Editor’s note: These remarks are from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos commencement speech to Princeton’s Class of 2010, delivered on May 30, 2010
Message for you.
I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago. I came across the fact that Web usage was growing at 2,300 percent per year. I’d never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast, and the idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles — something that simply couldn’t exist in the physical world — was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old, and I’d been married for a year. I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go do this crazy thing that probably wouldn’t work since most startups don’t, and I wasn’t sure what would happen after that. MacKenzie (also a Princeton grad and sitting here in the second row) told me I should go for it. As a young boy, I’d been a garage inventor. I’d invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires, a solar cooker that didn’t work very well out of an umbrella and tinfoil, baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings. I’d always wanted to be an inventor, and she wanted me to follow my passion.
He talk after that.
“After much consideration, I took the less safe path to follow my passion, and I’m proud of that choice.”
And I can’t get answer about follow questions.
・How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make?
・Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?
・Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?
・Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?
・Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong, or will you apologize?
・Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?
・Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling?
・When it’s tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?
・Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?
・Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?
