floors, the sandstone walls, the bronze-clad ramp. it is here that one senses the energy and dimon is a -- dynamism that is bloomberg. >> we want you to come in, grab a cup of coffee come have a snack, stand up and show something. when customers come in or potential employees -- what's going on here? there's a buzz. >> the internal entry to the pantry is formed by the mezzanine level. oft is to promote this idea where people can come and exchange ideas and work together. >> the ramp is a very special feature. not only does it have structural significance, it is a very symbolic of who we are as a company. it connects people. >> the whole idea of you walking up and down is to see your fellow associates and to be able to say "hey, joe, how are you,

give me a call," that kind of stuff, but just to interact. pass people on the ramp going up and down. caroline: the design and function have been considered with one key thought in mind, collaboration. >> i really believe that it is the ceo's job to set the tone. the ceo's job is to get the right people. the ceo's job is to get them to work together. i can't think of anything that stops that more than walls, and when it comes down to the desks, we did something very unconventional here. it is not the most efficient use of space if what you are trying to do is reduce the square footage for the it is the most efficient use of space if what you're trying to do is enhance the productivity of your people. >> the new bloomberg office demonstrates the new generation of open plan working. the desks are configured in

pod and each pod has a small table in the center. floor meetingrom spaces and have far more spontaneity. >> you can swing the chair around, rolet over, -- roll it over, pull out the drawers and sit onaround, rolet over, them,e keyboards. that is the whole idea here. our inexperience in the shower experience in years of open plan -- our experience in 35 years of bloomberg and everybody feels that they are important. >> if you can improve the quality of the working environment, that is going to percolate all the way through the organization, the end products, the way it treats its customers, it's attitudes, it's ethics. caroline: in the effort to creating a working environment conducive to the well-being of

its staff from bloomberg took an unprecedented step of creating a breathing building, allowing fresh air into a building of this size had never been achieved before. -- at theo the testing facility, a hermetically sealed testing control unit was laid out as part of the office space. this marked a workspace was rigged with air movement and temperature sensors that would capture data for this groundbreaking feature of the new building. >> when the weather outside is temperate enough, the breathing opens and natural ventilation will be brought through the space. the air will pass across the floodplain and up through the spiral ramp in the center of the building and come through the roof at the top of the building. caroline: the truly unique features that the air circulates without any mechanical assistance. in a structure with such vast floor spaces, that is an amazing engineering achievement. >> you will not have found an example of a building like this thes, actually brea

produces the amount of energy, creates a fresher environment, works with the seasons. that is totally new. >> it's been central to the london build from day one, from the choice of site to the design process and construction practices. compared to a typical office building, this building will deliver a 73% reduction in water consumption and a 35% reduction in energy consumption. to the remarkable savings in energy consumption is the power generation center. one of the advantages of creating our own power is the possibility to use the waste produced in the process. >> that waste is used to heat buildings and during the summer, it is used to drive and absorption chiller which circulates chill water around the building. caroline: this chilled water runs through pipes integrated throughout the building.

>> there's a copper pipe that runs all the way through the ceiling, about 120 meters of pipe in one panel. cold water runs, it will chill the panel itself, and using convection chill the air in the room. it has actually been optimized to give us the best possible performance. >> we quickly realized this was to become one of the most complicated challenging projects we had ever done. this the first totally integrated ceiling panel in the u.k., is not worldwide. ling,corporates coo lighting, and acoustics into one single panel which is unique. caroline: these integrated ceiling panels deliver cooling with more energy efficiency than the conventional air-conditioning, and while they contain half a million led lights, they lose 40% less energy than a typical office lighting.

water efficiency is a key component to the sustainability credentials. reduction in water consumption are made possible by the capture of rainwater on the roof, the recycling of gray water, and the use of vacuum toilets similar to those found on airplanes. >> these toilets use about a quarter of the amount of water as a regular flushed toilet would use. the systems can become the regular systems of the future. measuringu.k., sustainability is similar to the system in the united states. this particular building scored outstanding in the system, the highest rating you can get. it is the first office building in london to achieve that status, and we are very proud. if it helps set the bar for other builders in london and throughout the u.k., all the better. isoline: coming up, how art embedded within the bloomberg

dna.

caroline: at bloomberg, our responsibility to the environment through sustainable office design is consummated by the desire to improve our immediate surroundings, private and public spaces, through art. >> bloomberg believes that art and culture in which an in half -- in rich and enhance our everyday lives. in an office environment you wanted to be surprising and provocative and exciting, and creativity is very heart of where you live and work. we approached the series of artists and ask them to think about the building and its location within the city of london and to create spreads between the visible and invisible. caroline: no future is possible without a past.

the danish artist composes two parts for the vortex and the ramp, positioned to the viewer as the underside and service of the same pond. the undulating services measure more than 400 square feet and are made from polished aluminum. the preconference space features "pomona," by an american artist, a tapestry in three parts made metallictirely from copper, bronze, and gold. >> the bloomberg philosophy is to be creative and exciting and think out-of-the-box and take risks, and that is what artists do, and that is why we love working with artists, commissioning artists. nothing better than having a creative guy like an partnership with artists in our communities. caroline: the reception area of

the south building is graced by a colorful mural. a response to the juxtaposition of past and present that defines the buildings location. it also seeks to soften the space and create an inviting pathway. inspiresieve that art people, but it also brings to life what can be a commercial space and encourage creative thinking and ways to communicate and connect with other employees. "lexicon" by an irish- born artist features everyday objects. colorful, irreverent, it creates recognizable landmarks within the vast open panel. this, by a venezuelan artist, stands over 60 feet.

bloomberg's creation of spaces with art allows not only the inside but the outside also but the aim of enriching the area given over to the public. >> bloomberg can go right to the edge. instead, we pull back and create additional space around the monuments, the great terminals, spaces to enjoy, inhabited by sculptures, by works of art. >> surprising, stimulating, accessible. public art is where we can bring that creativity and energy into the community and get as wide an audience as possible to engage. caroline: the artist whose work features in the public spaces has created three art installations for the public squares on the east and west side of the building. her inspiration is the ancient

roman river that flows to the tens across the site. >> commissioning and supporting public art. christina's stunning sculpture really provides people with an opportunity not only to enjoy the beautiful work, she has created a space for people to sit and enjoy and reflect on the history of the river. caroline: beyond creating public spaces and artwork, bloomberg has come up with other ways to enrich life in the community, at least by respecting the historical significance of the site. continuing the line of the old roman road, which had been lost in. development -- in previous development, to rediscover and create an arcade as an urban shortcut where you can walk through the mass of the building and to bring that to life with

cafes, outdoor seating, protected from the rain. it is about raising the quality of life through design. in,he thing about fitting you cannot get more fitting than to create through the site the extension of the original waddling street. this was the roman road that took you from the south coast to saint albans. >> the guests in the city and guests in this country can we want to respect traditions, and you cannot do it more than when you design here. caroline: this new street restores the original route from st. paul's cathedral to the station. it respects the long tradition of covered arcades in london, and is home to a range of restaurants creating a new destination in this part of the city. >> there have been arcades in markets of london for hundreds of years, places where people buy cheese and meat in victorian we areor the with the --

drawing on the hit the street, but times have changed. walk into any bloomberg building in the world in the first thing you come to is a pantry where people are standing around and sharing food and chatting and having drinks. it is a very hospitable approach to business. we are trying to extend that hospitality to the community. >> we have a dozen restaurants have totally different kinds of food, both outside the building and in the arcade between our two buildings. we will continue the process of making this more than just a business site where when everybody goes home at 5:00, 6:00, there is nothing left. you want to add culture, you want to add fun, you want to add cuisine, you want a place where people can come and meet. that is what the design of the building is for. caroline: just ahead, we go underground to discover archaeological treasures that

link london's roman past with our architectural future.

caroline: the most unexpected space within our new london headquarters that is open to the public is found 20 feet beneath street level. its origins date back to an unprecedented archaeological find on the site, discovery with its roots in one of the darkest hours of the war. of 1940, nazi germany launched a blitzkrieg on london. two thirds of the historic square of the city and let it lay in ruins.

during the postwar reconstruction of london, the most remarkable discovery was made on what is now the bloomberg site the remains of an ancient roman temple dedicated toward god. >> the temple discovered in 1954 generated a huge amount of public interest. ,he last day of the excavation of the discovery, the site was opened, and thousands of people queued up. september 1954 i visited the site and found a little roman well. that was the start of my career in archaeology. this wonderful discovery shows that there was a little bit of good that came out of the war. after the temple was found, what they did was just break up the walls so it was just lumps of stone, and they put this total

travesty of a temple in queen victoria street, with crazy paving and the stones were in the wrong -- it was awful. >> it was obliged to relocate and restore the temple as close to the original location as possible. for a project of this significance, it is very important to go the extra mile and ensure the reconstruction is handled with the utmost integrity and the highest standards. >> we got the brief from bloomberg to make any evocative experience. there is very few people who have connected together archaeology and innovation, and i think that is a big gift that bloomberg is giving, both the community here in london, but also the way that people can experience archaeology. >> it is a happy opportunity to enter the temple and to get a sense of the actual physical

reconstruction of the temple. experience,an audio sounds you might have heard in london but also mysterious sounds of ceremonies and rituals that might have gone on. >> as people have this experience, they will understand much deeper what it was like in the past and how we can reflect on it for meaning in the present. caroline: it was not the only reminder of the site's roman past. bloomberg's investment in giving time to the archaeological dig paid off in spades. >> when we started the archaeological project in 2012, we were very excited. it was the first time we have been able to see the archaeology in this part of the city in half a century. the size of the excavation were absolutely astonishing for the

thousands and thousands of individual signs 65,000 pieces of pottery tons of animal bone. we had people's shoes, thousands of clothing, all sorts of things. what was really great was knowing that some of these would go on display and be sure to the public -- be shared to the public. caroline: perhaps the most remarkable find was the 400 wooden tablets which give extraordinary insight into the daily life of the roman city almost two dozen years ago. 87 of them contain legible text, including the first ever mention of london, and the first recorded financial transaction aptritish history, an treasure to grace bloomberg's new home in this historic financial district. now fast-forward 2000 years to the 24th of october 2017, the day that marked the end of a seven have your journey breaking ground on this historic site, a

of to celebrate the opening bloomberg's new european headquarters. >> this is mike bloomberg. he was mayor of new york for 12 years. bloomberg's amazing building will inspire collaboration and fuel innovation and be a great example in sustainable office design. >> i would like to pay tribute that shared civic pride, that social idealism, and the extraordinary collaboration between the public world and the private world. i think that is a great combination to celebrate. >> we wanted to create a place that would be as innovative and forward-looking as our employees, a place that would inspire them and a place that would allow us to continue creating great products and better services for our customers. in designing the building, we wanted to respect london's aesthetic traditions.

we have always taken the long view and we have always place great value on being good neighbors in the cities that host us. we also wanted to bring new life to the community, and that is why much of the arcade on the ground floor is devoted to great food and great public art. we painstakingly worked with the museum of london archaeology and the museum of london to conserve 14,000 artifacts, restore the temple, and create a new cultural and educational opportunity for the public. >> this neighborhood has been at the center of finance and trade for 2000 years old we are excited to build that history and help london continue growing as an economic and cultural capital. bloomberg is growing, too. the future is wide open, and we couldn't be more excited about what is to come.

david: you have become the wealthiest man in the world. jeff: it was fine being the second wealthiest person in the world. [laughter] david: what compelled you to sell things more than books? jeff: i thought we can sell anything this way. what happens when you offer a free, all-you-can-eat buffet? who shows up first? the heavy eaters.

david: there are some people who criticize the things the washington post says. jeff: i have no idea what you are talking about. [laughter] >> would you fix your tie, please? david: well, people wouldn't recognize me if my tie was fixed, but ok. just leave it this way. alright. ♪ david: i don't consider myself a journalist. and nobody else would consider myself a journalist. i began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. how do you define leadership? what is it that makes somebody tick? your stock is up 70% this year. is there one thing you think is responsible for that? 70% is pretty good. [laughter] jeff: i, it, i have been lecturing. we have all hands meetings at amazon. 21 years now, 1997, i say, look, when the stock is up 30% in a month, don't feel 30% smarter, because when the stock is down 30% in a month, it will not feel

so good to feel 30% dumber. that is what happens. i never spend time thinking about the daily stock price. i don't. david: as a result of going up 70%, you have become the wealthiest man in the world. is that a title you really wanted? [laughter] jeff: i have never sought that title. him it was fine being the second wealthiest person in the world. that actually worked fine. [laughter] jeff: it isn't, i would say, some people are naturally curious about it. the thing, i would much rather they said inventor jeff bezos or entrepreneur jeff bezos or , you know father jeff bezos. , those kinds of things are more meaningful to me. it is an output measure. if you look at the financial

success of amazon and the stock, i own 16% of amazon. amazon is worth roughly $1 trillion. that means what we have built over 20 years is $840 billion of wealth for other people, and that is great. that is how it should be. i believe so powerfully in the ability of entrepreneurial capitalism and free markets to solve so many of the world's problems, not all of them. david: you live in washington state, outside of seattle. the man who was the richest man is named bill gates. what is the likelihood that the two richest men in the world live not only in the same country state, city, but same neighborhood? is there something about that neighborhood we should know about? are there any more houses there for sale? [laughter] jeff: after i saw bill not too

long ago, we were joking about the world's richest man thing. i basically said, you are welcome. he immediately turned to me and said, thank you. medina is a suburb of seattle. i don't think there is anything special in the water there. i did locate amazon in seattle because of microsoft. i thought that pool of technical talent would be a good place to recruit people from. that did turn out to be true, so it is not a complete coincidence. there is some correlation there. david: when you want to buy something, do you have put a credit card down? you just say you are jeff bezos? you carry cash around? [laughter] jeff: i do carry cash. [laughter] jeff: i have credit cards. i have to show my driver's license. david: have you ever had a credit card denied? [laughter] jeff: i have had my credit card denied.

david: what do you say? do you say don't you know who i am? jeff: i give them another credit card. [laughter] jeff: i say here, try this one. david: you made an announcement that is the most significant philanthropic gift you have made. [applause] jeff: thank you. david: about a year ago, you said you wanted to look for some good philanthropic ideas. you got 47,000 of them? jeff: yeah. david: you review them. so how did you decide where to put this $2 billion? jeff: that process was very helpful. i solicited ideas, i crowd sourced.

and i got literally something like 47,000, maybe a little more, most of them came on social media. i read through thousands and thousands of them. my office correlated them all and put them into buckets. there were some themes that emerged. the other thing that is fascinating about that exercise, you see just how long-tailed it is. people are interested in helping the world in so many different ways. a lot of people are interested in homelessness, including me. a lot of people are interested in education of all kinds. i am interested in early education. the apple does not fall far from the tree. my mother, in running the bezos family foundation, has become an expert in early education. i am a student of montessori schools. [applause] jeff: i started at montessori when i was two years old. the teacher complained to my mother that i was too task-focused and she could not get me to switch tasks, she would have to pick up my chair and move me. [laughter] jeff: if you asked the people who worked with me, that is probably still true today. david: has the teacher ever

called you since and said she is responsible for your success? [laughter] jeff: i am in touch with several of my elementary school teachers, but i don't know my montessori school teachers. david: the gift you are giving, essentially preschool for children who need free preschool. jeff: full tuition preschool. montessori inspired. i am very excited about that. i will operate that. that will be an operating nonprofit. we will put them in low income neighborhoods. we know if a kid falls behind, it is really hard to catch up. if you can give somebody a leg up when they are two years old, three years old, four years old , by the time they get to kindergarten or first grade, they are less likely to fall behind. it can happen but you improved their odds. the money spent there will pay gigantic dividends for decades. david: the other part of your gift will be to give awards out? jeff: that will be more traditional grant-making

philanthropy. i will identify with the help of a team and fund, vet and fund, family homeless shelters. david: you said you would give an initial $2 billion. do you expect to add to that? jeff: everything i have ever done started small. [laughter] jeff: amazon started with a couple of people. blue origin started with five people. the budget of blue origin was very small. now it approaches $1 billion a year. next year will be more than $1 billion. amazon is 500,000 people. it's hard to remember for you, but for me, it was like yesterday i was driving the packages to the post office myself. i was hoping one day we could afford a forklift. so for me, i have seen small things get big. it is part of this mentality.

i like treating things as if they are small. amazon, even though it is a large company, i wanted to have -- i want it to have the heart and spirit of a small one. the day one foundation will be like that. we will wander a bit too. we have some specific ideas about what we want to do, but i believe in the power of wandering. all of my best decisions in business and life have been made with heart, intuition, guts, you know, not, not analysis. when you can make a decision with analysis, you should do so, but it turns out in life that your most important decisions are always made with instinct, intuition, taste, heart, and that is what we will do with this day one foundation. the customer will be the child. this is so important. the secret sauce of amazon, the

number one thing that has made us successful by far is obsessive, compulsive focus on the customer, as opposed to obsession over the competitor, and i talked so often to other ceos, some other ceos, and also founders and entrepreneurs, and i can tell that even though they are talking about the customers, they are really focusing on competitors. it is a huge advantage to any company if you can stay focused on your customer instead of your competitor. then you have to identify who is your customer? at the washington post, is the customer the people who buy advertising? no, the customer is the reader. in school, who are the customers? parents, teachers? no, it is the child, and that is what we will do. we will be obsessive will he compulsively focused on the

child, we will use science when we can and use heart and intuition when we need to. david: when you use your intuition to make decisions, where is the intuition leading you now on your second headquarters? [laughter] [applause] jeff: all right. [applause] jeff: can we just take a moment to acknowledge that that may be the best segue in the history -- [laughter] [applause] jeff: -- of interviewing. david: right. jeff: seriously, david. david: all right. jeff: that is amazing. david: the answer is? [laughter] jeff: the answer is simple. we will announce a decision before the end of this year. we have made tremendous progress. the team is working on it, and we will get there. no, no, be nice. come on. jeff: it is dangerous to demonize the media, call them

lowlifes, say they are the enemy of the people. every time you attack that, you are eroding it a little bit around the edges. ♪

david: why did you buy the washington post? you had no background. what convinced you to do that? jeff: first of all, i was not looking for a newspaper. i had never thought about the idea, had never occurred to me. it was not like a childhood dream, nothing. my friend, don graham, who i had known 15 years. i know him 20 years now. he approached me through an intermediary and wanted to know if i would be interested in buying the washington post. i said i would not because i did not know anything about newspapers.

and don, over a series of conversations, convinced me that was unimportant, because we had inside the washington post, we have so much talent that understands newspapers. that wasn't what the problem was. what they needed was somebody who had an understanding of the internet. so that was the first thing. that is how i got started. i did some soul-searching. my decision-making process, this would be intuition and not analysis. the financial situation of the washington post in 2013 was upside down. the internet was eroding all the traditional advantages that local newspapers had, all of them. i said, you know, is this something i want to get involved in? if i do it, i will put heart and work into it. i decided i would do that if i believed it was an important

institution. i said if this were a financially upside down salty snack food company, the answer would be no. i started thinking about it that way i realized this is an important institution. this is the newspaper in the capital city of the most important country in the world. the washington post has an incredibly important role to play in this democracy. there is no doubt in my mind about that. [applause] jeff: and so -- [applause] jeff: and when i passed through that gate, i had a only one more gate, and that was i wanted to look myself, be really open with myself and look in a mirror and think about the company and be sure i was optimistic that it could work, because if it were hopeless, that would also be not something i would get involved in. i looked at that and was super

optimistic. it needed to transition to a national and global publication, and there is one gift the internet brings newspapers, free global distribution. we had to take advantage of that gift. that was the basic strategy. we had to switch from a business model where we made a lot of money per reader with a relatively small number of readers, to a tiny bit of money per reader on a very large number of readers, and that is the transition. i am pleased to report the post is profitable today. the newsroom is growing. [applause] jeff: it has been growing every year since i have been there. it is working. i am so proud of my team. i know for a fact when i am 80, i always project myself forward to age 80 but as i get older i , been projecting to 90. [laughter] jeff: i know that when i am 90 it will be one of the things i am most proud of, that i took on the washington post and helped

them through a rough transition. [applause] david: when you agreed to buy it, the asking price was $250 million. did you negotiate? jeff: i asked him how much he wanted. i did not negotiate with him and did not do due diligence. [laughter] david: i have something i would like to sell. [laughter] david: now that you own the washington post, sometimes there are some people who criticize some things the washington post says, and you have been remarkably quiet. jeff: i have no idea what you are talking about. [laughter] david: you have been remarkably quiet in not defending yourself. jeff: i do defend the post. it is a mistake for any elected official in my opinion. i don't think this is an out there opinion, to attack media and journalists. [applause] jeff: i believe it is an essential component of our democracy.

there has never been, i was going to say there has never been an elected official who has likes their headlines. i think there has been no public figure who has ever like their -- liked their headlines. it is ok. it is part of the process. if you are the president or governor, you don't take that job thinking you will not get scrutinized. you are going to get scrutinized. it is healthy. somebody very, you know, what the president should say is, this is right. this is good. i am glad i am being scrutinized. that would be so secure and confident. but it is really dangerous to demonize the media. it is dangerous to call the media lowlifes. it is dangerous to say they are the enemy of the people. we live in a society where it is not just the laws of the land that protect us, we do have freedom of the press in the constitution, but it is also the social norms that protect us.

it works because we believe those words on that piece of paper, and every time you attack that, you are eroding it a little around the edges. i don't want to be dramatic here. we are so robust in this country that the media will be fine. david: let's talk about how you came to where you are today. you grew up in texas, initially. jeff: yes. david: from early age were you a smart student? did your teachers tell you you were good? jeff: i have always been academically smart. by the way, the older i get i realize how many kinds of smart there are. there are a lot of kinds of smart, and a lot of kinds of stupid too. [laughter] jeff: i see people all the time i know they would not have gotten a pluses on their calculus exam, but are incredibly smart, but yes, i was a good student. david: you move to high school

in miami and were valedictorian in every class. you gave a speech as valedictorian saying we should colonize space or something like that? jeff: i did. i graduated from high school in 1982. a big public high school, miami, palmetto senior high, go panthers. [laughter] jeff: there were 750 kids in my graduating class. i loved high school. i had so much fun. i lost my library privileges because i laughed too loudly in the library. david: what about that laugh? where did you get that laugh from? it is distinctive. jeff: i have have that laugh all my life. there was a multiyear period where my brother and sister would not see a movie with me because they thought it was too embarrassing. [laughter] jeff: i don't know why i have this laugh. i laugh easily and often. you ask my mom or anybody who

knows me well and they will say that if jeff is unhappy, wait five minutes. ♪ jeff: i was packing boxes on my hands and knees with somebody else standing next to me, kneeling next to me. we are packing and i said, you know what we need? kneepads. this is killing my knees. this guy packing alongside me said we need packing tables. [laughter] jeff: i was like, that is the most brilliant idea i have ever heard. ♪

david: you graduated as as valedictorian and decided you want to go to princeton. why? jeff: i wanted to be a theoretical physicist. i changed my major quickly. david: you graduated summa cum laude, phi beta kappa?

jeff: phi beta kappa. david: then you went into the highest calling of mankind, finance. [laughter] jeff: yes, i worked at a quantitative hedge fund, d. e. shaw & co. i used a lot of his ideas and principles, hr, recruiting, what kind of people to hire. david: a very good, well-known hedge fund. you were a star there. what propelled you to say i am quitting this, and will start a company selling books over the internet from seattle? where did that idea come from? jeff: this is 1994. nobody has heard of the internet, very few people. i came across the fact the world wide web was growing at something like 2300% a year in 1994. anything growing that fast, even if it's baseline usage is tiny, it is going to be big. i looked at that and said there has to be, i should come up with

a business idea on the internet, then let the internet grow around this and keep working on it. i made a list of products on -- products i might sell, i started force ranking them. i picked books because they are super and usual in one respect, there are more books in the book item in one category than any other item. there are 3 million different books active in print around the world at any given time. my founding idea of amazon was to build universal selection of books. the biggest bookstores had only 150,000 titles, so that is what i did. i hired a small team and we built the software and moved to seattle. david: you told your parents you were going to quit d. e. shaw & co, making i presume a fair amount of money, and told your wife, mackenzie, that you would move across the country. what did they all say? jeff: they were immediately and reflexively supportive after they asked the question, what is the internet? [laughter]

jeff: so, you know, with your loved ones, you bet on them, not the idea. you are betting on the person. that was one of those decisions i made with my heart and not my head. i basically said when i am 80, now 90, i want to have minimized the number of regrets that i have in my life, and most of our regrets are acts of omission, the things we did not try. the path untravelled. those are the things that haunt us. david: you were telling me you had to go deliver the books to the post office yourself? jeff: i was doing that for years. and i was packing boxes on my hands and knees. in the first month, i was packing boxes on my hands and knees on the hard cement floors with somebody else standing next to me, kneeling next to me. we were packing and i said, you know what we need? kneepads. this is killing my knees.

this guy packing alongside me said, we need packing tables. [laughter] jeff: i was like, that is the most brilliant idea i have ever heard. [laughter] jeff: the next day i went and bought packing tables and doubled our productivity. david: think about it, as a senior executive, what do you get paid to do? jeff: you get paid to make a small number of high-quality decisions. ♪

david: what propelled you to sell things more than books? jeff: after books, music, then we started selling videos, then i got smart and i emailed 1000 randomly selected customers and

asked them besides the things we sell today, what would you like to see us sell. that answer came back long-tailed. they answered the question with whatever they were looking for at the moment. one was, i wish you sold windshield wiper blades because i really need new windshield wiper blades. i thought to myself we can sell anything this way. so we launched electronics, toys, and many other categories over time. you read the original business plan, it is just books. david: your stock went to $100, and then it went down to six dollars or something like that. jeff: at the peak of the internet bubble, $113, and after the internet bubble busted open, our stock went down to six dollars. that was less than the year. my annual shareholder meeting started with a one-word sentence, the word "ouch."

david: most of those internet companies of the dot com era are out of business. what made you survive under the rest of the number gone? jeff: the whole period is very interesting. the stock is not the company, and the company is not the stock. as i watched the stock fall, i was watching our internal business metrics as well, number of customers, profit per unit, everything you can imagine, defects, etc. every single thing about the business was getting better, and fast. as the stock price was going the wrong way, everything in the company was going the right way. so we didn't need to go to capital markets. we didn't need more money. the only reason a financial bust like the internet bubble bursting makes it hard to raise money, but we already had the money we needed, so we just needed to continue to progress.

david: wall street kept saying amazon is not making any money. they are just getting customers. where are the profits? wall street kept beating you up on that. your response was i don't care what you think? jeff: amazon was, people always accused us of selling dollar bills for $.90. anybody can do that and grow revenue. that is not what we were doing. we always had positive gross margins. it is a fixed cost business. what i could see from the internal metrics was at a certain volume level, we would cover our fixed costs and the company would be profitable. david: who came up with the idea of prime? prime seems to be a great way of getting money in advance of services. jeff: it is very interesting. like many inventions inside of a team, team inventing is my favorite thing, so i tap dance into the office. i love amazon, blue origin, "the washington post," but amazon is my full-time job. i get to live two to three years

in the future. most of the invention is somebody has an idea and other people improve the idea and come up with objections why it could never work, then we saw those -- solved those objections. it is a very fun process. we are always wondering what could a loyalty program b. then, actually a junior software engineer came up with this idea, not as a loyalty program, but we could offer people kind of an all-you-can-eat buffet of fast, free shipping, and when we modeled that, the finance team went and modeled that idea, and the results were horrifying. we would offer unlimited shipping. shipping is expensive, and customers love free shipping, but we could see, again, back to that, you have to use heart and intuition. there has to be risk-taking, you

have to have instinct and all good decisions have to be made that way. you do it with a group, you do it with great humility. getting it wrong is not bad, that is the other thing. when we make mistakes, and we have made doozies. like the fire phone. we do not have enough time for me to list all of our failed experiments. but the big winners pay for thousands of failed experiments. you try something like prime. it was very expensive at the beginning. it cost us a lot of money. what happens when you offer a free all-you-can-eat buffet? who shows up to the buffet first? the heavy eaters. [laughter] jeff: it is scary. did i really say as many prawns as you can eat? [laughter] jeff: so that is what happened, but we could see the trendlines, all kinds of customers were coming and they appreciated that service. david: you sit around with your team, but you don't like

meetings before 10:00 a.m. you like eight hours of sleep, and you don't like powerpoint. explain all of that. why is that? jeff: i go to bed early, get up early, like to putter in the mornings. i like to read the newspaper. i like to have coffee and havede they go to school, so i have my puttering time, it is very important to me. that's why i set my first meeting for 10:00. i like to do my high iq meetings before lunch. anything that is going to be really mentally challenging is a 10:00 meeting. by 5:00 p.m., i can't think about this today. let's try this again tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. then on sleep, i get eight hours of sleep. i prioritize it. unless i am traveling in different time zones. sometimes it is impossible but i'm very focused on it, for me, i need eight hours sleep. i think better. i have more energy. my mood is better. all of these things. think about it, as a senior

executive, what do you really get paid to do? as a senior executive you get paid to make a small number of high-quality decisions. your job is not to make thousands of decisions every day. is that really worth it if the quality of decisions might be lower because you are tired, or grouchy, or any number of things? it is different if it is a startup company. if amazon was 100 people, that is a different story, but amazon is not a startup company, and all our senior executives work the way i do. they work and live in the future. none of the people who report to me should be focused on the current quarter. i'll is tell people, sometimes have a goodill quarterly conference call or something, and wall street will like our quarterly results, and people will stop me and say congratulations on your quarter. i will say, thank you, but what i am thinking is that quarter

baked three years ago. right now, i am working on a quarter that is going to reveal itself in 2021 some time. that is what you need to be doing. you need to be two to three years in advance. then why do i need to make 100 , decisions today? if i make three good decisions, that is enough, and they should be as high quality as i make them. david: one of the companies you started in on it in amazon was amazon web services. jeff: a business miracle happen. this never happens. this is the greatest piece of this is luck in the history of business so far as i know. we faced no like-minded competition for seven years. ♪

david: when you buy over the internet, amazon, do you ever get the wrong order? is anything ever wrong? do you call up and complain or you don't have any problems? jeff: i am a customer of amazon. hopefully like everyone in this room. if anyone in this room is not an amazon customer, see me afterwards. i will walk you through it. i have problems sometimes. i treat them like the same way i treat a problem i would get from a customer. my email address is famous and i keep it. i read it. i don't see every email i get because i get too many. i see a lot of them. i use my curiosity to pick out certain emails. i will get one from a customer and we have done something wrong. usually people are writing us because we have screwed up their order somehow. and so i'm looking at this, and for some reason, something seems odd about that one.

i will ask the team to do a case study and find real root cause or causes. it is usually causes. then real root fixes so that when you are fixing it, you are not fixing it for that one customer, you are fixing it for every customer. that process is a gigantic part of what we do, so if i have a failed order or some bad customer experience and i would treat it just like that. david: you have revolutionized retail, but now you are in the bricks and mortar business. you bought whole foods. what was the theory behind buying something that doesn't sell over the internet? david: we are interested in physical stores. i have been asked for years would we ever open physical stores. literally 20 years i have been asked that question, and i always say yes, but only when we have a differentiated offering, something that is not a too, -- something that is not me too. because physical stores are so well served. if we offer a me too product offering, it will not work. we are not very good at that.

whenever we have tried dabbling in something that is a me too service, we tend to get beaten. it doesn't work. our culture is better at pioneering, inventing, so we have to have something that is different and that is what amazon go is. it is completely different. the amazon bookstore, completely different. we have ideas about how to merge prime and whole foods. those are still rolling out. you haven't seen them yet. to use amazon prime to make whole foods a very differentiated experience. and so what we will be able to do is take our resources, technological know-how, and expand the whole foods mission. they have a great mission, which is to bring nourishing food to everybody, organic nourishing food to everybody, but we have a lot to bring to that table in terms of resources, operational excellence technology know-how. , david: one other company you started within your company is amazon web services.

where did that idea come from? jeff: aws. we started it a long time ago now, 15 years ago. we worked on it behind the scenes for a long time, then finally launched it. it has become a very large company. at aws, we completely reinvented the way that companies buy competition. -- computation. then a business miracle happened. this never happens. this is like the greatest piece of business luck in the history of business so far as i know. we faced no like-minded competition for seven years. it is unbelievable. i will give you, like, when i launched amazon.com in 1995, barnes & noble launched their website in 1997, two years, very typical if you invent something new. we launched kindle. barnes & noble launched nook two

years later. launched google home two years later. when you pioneer, if you are lucky you get a two-year head , start. no one gets a seven year head start. so that was incredible because, i think it was a whole confluence of things. i think the big, established enterprise software companies did not see amazon as a credible enterprise software company, and so we had this long runway to build this incredible, feature-rich, and it is so far ahead of all the other products and services today. david: do you worry the u.s. government might come along, or the european government, some regulatory thing could come in and impair your business? jeff: i get asked this question frequently. david: i thought it was an original question. jeff: no, sorry. you do do that sometimes, but that was not one of them. [laughter]

jeff: my view on this is very simple. all big institutions of any and all kind are going to be, and should be, examined, scrutinized, and inspected. governments should be inspected. government institutions, big educational institutions, big nonprofits, big companies. they're going to get scrutiny. it is not personal. it is what we as a society want to have happen. that is one thing. i remind people internally don't take this personally. that is a lot of wasted energy. this is normal, healthy, good. and then the second thing is that we are so inventive that whatever regulations are promulgated or however it works, that will not stop us from serving customers. to really, you know, under all, we have kind of, regulatory frameworks that i can imagine,

customers will still want low prices. they will still want fast delivery. they will still want big selection. it is really important that politicians and others, they need to understand the value of the big companies and not demonize or vilify business in general especially, well, you should not vilify big companies and business in general for a sure, and the reason is simple. there are certain things only big companies can do. i love garage entrepreneurs. i invest in a lot of their companies and i know many of them, but nobody in their garage is in going to build an all carbon fiber, fuel-efficient boeing 787. [applause] jeff: it is not going to happen. you need boeing to do that. this world would be bad without boeing, apple, and samsung. david: one of your passions is

outer space and space travel. jeff: there are all sorts of problems that we are about to face because for the first time in our civilizational history , going back out years, we are now big compared to the size of the planet. we can fix that problem in exactly one way, by moving out into the solar system. ♪

david: one of your passions is not just amazon, but outer space and space travel, blue origin. you started blue origin in secret, then made it public. you are putting $1 billion of your own capital in every year. jeff: next year it will be more for the first time. david: what are we going to get

out of it? are we going to have people going to space? jeff: this is the most important work i am doing. i have great conviction about that. it is a simple argument. this is the best planet. we have now sent robotic probes to every planet in the solar system. believe me, this is the good one. my friends who say they want to move to mars, i say, look, do me a favor. move to the top of mount everest for a year first, because that is a garden paradise compared to mars. this gem of a planet, we are finally, as a species, big enough to impact it. for thousands and thousands of years, earth was big and humanity was small. that is not true anymore. so we face a choice as we move forward. we will have to decide whether we want a civilization of stasis, which we could do.

that is a legitimate choice. what does it mean? we will have to cap population, we will have to cap energy usage per capita. people don't think about how much energy they use. it takes a lot of energy, so do you want that to continue for your grandchildren, and your grandchildren's grandchildren? i want my grandchildren's grandchildren to be using way more energy per capital than i -- per capita than i am, and i would like to see to not have a population cap. i wish there were one trillion humans in the solar system and then there would be 1000 einsteins, 1000 mozarts. but we do not have that long so there is all sorts of problems we are about to face because for the first time in our civilizational history going back thousands of years, we are now big compared to the size of the planet. we can fix that problem, but in exactly one way, by moving out into the solar system.

and so, my part, my role in that is i want to build reusable space vehicles. that is the heavy lifting. amazon was able to get started with only $1 million in capital. and because i got to ride on the back of the credit card system, ride on the back of the pre-existing transportation network that could deliver packages, the pre-existing telecommunications network that could allow people to connect to our servers, all of that would have been hundreds of billions of dollars in capex, but it was all in place. that is what allowed facebook, if you think about it, two kids in a dorm room made this company in less than two decades. that is unbelievable. but that can't happen in space. there is no way two kids in a dorm room can start a space company of any significance, because the price of admission is so high. i want to build space

infrastructure so that the next generations of people can use that infrastructure the same way i used ups, fedex, and so on to build amazon. and so that is what blue origin is all about. david: so do you ultimately want that to be your legacy, or amazon? what would you like to have as your legacy? jeff: world's oldest man. [laughter] jeff: that is a famous line i like. the real thing is, it will be whatever it is going to be. i will be proud of the things -- i live my life in such a way that when i in a quiet moment of reflection, thinking about on my life, i have as few regrets as possible. what will my legacy be? i have no idea. i do not even want to spend a lot of time thinking about it. david: do you intend to give away the bulk of your fortune at some point in your life? jeff: i don't know how much i will give away. i will give away a lot of money in a nonprofit model, but i will also invest a lot of money in

something that any rational investor would say is a really bad investment, which is blue origin, but i think it is super important. if i cannot make blue origin a for-profit, maybe i will convert it to a nonprofit at some point in the future, but i would not want that. i would want it to be a thriving ecosystem like ups. david: let's close with your wife. we have not mentioned her. jeff: we met in new york city where we worked. we got engaged. we dated for three months, were engaged three months, then got married. the whole dating and engagement period was only six months long. i also, i would like to take a moment to talk about my parents, if that is ok. you did not ask me, but i would like to. they are here in the audience. [applause] jeff: thank you, guys. [applause]

jeff: you know, you get different gifts in life. one of the great gifts i got is my mom and dad. it is amazing, my highest admiration is withheld for those people, and we all know some of them -- i know several of them -- who had terrible parents. maybe they were abusive or what ever it is. those who so admirably break that cycle, pull out, and make that work, i did not have that situation. i was always loved. my parents loved me unconditionally. by the way, it was pretty tough for them. she does not talk about it that much, but my mom had me when she was 17 years old. she was a high school student in albuquerque, new mexico. you can ask her, but i'm pretty sure that wasn't cool in 1964 to be a pregnant mom in high school in albuquerque, new mexico. in fact, my grandfather who is another incredibly important

figure in my life, went to bat for her, and the high school wanted to kick her out. you were not allowed to be pregnant in high school there. my grandfather said, you can't kick her out. it is a public school. she gets to go to school. then they negotiated for a while. then the principal said she can stay and finish the high school, but can't do extracurricular activities and can't have a locker. i know. my grandfather being a very wise man, he was like done. we will take that deal. she finished high school. she had me, then she married my dad. my dad is my real dad, not my biological dad. his name is mike. he is a cuban immigrant. he got a scholarship to college in albuquerque, which is where he met my mom. i have kind of a fairytale story. my grandfather, possibly, i am pretty sure because my parents

were so young, starting at age four, he would take me every summer on his ranch, and it was the most spectacular, from age four to 16, i spent every summer working alongside him on the ranch. he was the most resourceful man. he did all his own veterinary work. he would make his own needles, he would pound the wire with the oxyacetylene torch and drill a hole in it and make a suture, a needle he could suture the cattle with. some of the cattle even survived. [laughter] jeff: he was a remarkable man and a huge part of all of our lives, but you don't realize, you know, you look back and if you don't have these parents, you know, it is so important, so it is just a really big deal, and my grandfather too, like a second set of parents for me. ♪ [ phone rings ] what?!

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"activecore, how's my network?" "all sites are green." all of which helps you do more than your customers thought possible. comcast business. beyond fast. david: now when you are the head of the imf, do people recognize you? christine: it is a lot of ego food, which i take and store for the hard days. david: how did you get to be the head of the entire firm? christine: it is often in those situations when a woman appears. david: so with synchronized swimming, you became a member of the national team of france. christine: i did european championship and many international events. david: did you experience a lot of discrimination? christine: when i interviewed with law firms, where i was told back in those days i would never make partnership because i was a woman. >> would you fix your tie please? david: well, people wouldn't recognize me if my tie was fixed, but ok. just leave it this way? all right.