure averse and
therefore unable to invent and pioneer
you cannot invent and pioneer if you
cannot accept failure to invent you need
to experiment and if it’s if you know in
advance that it’s going to work it is
not an experiment and so that’s a very
important thing you know it’s these they
are inseparable twins failure and
invention so you have to be willing to
do that
it’s embarrassing to fail
and you know it’s always embarrassing to
fail but you have to say no that’s not
how this works if I said to you you have
a 10% chance of a particular decision a
10% chance of a 100x return you should
take that bet every time but you’re
still going to be wrong nine out of ten
times and it’s going to feel bad 910
times and in in in with technology the
outcomes the results can be very long
tailed it’s very the payoff is can be
very asymmetric which is why you should
do so much experimentation you know
everybody knows that if you swing for
the fences you hit more home runs but
you also strike out more but with the
baseball that analogy doesn’t go far
enough because with baseball no matter
how well you connect with the ball you
can only get four runs the success is
capped at four runs but in business
every once in a while you step up to the
plate you hit the ball so hard you get a
thousand runs and so when that when you
have that kind of asymmetric payoff and
you know one f1 at back and get you a
thousand runs it encourages you to
experiment more it’s the right business
decision to experiment more it’s also
better for your customers customers like
the successful experiments by the way
this is a giant misconception in a lot
of young entrepreneurs and experienced
entrepreneurs that they meet one of the
things that is very fashionable right
now is to talk about how disruptive
their business plan is going to be and
the but invention is not disruptive only
customer adoption is disruptive and
Amazon we’ve invented a lot of things
the customers did not care about at all
and believe me they were not disruptive
through anyone so it’s only when
customers like the new way that anything
becomes disruptive and so really it’s
just saying that you want to you know if
somebody comes to you with a business
plan that they claim is disruptive you
should ask them to explain it to you in
simpler language and the simpler
language is why are customers going to
adopt this why are they going to like it
why is it better
than the traditional way so along those
lines we have you know some press and
media in the room is there something
that you think people get wrong about
Amazon that surprises you when you’re
read about it or see it in media
coverage well wrong I don’t know about
wrong first of all we’ve been over 20
years on balance treated very fairly by
the media and you know not every story
that’s ever been written about us is the
way we would have written it if we were
writing it ourselves but but on balance
very fairly treated and I you know so
wrong might be too strong I think there
there’s a piece of our business which is
probably not fully appreciated the scale
of it and what’s happening and the
energy and the dynamism round it which
is the third party seller part of our
business so you know we have today
roughly half of the company really is
third party sales it’s small businesses
there are a hundred thousand businesses
on Amazon
where the businesses make $100,000 or
more a year and it’s it’s turned into
you know a gigantic service for them we
even let them stow their products and
our fulfillment centers so that their
products become prime eligible which
increases their sales and a lot of
people make their living on that you
know that way and we’ve sort of we’ve
extended that into other areas too we
have a platform called Kindle direct
publishing so authors can write books
and then publish them directly and
that’s become very successful so there
are a lot of authors making plays have
done that Chris shootin our economists
had the book published on that right
very good and it’s it’s we get people
make they make livings I mean they’re
people who I have so many emails from
authors saying I you know because of
this program I’ve been able to quit my
job and they usually come they won’t
they already have like 25 rejection
letters from traditional publishers and
because their book didn’t fit in a
category or didn’t seem right and so on
but readers disagreed and so one of the
things that you get when you let people
when you you know I think this is more
like gardening you kind of get all the
nutrients right in the soil and then you
see what comes up and that’s what
happens with these third-party
businesses you know we don’t plan which
books people are going to write we just
provide a service that makes it really
easy for them to contact and reach
readers and then they create these they
create new things
same thing with Amazon Web Services you
know we create a set of tools and then
you know software developers and
companies that employ software
developers they figure out surprising
and amazing things to build with these
tools and so empowering these third
parties to do things is probably
starting with our third-party sellers
and authors and an AWS probably probably
the biggest thing that most I would say
consumers I don’t appreciate about
Amazon and good investors understand it
very well I love them clapping okay so
ten so ten years ago you mentioned AWS
so that your amazon has changed so much
in ten years ten years ago you barely in
cloud computing yeah certainly not we
just got started and cloud started it or
certainly not another overnight success
I’ve noticed all overnight successes
take about ten years that’s the right
that’s the right amount of time probably
so we’re five years away is it you start
something and just start the clock any
year now so Amazon has changed so much
over over that period of time key
preview or predict maybe what Amazon’s
going to look like ten years from now
well um that’s a very good question
I think on the outside you know kind of
hope you know the observable Amazon
could change quite a bit just as you
said you know ten years ago you wouldn’t
think that AWS would be such a
significant contributor to the business
and there could be more things like that
in a kind of 10-year time frame that we
don’t know about and the one thing I
hope will not change of course is that
approach that I outlined at the
beginning you know the customer
obsession the willingness to invent
the patient’s letting things develop
accepting failure as a path to getting
success by the way one thing I should
point out about failure and this is a
fine point internally we take it we know
it we don’t need to talk about it much
but there’s a different kind of failure
which is not what you want that’s where
you have operating history and you do
know what you’re doing and you just
screw it up so that’s not a good thing
that’s not an experiment that’s just bad
operation operational excellence and so
like if we’ve opened 130 fulfillment
centers we’re on generation 8 of our
fulfillment center technology if we open
a new fulfillment center and just woof
it you know we have to do some internal
examination that’s not an experiment
that’s just bad execution so there’s
different kinds of failure and you need
to make sure you’re making the right
kind of failure the right kind of
failure should be an invention it should
be something that you know it’s an
experiment you don’t know if it’s going
to work and you know up front that you
don’t know if it’s going to work that
shouldn’t be opening a new fulfillment
center for us I’m not sure I answer your
question I got distracted by failure
I’ve lived so comfortably with failure
for so long that I you know I revert
there on a dime you know it’s an
important distinction though between the
two it is so oh but the things that will
stay the same over ten years the Pope we
the approach will stay the same and then
the other thing I would advise any
entrepreneur or large business or large
organization you know like government
organization is you need to identify
your big ideas and there should only be
two or three of them and then if a
senior leader the main job of a senior
leader is to identify two or three
important ideas and then to enforce
great execution against those big ideas
and the good news is that the big ideas
are usually incredibly easy to identify
you shouldn’t need to think about them
very much you already know what they are
let me give you an example for Amazon
the consumer business the three big
ideas are low prices
fast delivery and vast selection you
don’t need you know it’s not the kind in
the way the way you know that they’re
the big ideas because they’re so obvious
the big ideas should be obvious and by
the way it’s very hard to maintain a
firm grasp of the obvious at all times
so little things can distract you from
the obvious but you have to back up and
say these are the three big ideas how do
we always deliver things a little faster
how do we always reduce our cost
structure so that we can have prices
that are a little lower and the good
thing about these big ideas is they will
be stable in time so I know for a fact
that ten years from now customers are
still going to like low prices no matter
what happens with technology and
everything else no matter what happens
people are going to like faster delivery
it is impossible for me to imagine a
scenario where 10 years from now a
customer comes to me and says Jeff I
love Amazon I just wish you delivered a
little more slowly this is so
inconceivable that you have you can have
great conviction as a leader to continue
to put energy into driving speed of
delivery and whatever you’re you know an
AWS I know that customers they like low
prices they like availability they don’t
want the services to be down there like
data security it’s not very hard to
figure out what the big ideas are and
then you can keep putting energy into
those things and you spin up those five
wheels and they’ll still be paying you
dividends 10 years from now and what I
would say I’m putting it in kind of a
business context but for those of you
who are in government these principles
would apply identically identically to a
government organization you should
figure out what the big ideas are and
just spin up flywheels get those things
rolling make sure that you pick things
it’ll still be true 10 years from now 20
years from now so on big ideas
artificial intelligence is something
that I think has captured the
imagination of Washington and and
probably the rest of the country in the
world what is what is Amazon’s approach
to artificial intelligence first of all
this is artificial intelligent
artificial intelligence
this is it is a Renaissance it is a
golden age we are now solving problems
with machine learning and artificial
intelligence that were you know kind of
in the realm of science fiction for the
last several decades and natural
language understanding machine vision
problems it really is it is an amazing
renaissance and for decades
AI researchers kind of struggled and
made very very slow progress and over
the last ten years it you know it looks
like one of those s curves you’re just
making a lot of progress for a rapid
over the last ten years the machine
learning and AI is a horizontal enabling
layer it will empower and improve every
business every government organization
every philanthropy every basically
there’s no institution in the world that
cannot be improved with machine learning
so the Amazon you know some of the
things we’re doing are super obvious so
they’re kind of superficially obvious in
there and they’re interesting and
they’re cool and you should pay
attention to thinking about things like
Alexa and echo you know our voice
assistant for thinking about our
autonomous primary delivery drones those
things use a tremendous amount of
machine learning machine vision systems
natural language understanding and a
bunch of other techniques and those but
those are kind of the shellye ones and i
would say a lot of the value that we’re
getting from machine learning is
actually happening you know kind of
beneath the surface and it is things
like improved search results improved
product recommendations for customers
improve forecasting for inventory
management and and and literally
hundreds of other things beneath the
surface and then I’d say the most
exciting thing that I think we’re
working on in machine learning is that
we are determined to through Amazon Web
Services where we have all these
customers who are corporations and
software developers to make these
advanced techniques accessible to
to every organization even if they don’t
have kind of the current class of
expertise that’s required right now
deploying these techniques for your
particular institutions problems is
difficult it takes a lot of expertise
and so you have to go compete for the
very best PhDs in machine learning and
you get them and it’s difficult for a
lot of organizations to win those
competitions and so we’re in a great
position because of the success of
Amazon Web Services to be able to put
energy into making those techniques easy
and accessible and so we’re determined
to do I think we can build a great
business doing that for ourselves and it
would be incredibly enabling for
organizations that want to use these
these sophisticated technologies to
improve their own organizations we have
quite a few policy makers and elected
officials and people from the
administration here so I’ve ever missed
it not to ask how do you interface with
the administration and how are you
working with elected officials in
general well I think probably the
probably the pretty normal the normal
ways we have a fantastic public policy
organization here you guys already met
brian jay carney we have a bunch of
people here in washington we’ve you know
over time we’ve grown that group we also
do things at the state level we’re doing
a little bit at certain municipal levels
too we work hard at it
it’s really important to work hard at it
you can’t just pretend that when you
know that everything is the people know
everything and you don’t have to educate
them and and we try to stay I would say
the main thing we try to do and I think
we’re pretty good at it it stayed very
issues focused so we try to stay you
know on the things that are specific to
Amazon and our customers and our
employees and and not try to we don’t
need to have it as a company our
employees are free to have opinions
about every issue they choose to have an
opinion about
they can have opinions about anything
they want I feel like Amazon needs to be
a little more you know laser focus than
that on things that are important to our
customers or to our employees as a group
and so we I think we our team does that
they keep us very disciplined in that
way I agree I think you’ve a great team
and just between us thank you yeah well
cover your ears right so Africa get all
the blushing through off the record it’s
actually turning red of a couple few
more questions that no we’re running out
of time and so you’d mentioned at a
shareholders meeting maybe last year the
previous year about how Amazon can use
its scale for sustainability yeah and
environment any thing you want to get we
and so you know for us this is we have
done a couple of things that I think
where I think everybody inside the
organization is very proud of and it’s
been hard work but it’s paying off and
we have a program called
frustration-free packaging we’re working
on for roughly ten years and it’s a
simple idea but incredibly hard to
execute we go to manufacturers and we
say look you are producing this thing in
a four color printed package with a
cellophane window and lots of twisty
wire ties or worst case the what do they
call those things the clamshell
packaging where they feel it an
indestructible plastic and you know I
actually looked it up there is a
Wikipedia entry for packaging rage or
something like that there’s a term for
this and that that Wikipedia entry has
the number I don’t remember the number
now there’s thousands the number of
people who go to the emergency room per
year trying to open that indestructible
bubble packaging that and but why do
people why do manufacturers put things
in that packaging that kind of packaging
it’s but not cheap that packaging is
expensive it’s hard to recycle it has a
bunch of flaws but it shows off the
product well so the when it’s hanging on
a
look in a store shelf or something as
you walk by you can actually see the
product cuz it’s sealed in clear plastic
and of course that Amazon that doesn’t
matter at all you know we’re going to
show you great pictures of the product
and videos and the product and customer
reviews of the product the product can
be sealed in a tiny little cardboard box
that’s easy to open and and so we’ve
started this program and and we teach
people how to make internet packaging
that is a very efficient easy recycle
easy to open and we this something like
just in the past year we have saved
55,000 tons of waste as a result of this
program we and
and we have gone we have now started
putting solar cells on the roofs of all
of our fulfillment centers we’re doing
15 this year
these are big fulfillment centers there
are they’re about a million square feet
each and so we’re covering them with
sourcils that’ll cover about 80% of the
fulfillment centers energy budget on an
annual basis we have built we are the
largest purchaser in the world largest
corporate purchaser in the world of
renewable energy and I don’t know I’ll
screw up the figure because they guarded
something like 3.6 million megawatt
hours per year we’ve built solar farms
and solar wind farms and so it’s you
know we keep just rolling this out and
we have a goal long term of being
completely renewable so it’ll take a
long time but the good news is these are
these are not only great for the you
know the environment they’re good
business decisions too you know the
technologies have improved to build a
solar farm or wind farm now you know it
you’re these are competitive
technologies with natural gas power
plants and other things so you can
actually do it and and and feel like
you’re making a sensible business
decision so I think a lot of companies
will do this in the future I think they
should do it so we’re having fun with
all that I have one final question that
I that I have to ask as we’re running
out of time it’s a shared passion of
ours I went to Space Camp as a child and
and you have a rocket company I knew I
liked you right away yeah we have so
much we’ve so much in common so a little
Space Camp it’s my kind of person that’s
oh don’t see on the time that’s gonna be
– enough – so your rocket company Blue
Origin yeah it’s really taking off doing
well how do you see that company you
know evolving in the future future of
space anything well Sharon brewer
so okay first of all I love space I have
been a space lover since I was a 5 year
old boy
and I feel like I won the lottery with
Amazon I know I won the lottery and and
now I’m investing those lottery winnings
in Blue Origin which is the space
company we built
we’re built we are flying a several
rural tourism vehicle and we’ll start
taking people up hopefully in 2018
that’s coming right up working out for
more than ten years hopefully this one
this overnight success is taking longer
than 10 years I don’t know we’ll see you
know and we’re also building an orbital
vehicle called new Glen new Sheppard is
named it for Alan Shepard the first
American in space he went on a
suborbital journey new Glen is named
after the American hero John Glenn who
was the first American to orbit the
earth and so these are both these are
reusable boosters fully reusable that’s
the key to lowering the cost our vision
of Blue Origin is that we want millions
of people living and working in space
and my personal hope is that I live long
enough to see the kind of dynamism in
space I want to see a whole economy
entrepreneurs in space that I got to
witness over the last 20 years on the
internet you know that the problem with
being an entrepreneur and the space
arena is that the price of admission is
so darn high so it you know to do
interesting things in space the
beginning you know kind of the beginning
entry level is a few hundred million
dollars so you’re not going to get you
know two kids in their dorm room doing
something amazing in space whereas
that’s literally what happened to
Facebook right so on the internet
because the price of admission is so low
you can get these amazing experiments
where like one kid in the dorm room does
something and it turns into Facebook and
or you know Amazon’s case you know I
started this thing with an incredibly
small amount of capital and the you know
it was able to grow because we didn’t
need a lot to get to begin with the
heavy lifting was in place
Ramazan right so I didn’t need to build
a transportation network it existed
already it was ups and the Royal Mail
and the US Postal Service and Deutsche
Post and so on and so on I didn’t have
to build a telecommunications backbone
to connect with my customers it was
there it was called the Internet and in
fact the internet was resting on top of
the long-distance phone network at that
time you guys remember the dial-up
modems some of you do some of you were
too young to you some of you should go
to a museum and see a dial-up modem was
that then yeah and so my one I I
recently showed a group of youngsters a
payphone I came across one and I was
like my god guys come over here
this may be the last one you have to see
it and so you know the point is that
Amazon was got to rest on top of we
didn’t have to build a payment system it
already existed was called the credit
card computers were already on every
desk thanks to you know Microsoft IBM
and Apple and what were they being is
for to play games not to buy things on
Amazon and so all that heavy lifting was
in place and I want to you know my
greatest I would have such a good
feeling if I could be an 80 year old guy
and laying there thinking about my life
if I could said look there is now a
bunch of entrepreneurs in space because
I took my amazon lottery winnings and
built the heavy lifting infrastructure
that does take billions of dollars in
capex to lower the cost of access to
space that’s how you get millions of
people living in Oregon State and by the
way we need that for those of you who
like to think about the future at all
you can do a simple calculation you know
we can argue about you know what limited
resources on earth and so on and so on
but here’s the calculation that you
cannot argue with which is you take
current baseline energy usage on earth
compound it it’s just a few percent a
year for just a few hundred years and
you have to cover the entire surface of
the earth and solar cells so you have to
we’re going to have to decide do we want
a society
of pioneering invention expansion growth
or do we want a society of stasis and
personally I look because the earth is
finite and if you want a society of
stasis I think it’s good first of all I
don’t personally believe that stasis is
even compatible with freedom so I think
for me that’s a big problem
second of all it’s going to be dull
stasis is going to be very dull you
don’t want to live in the stasis world
and so of course we’re going to continue
get more efficient too we have been for
hundreds of years we’ve been getting
more productive more efficient
that’s that trend is going to continue
but even so we’re going to want to use
more energy more energy per capita and
also I don’t want to stabilize
population I would love for the Viet
Trillian humans in the source system
with a trillion humans we would have a
thousand Einsteins and a thousand
Mozart’s it’d be an incredible sizzle
don’t you want that dynamism it’d be so
much merging my this is for your
great-great-great grandchildren but what
kind of world you want them to live in I
want them to live in that expansive
world that is you know learning more
about the universe and moving out
throughout the solar system so that we
have to do it and anyway so it’s fun to
work on that and you know I get I have a
I want so many lotteries in my life I
have the best parents in the world
my mom Jackie and my dad Mike my mom had
me when she was 17 in Albuquerque New
Mexico she was still in high school it
was not cool and she did an amazing job
my dad Mike is a Cuban immigrant who
came here when he was 16 without his
parents did an amazing job so those are
the things that are your little gifts in
life you get sometimes you get my
greatest admiration by the way is
withheld for those people and I know
several of them who had terrible parents
and still somehow made it through that’s
hard now I had the opposite so I got
lucky
[Applause]
loves but Amazon is you can look back at
your purchases yeah and it’s a really
great reflection of what’s going on in
your life at the time based on what
you’re buying and it occurred to me that
the reverse is also true that the
e-commerce journey that everybody
probably this room has gone on mirrors
what you and Amazon have gone through
first only selling books and now selling
everything is we’ve all kind of gone on
that journey together and I looked back
at my purchase history and in 2004 I
bought exactly one thing on Amazon was a
book by 2006 I had a 500% increase in
purchases for books and one Gillette
razor and which I use tonight and
hopefully a new one you’re the new one
and then by 2015 a year we had just
gotten married moved into a home got
dogs we bought everything for our dogs
we bought a TV but snow blower bought
allergy medicine and peanut butter I
look these things up literally
everything four days a week ordering and
so the question is at what point because
you realize you’d have the scale of
success with Amazon going from books to
where you are now is a company well I
have a question for you in 2004 what you
know what book it was you bought I do
remember it was writing screenplays that
sell and if it’s not I’m how does that
work out that I can watch your money
back I guess I could even return all
right I’ll take it back because that did
not work out I’m going to keep my day
job whether your question is you know
did I kind of anticipate what would
happen over the last 22 years at Amazon
and the answer is god no so you know
Amazon started as a very small company
it was me and a few other people I was
driving all the packages to the post
office myself in my 1987 Chevy Blazer
and when I raised money for Amazon I had
to raise a million dollars which I
raised from 22 different investors
$50,000 each they got 20% of the company
for for the million dollars and it was a
40 people told me no so I did take sixty
meetings to get 20 yeses the first
question was always what’s the internet
and I had to walk through that and this
was 1994 early 95 and so did I
anticipate you know fast forward to
today and and the current version of it
now it has been one foot in front of the
other and I think that that is true for
most businesses where you kind of
proceed adaptively step by step you
figure it out you have a success and
then you kind of double down on that
success and you figure out what what
else you can do what customers want
everything we’ve done and all the
success we have is at its root primarily
due to the fact that we have put
customers first
so those few people are probably kicking
themselves now that well it’s very
interesting the 40 people who did not
invest its kind of a study in human
nature I’m in touch with a few of them
still and some of them take it in great
stride and have they recognized that
they actually have ridiculously happy
lives others of them actually cannot
talk about it it’s just – it is actually
just too painful that’s human nature and
some people are better at rolling with
the punches I would be they do not talk
about it can’t probably good speaking of
talk I have the privilege of being able
to talk to a lot of people in Washington
but all of our member companies and
Amazon is one where I think people have
a very different idea of what Amazon is
some people see you as an e-commerce
company or retail or others see you as
an innovative tech company you have
Amazon Web Services and you have
original content and you have Alexa and
so many other things how should we be
thinking about Amazon yeah I do get that
that is something that people get
confused about some time what is Amazon
we do such a diverse array of things
from producing original content at
Amazon Studios
to Amazon Web Services where we sell you
know startups and enterprises
you know computing infrastructure to the
things that most people know about which
is our our consumer offering where we
deliver things in little brown boxes and
these things seem so disparate how is it
that we’re doing all them and the common
thread and really what it is is it’s an
approach we have a very distinctive
approach that we have been honing and
refining and thinking about for 22 years
and its really just a few principles
that we use as we go about these
activities at the very top of the list
it’s one I’ve already mentioned but
you’ll probably hear it 10 times
throughout tonight because it’s so
central and it is customer obsession its
customer obsession instead of for
example competitor obsession or business
model obsession or a product obsession
or technology obsession there are many
ways to Center a business and and by the
way many of them can work I know and and
and have friends who lead very
competitor obsessed companies and those
companies can be successful you know
that’s not a bad strategy
you have to be really good at close
following you identify winners when you
watch you watch your competitors very
carefully if they latch on to something
that’s working you duplicated as quickly
as possible it’s a very good strategy in
some ways because you don’t have to go
down blind alleys if you’re not
pioneering if you’re only closed
following and have some advantages but
it has some disadvantages too and I like
the customer obsession model I think
it’s the right one it’s better than
product obsession even a product
recession is not bad but I think
customer obsession gets you there in a
healthier way so that’s one of the one
of the principles one of the approaches
that we take in every single thing that
we do the second one is that we are
willing I would say even eager to invent
and pioneer so that is and that goes
along it marries really well with
customers session customers are always
dissatisfied they even when they don’t
know it even when they think they’re
happy they actually do want a better way
and they just don’t know yet what that
should be and that’s why I always warn
people customer obsession is not just
listening to customers customer
obsession is also inventing on their
behalf because it’s not their job to
invent for yourselves
and so you need to be an inventor and a
pioneer and the third one it’s really
central to the way we think about all of
our business problems and a bunch of
things that Amazon is we’re long-term
oriented so I ask everybody to not think
in two to three-year timeframes but to
think in five to seven year time frames
to not think about when somebody says to
me congratulate Amazon on a good quarter
which is a very common thing to say you
meet somebody they’re being nice they
looked at your financial results for the
quarter they like a quarter I say thank
you but what I’m thinking to myself is
that quarter all that those quarterly
results were actually pretty much fully
baked about three years ago and so like
today I’m working on you know a quarter
that is going to happen in 2020 not next
quarter next quarter for all practical
purposes is done already and it’s
probably been done for a couple of years
and so if you start to think that way
it changes how you spend your time how
you plan where you put your energy and
and your ability look around corners
gets better so many things improve if
you can take a long time by the way it’s
not natural for humans so it’s a it’s a
discipline that you have to build the
kind of you know get rich slowly schemes
are not big sellers on infomercials you
know it’s and so that’s something that
you have to sort of steel yourself for
discipline and teach
over time so that that’s what is Amazon
I would say really it’s a collection of
principles and approach and it’s an
approach that we deploy and and it’s
fine I danced into work me too
I’m not a good dancer we should get rich
slowly as a book I probably should have
gotten instead of this to finish a book
but by the way you know I’m one of our
award recipients earlier mentioned that
you mentioned that you were happy you
got rid of your bangs me too yeah I
hated my bangs so it clearly clearly you
do not take the success of Amazon
lightly and you’re very involved in the
company and one of the great things
about the internet many of your
competitors are in this room tonight and
competitions a click away
they’re probably people in garages
across the country trying to start a
next great Internet company like you did
for sure and so what does keep you up at
night when you think about the continued
success of Amazon well first of all I
I’m gifted but sleeping really well so
the Met particular metaphor doesn’t work
for me but I I know what you mean which
is what could go wrong and what are you
worried about and and for me the thing I
worry about the most is that we would
lose our way in one of those things that
we would lose our our obsessive focus on
customers or would somehow become
short-term oriented or would you know
and start to become overly cautious you
know kind of failure averse and
therefore unable to invent and pioneer
you cannot invent and pioneer if you
cannot accept failure to invent you need
to experiment and if it’s if you know in
advance that it’s going to work it is
not an experiment and so that’s a very
important thing you know it’s these they
are inseparable twins failure and
invention so you have to be willing to
do that
it’s embarrassing to fail
and you know it’s always embarrassing to
fail but you have to say no that’s not
how this works if I said to you you have
a 10% chance of a particular decision a
10% chance of a 100x return you should
take that bet every time but you’re
still going to be wrong nine out of ten
times and it’s going to feel bad 910
times and in in in with technology the
outcomes the results can be very long
tailed it’s very the payoff is can be
very asymmetric which is why you should
do so much experimentation you know
everybody knows that if you swing for
the fences you hit more home runs but
you also strike out more but with the
baseball that analogy doesn’t go far
enough because with baseball no matter
how well you connect with the ball you
can only get four runs the success is
capped at four runs but in business
every once in a while you step up to the
plate you hit the ball so hard you get a
thousand runs and so when that when you
have that kind of asymmetric payoff and
you know one f1 at back and get you a
thousand runs it encourages you to
experiment more it’s the right business
decision to experiment more it’s also
better for your customers customers like
the successful experiments by the way
this is a giant misconception in a lot
of young entrepreneurs and experienced
entrepreneurs that they meet one of the
things that is very fashionable right
now is to talk about how disruptive
their business plan is going to be and
the but invention is not disruptive only
customer adoption is disruptive and
Amazon we’ve invented a lot of things
the customers did not care about at all
and believe me they were not disruptive
through anyone so it’s only when
customers like the new way that anything
becomes disruptive and so really it’s
just saying that you want to you know if
somebody comes to you with a business
plan that they claim is disruptive you
should ask them to explain it to you in
simpler language and the simpler
language is why are customers going to
adopt this why are they going to like it
why is it better
than the traditional way so along those
lines we have you know some press and
media in the room is there something
that you think people get wrong about
Amazon that surprises you when you’re
read about it or see it in media
coverage well wrong I don’t know about
wrong first of all we’ve been over 20
years on balance treated very fairly by
the media and you know not every story
that’s ever been written about us is the
way we would have written it if we were
writing it ourselves but but on balance
very fairly treated and I you know so
wrong might be too strong I think there
there’s a piece of our business which is
probably not fully appreciated the scale
of it and what’s happening and the
energy and the dynamism round it which
is the third party seller part of our
business so you know we have today
roughly half of the company really is
third party sales it’s small businesses
there are a hundred thousand businesses
on Amazon
where the businesses make $100,000 or
more a year and it’s it’s turned into
you know a gigantic service for them we
even let them stow their products and
our fulfillment centers so that their
products become prime eligible which
increases their sales and a lot of
people make their living on that you
know that way and we’ve sort of we’ve
extended that into other areas too we
have a platform called Kindle direct
publishing so authors can write books
and then publish them directly and
that’s become very successful so there
are a lot of authors making plays have
done that Chris shootin our economists
had the book published on that right
very good and it’s it’s we get people
make they make livings I mean they’re
people who I have so many emails from
authors saying I you know because of
this program I’ve been able to quit my
job and they usually come they won’t
they already have like 25 rejection
letters from traditional publishers and
because their book didn’t fit in a
category or didn’t seem right and so on
but readers disagreed and so one of the
things that you get when you let people
when you you know I think this is more
like gardening you kind of get all the
nutrients right in the soil and then you
see what comes up and that’s what
happens with these third-party
businesses you know we don’t plan which
books people are going to write we just
provide a service that makes it really
easy for them to contact and reach
readers and then they create these they
create new things
same thing with Amazon Web Services you
know we create a set of tools and then
you know software developers and
companies that employ software
developers they figure out surprising
and amazing things to build with these
tools and so empowering these third
parties to do things is probably
starting with our third-party sellers
and authors and an AWS probably probably
the biggest thing that most I would say
consumers I don’t appreciate about
Amazon and good investors understand it
very well I love them clapping okay so
ten so ten years ago you mentioned AWS
so that your amazon has changed so much
in ten years ten years ago you barely in
cloud computing yeah certainly not we
just got started and cloud started it or
certainly not another overnight success
I’ve noticed all overnight successes
take about ten years that’s the right
that’s the right amount of time probably
so we’re five years away is it you start
something and just start the clock any
year now so Amazon has changed so much
over over that period of time key
preview or predict maybe what Amazon’s
going to look like ten years from now
well um that’s a very good question
I think on the outside you know kind of
hope you know the observable Amazon
could change quite a bit just as you
said you know ten years ago you wouldn’t
think that AWS would be such a
significant contributor to the business
and there could be more things like that
in a kind of 10-year time frame that we
don’t know about and the one thing I
hope will not change of course is that
approach that I outlined at the
beginning you know the customer
obsession the willingness to invent
the patient’s letting things develop
accepting failure as a path to getting
success by the way one thing I should
point out about failure and this is a
fine point internally we take it we know
it we don’t need to talk about it much
but there’s a different kind of failure
which is not what you want that’s where
you have operating history and you do
know what you’re doing and you just
screw it up so that’s not a good thing
that’s not an experiment that’s just bad
operation operational excellence and so
like if we’ve opened 130 fulfillment
centers we’re on generation 8 of our
fulfillment center technology if we open
a new fulfillment center and just woof
it you know we have to do some internal
examination that’s not an experiment
that’s just bad execution so there’s
different kinds of failure and you need
to make sure you’re making the right
kind of failure the right kind of
failure should be an invention it should
be something that you know it’s an
experiment you don’t know if it’s going
to work and you know up front that you
don’t know if it’s going to work that
shouldn’t be opening a new fulfillment
center for us I’m not sure I answer your
question I got distracted by failure
I’ve lived so comfortably with failure
for so long that I you know I revert
there on a dime you know it’s an
important distinction though between the
two it is so oh but the things that will
stay the same over ten years the Pope we
the approach will stay the same and then
the other thing I would advise any
entrepreneur or large business or large
organization you know like government
organization is you need to identify
your big ideas and there should only be
two or three of them and then if a
senior leader the main job of a senior
leader is to identify two or three
important ideas and then to enforce
great execution against those big ideas
and the good news is that the big ideas
are usually incredibly easy to identify
you shouldn’t need to think about them
very much you already know what they are
let me give you an example for Amazon
the consumer business the three big
ideas are low prices
fast delivery and vast selection you
don’t need you know it’s not the kind in
the way the way you know that they’re
the big ideas because they’re so obvious
the big ideas should be obvious and by
the way it’s very hard to maintain a
firm grasp of the obvious at all times
so little things can distract you from
the obvious but you have to back up and
say these are the three big ideas how do
we always deliver things a little faster
how do we always reduce our cost
structure so that we can have prices
that are a little lower and the good
thing about these big ideas is they will
be stable in time so I know for a fact
that ten years from now customers are
still going to like low prices no matter
what happens with technology and
everything else no matter what happens
people are going to like faster delivery
it is impossible for me to imagine a
scenario where 10 years from now a
customer comes to me and says Jeff I
love Amazon I just wish you delivered a
little more slowly this is so
inconceivable that you have you can have
great conviction as a leader to continue
to put energy into driving speed of
delivery and whatever you’re you know an
AWS I know that customers they like low
prices they like availability they don’t
want the services to be down there like
data security it’s not very hard to
figure out what the big ideas are and
then you can keep putting energy into
those things and you spin up those five
wheels and they’ll still be paying you
dividends 10 years from now and what I
would say I’m putting it in kind of a
business context but for those of you
who are in government these principles
would apply identically identically to a
government organization you should
figure out what the big ideas are and
just spin up flywheels get those things
rolling make sure that you pick things
it’ll still be true 10 years from now 20
years from now so on big ideas
artificial intelligence is something
that I think has captured the
imagination of Washington and and
probably the rest of the country in the
world what is what is Amazon’s approach
to artificial intelligence first of all
this is artificial intelligent
artificial intelligence
this is it is a Renaissance it is a
golden age we are now solving problems
with machine learning and artificial
intelligence that were you know kind of
in the realm of science fiction for the
last several decades and natural
language understanding machine vision
problems it really is it is an amazing
renaissance and for decades
AI researchers kind of struggled and
made very very slow progress and over
the last ten years it you know it looks
like one of those s curves you’re just
making a lot of progress for a rapid
over the last ten years the machine
learning and AI is a horizontal enabling
layer it will empower and improve every
business every government organization
every philanthropy every basically
there’s no institution in the world that
cannot be improved with machine learning
so the Amazon you know some of the
things we’re doing are super obvious so
they’re kind of superficially obvious in
there and they’re interesting and
they’re cool and you should pay
attention to thinking about things like
Alexa and echo you know our voice
assistant for thinking about our
autonomous primary delivery drones those
things use a tremendous amount of
machine learning machine vision systems
natural language understanding and a
bunch of other techniques and those but
those are kind of the shellye ones and i
would say a lot of the value that we’re
getting from machine learning is
actually happening you know kind of
beneath the surface and it is things
like improved search results improved
product recommendations for customers
improve forecasting for inventory
management and and and literally
hundreds of other things beneath the
surface and then I’d say the most
exciting thing that I think we’re
working on in machine learning is that
we are determined to through Amazon Web
Services where we have all these
customers who are corporations and
software developers to make these
advanced techniques accessible to
to every organization even if they don’t
have kind of the current class of
expertise that’s required right now
deploying these techniques for your
particular institutions problems is
difficult it takes a lot of expertise
and so you have to go compete for the
very best PhDs in machine learning and
you get them and it’s difficult for a
lot of organizations to win those
competitions and so we’re in a great
position because of the success of
Amazon Web Services to be able to put
energy into making those techniques easy
and accessible and so we’re determined
to do I think we can build a great
business doing that for ourselves and it
would be incredibly enabling for
organizations that want to use these
these sophisticated technologies to
improve their own organizations we have
quite a few policy makers and elected
officials and people from the
administration here so I’ve ever missed
it not to ask how do you interface with
the administration and how are you
working with elected officials in
general well I think probably the
probably the pretty normal the normal
ways we have a fantastic public policy
organization here you guys already met
brian jay carney we have a bunch of
people here in washington we’ve you know
over time we’ve grown that group we also
do things at the state level we’re doing
a little bit at certain municipal levels
too we work hard at it
it’s really important to work hard at it
you can’t just pretend that when you
know that everything is the people know
everything and you don’t have to educate
them and and we try to stay I would say
the main thing we try to do and I think
we’re pretty good at it it stayed very
issues focused so we try to stay you
know on the things that are specific to
Amazon and our customers and our
employees and and not try to we don’t
need to have it as a company our
employees are free to have opinions
about every issue they choose to have an
opinion about
they can have opinions about anything
they want I feel like Amazon needs to be
a little more you know laser focus than
that on things that are important to our
customers or to our employees as a group
and so we I think we our team does that
they keep us very disciplined in that
way I agree I think you’ve a great team
and just between us thank you yeah well
cover your ears right so Africa get all
the blushing through off the record it’s
actually turning red of a couple few
more questions that no we’re running out
of time and so you’d mentioned at a
shareholders meeting maybe last year the
previous year about how Amazon can use
its scale for sustainability yeah and
environment any thing you want to get we
and so you know for us this is we have
done a couple of things that I think
where I think everybody inside the
organization is very proud of and it’s
been hard work but it’s paying off and
we have a program called
frustration-free packaging we’re working
on for roughly ten years and it’s a
simple idea but incredibly hard to
execute we go to manufacturers and we
say look you are producing this thing in
a four color printed package with a
cellophane window and lots of twisty
wire ties or worst case the what do they
call those things the clamshell
packaging where they feel it an
indestructible plastic and you know I
actually looked it up there is a
Wikipedia entry for packaging rage or
something like that there’s a term for
this and that that Wikipedia entry has
the number I don’t remember the number
now there’s thousands the number of
people who go to the emergency room per
year trying to open that indestructible
bubble packaging that and but why do
people why do manufacturers put things
in that packaging that kind of packaging
it’s but not cheap that packaging is
expensive it’s hard to recycle it has a
bunch of flaws but it shows off the
product well so the when it’s hanging on
a
look in a store shelf or something as
you walk by you can actually see the
product cuz it’s sealed in clear plastic
and of course that Amazon that doesn’t
matter at all you know we’re going to
show you great pictures of the product
and videos and the product and customer
reviews of the product the product can
be sealed in a tiny little cardboard box
that’s easy to open and and so we’ve
started this program and and we teach
people how to make internet packaging
that is a very efficient easy recycle
easy to open and we this something like
just in the past year we have saved
55,000 tons of waste as a result of this
program we and
and we have gone we have now started
putting solar cells on the roofs of all
of our fulfillment centers we’re doing
15 this year
these are big fulfillment centers there
are they’re about a million square feet
each and so we’re covering them with
sourcils that’ll cover about 80% of the
fulfillment centers energy budget on an
annual basis we have built we are the
largest purchaser in the world largest
corporate purchaser in the world of
renewable energy and I don’t know I’ll
screw up the figure because they guarded
something like 3.6 million megawatt
hours per year we’ve built solar farms
and solar wind farms and so it’s you
know we keep just rolling this out and
we have a goal long term of being
completely renewable so it’ll take a
long time but the good news is these are
these are not only great for the you
know the environment they’re good
business decisions too you know the
technologies have improved to build a
solar farm or wind farm now you know it
you’re these are competitive
technologies with natural gas power
plants and other things so you can
actually do it and and and feel like
you’re making a sensible business
decision so I think a lot of companies
will do this in the future I think they
should do it so we’re having fun with
all that I have one final question that
I that I have to ask as we’re running
out of time it’s a shared passion of
ours I went to Space Camp as a child and
and you have a rocket company I knew I
liked you right away yeah we have so
much we’ve so much in common so a little
Space Camp it’s my kind of person that’s
oh don’t see on the time that’s gonna be
– enough – so your rocket company Blue
Origin yeah it’s really taking off doing
well how do you see that company you
know evolving in the future future of
space anything well Sharon brewer
so okay first of all I love space I have
been a space lover since I was a 5 year
old boy
and I feel like I won the lottery with
Amazon I know I won the lottery and and
now I’m investing those lottery winnings
in Blue Origin which is the space
company we built
we’re built we are flying a several
rural tourism vehicle and we’ll start
taking people up hopefully in 2018
that’s coming right up working out for
more than ten years hopefully this one
this overnight success is taking longer
than 10 years I don’t know we’ll see you
know and we’re also building an orbital
vehicle called new Glen new Sheppard is
named it for Alan Shepard the first
American in space he went on a
suborbital journey new Glen is named
after the American hero John Glenn who
was the first American to orbit the
earth and so these are both these are
reusable boosters fully reusable that’s
the key to lowering the cost our vision
of Blue Origin is that we want millions
of people living and working in space
and my personal hope is that I live long
enough to see the kind of dynamism in
space I want to see a whole economy
entrepreneurs in space that I got to
witness over the last 20 years on the
internet you know that the problem with
being an entrepreneur and the space
arena is that the price of admission is
so darn high so it you know to do
interesting things in space the
beginning you know kind of the beginning
entry level is a few hundred million
dollars so you’re not going to get you
know two kids in their dorm room doing
something amazing in space whereas
that’s literally what happened to
Facebook right so on the internet
because the price of admission is so low
you can get these amazing experiments
where like one kid in the dorm room does
something and it turns into Facebook and
or you know Amazon’s case you know I
started this thing with an incredibly
small amount of capital and the you know
it was able to grow because we didn’t
need a lot to get to begin with the
heavy lifting was in place
Ramazan right so I didn’t need to build
a transportation network it existed
already it was ups and the Royal Mail
and the US Postal Service and Deutsche
Post and so on and so on I didn’t have
to build a telecommunications backbone
to connect with my customers it was
there it was called the Internet and in
fact the internet was resting on top of
the long-distance phone network at that
time you guys remember the dial-up
modems some of you do some of you were
too young to you some of you should go
to a museum and see a dial-up modem was
that then yeah and so my one I I
recently showed a group of youngsters a
payphone I came across one and I was
like my god guys come over here
this may be the last one you have to see
it and so you know the point is that
Amazon was got to rest on top of we
didn’t have to build a payment system it
already existed was called the credit
card computers were already on every
desk thanks to you know Microsoft IBM
and Apple and what were they being is
for to play games not to buy things on
Amazon and so all that heavy lifting was
in place and I want to you know my
greatest I would have such a good
feeling if I could be an 80 year old guy
and laying there thinking about my life
if I could said look there is now a
bunch of entrepreneurs in space because
I took my amazon lottery winnings and
built the heavy lifting infrastructure
that does take billions of dollars in
capex to lower the cost of access to
space that’s how you get millions of
people living in Oregon State and by the
way we need that for those of you who
like to think about the future at all
you can do a simple calculation you know
we can argue about you know what limited
resources on earth and so on and so on
but here’s the calculation that you
cannot argue with which is you take
current baseline energy usage on earth
compound it it’s just a few percent a
year for just a few hundred years and
you have to cover the entire surface of
the earth and solar cells so you have to
we’re going to have to decide do we want
a society
of pioneering invention expansion growth
or do we want a society of stasis and
personally I look because the earth is
finite and if you want a society of
stasis I think it’s good first of all I
don’t personally believe that stasis is
even compatible with freedom so I think
for me that’s a big problem
second of all it’s going to be dull
stasis is going to be very dull you
don’t want to live in the stasis world
and so of course we’re going to continue
get more efficient too we have been for
hundreds of years we’ve been getting
more productive more efficient
that’s that trend is going to continue
but even so we’re going to want to use
more energy more energy per capita and
also I don’t want to stabilize
population I would love for the Viet
Trillian humans in the source system
with a trillion humans we would have a
thousand Einsteins and a thousand
Mozart’s it’d be an incredible sizzle
don’t you want that dynamism it’d be so
much merging my this is for your
great-great-great grandchildren but what
kind of world you want them to live in I
want them to live in that expansive
world that is you know learning more
about the universe and moving out
throughout the solar system so that we
have to do it and anyway so it’s fun to
work on that and you know I get I have a
I want so many lotteries in my life I
have the best parents in the world
my mom Jackie and my dad Mike my mom had
me when she was 17 in Albuquerque New
Mexico she was still in high school it
was not cool and she did an amazing job
my dad Mike is a Cuban immigrant who
came here when he was 16 without his
parents did an amazing job so those are
the things that are your little gifts in
life you get sometimes you get my
greatest admiration by the way is
withheld for those people and I know
several of them who had terrible parents
and still somehow made it through that’s
hard now I had the opposite so I got
lucky
[Applause]
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