david: you graduated summa cum laude, phi beta kappa? jeff: phi beta kappa.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

. >> you ended up excelling at princeton, and sue ma cum laude, and phi beta kappa.ze and went to yale law school, excelled there as well and got the same kinds of questions, all circling around this supposition that you were somehow undeserving. >> at yale, it was at a dinner by a law firm that was interviewing potential student job applicants to their firms. and my friend who invited me to the dinner had worked with this firm during the summer went around the room and described me as a puerto rican that had come from the south bronx and gone to princeton and ended up at yale, and after the introductions had finished around the table, the partner who was sitting across from me looked at me and the first question he asked me was did you get into yale only because you're puerto rican. and i was stunned. my mind raced, which was i don't really think so. i'm sure it helped, but i think i have other qualities that they also found important. but you're -- your assuming it is really insulting. i filed a complaint with yale. >> and they were forced to apologize. >> and they

she was phi beta kappa from the university of south um carolina, she's no. spending this time together on a boat with a couple of other people-- friend of hart's and a friend of hers-- . they go over to bimini - bimini in those days was and this is the era of "miami vice." [jan hammer's "miami vice theme"] there's fast boats, fast drugs, fast women, fast men. nk so right away, i'm ting, "if this is at all true, "why wouany presidentiae "put himself in a situation that wld be so politically dangerous?" - they end up staying the night, depending on who you talk to, either becauit was ind or because the customs shutdown, and then they reunite in washington a couple weeks later. - our job, check it out. if it checks out, we tell voters. voters can decide whether it matters or not. - the "miami herald" decides very quick and without a whole lot of internal debate, that they're going to put the presumed front-runner of the democratic party under covert surveillance. - i came up with the other editor and a photographer on the first flight satuorning, and we spent a