"His Majesty" Bezos the First (part 2)

Iii.

When you walk past the door without plates in the Blue Origin offices in the industrial area near the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, you quickly begin to feel that you have entered the abode of the space fanatic. The soaring 10-meter globe slowly rotates in the depths of the lobby. The flight of stairs leading to the lobby is a combination of a first-class museum of cosmonautics and a paradise of a passionate lover of rocket models. The canopy over the central fireplace is the base of the rocket in the spirit of Jules Verne; its flame actually radiates heat. Nearby, the USS Enterprise starship model from the famous Star Trek movie is guarding relics from real space flights, including the fuel flow control valve of the engine that controlled the descent of the Apollo module to the moon.

All these items are included in the personal collection of Bezos, who since childhood was a fanatic of science fiction. And everything here in this boundless sea of ​​buildings and developments also belongs to him. These include the reusable space ship New Shepard (New Shepard), developed by Blue Origin, and its BE-4 rocket engine, which goes to the final tests. Bezos himself intends to be on board in a few years, when Blue Origin will be ready to take people into space.


The Blue Origin rocket of New Shepard, taking off into space and returning to the original launch pad.

Bezos, without attracting everyone’s attention, launched Blue Origin 16 years ago as a research project and has been almost silent about it until now. Rob Meyerson, a quiet and quiet native of the Midwest and a former NASA space engineer who is now president of the company, says the secrecy was mainly caused by the desire to avoid the hype around untested technology. Meyerson, who worked for the private rocket company Kistler Aerospace near Seattle, which could not stand, after all, joined Blue Origin in 2003, when there were about 10 employees. At that time, Bezos sent his researchers to search for alternatives to polluting and deafening launch methods that astronautics has used since the 1960s. The search gave no result, and Bezos changed his approach. “Jeff realized it was necessary to invest in liquid-jet engines so that you could fly a lot and often,” says Meyerson. “All this is connected with his deep vision of millions of people living in space.”
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After many years of success and failure, Blue Origin is finally ready to fly into space. Automatic spacecraft was raised to a height of approx. 100 kilometers, known as the Karman line (conditional boundary between the atmosphere of the Earth and space), and confidently planted on the ground; the entire flight - from start to landing - took about 10 minutes. The company has not yet announced the exact date, but in its immediate plans to begin booking seats for passengers. She intends to develop a rocket for flying into a near-earth orbit, to which the SpaceX spacecraft Elon Musk has already entered, which will allow people and satellites to be put into space. “Perhaps,” says Meyerson, “we will sell these cases to customers. We believe that we will start flights with passengers in 2017. These will be test engineers. Then we start selling tickets. It seems to me that Jeff and I will fly somewhere in the 2018th. "

Just as with the Washington Post, Bezos is regularly interested in Blue Origin affairs, without performing any particular function. Meyerson says that Bezos deals with the review of the course of his production activity every month, which often includes speeches by experts invited from outside. He also devotes four hours each week to familiarize himself with work on the orbital launch vehicle and the New Shepard.

Meyerson says that he initially resisted writing well-known “six pages”, which Bezos demanded before meetings where PowerPoint presentations are prohibited. Bezos continued to insist, and Meyerson gave up. Now, he says to himself, "I am a complete convert."

Bezos does not want to say how much money is invested in Blue Origin. Reports related to the recent past, show the amount of about $ 500 million, but since then the intensity of investments has only increased. The company has 600 employees (it is assumed that there will be 800); launch sites are available in Texas and will soon be on Cape Canaveral in Florida. “No one enters the space business as a result of a comprehensive analysis of all areas in which to invest, and this business was chosen as the least risky and most profitable,” says Bezos. With his fortune, he can finance missiles for quite some time to achieve something. Indeed, if Bezos continues to drive 500 million dollars a year into Blue Origin, when will he have to cover this shop? ...? That's right - in 90 years.

“No one comes to the space business as a result of having completed an exhaustive analysis,” and concluded that “this business is the least risky and most profitable.”
- Bezos, rocket business

Iv.

In Seattle, I visited a new store, a prototype of Amazon Books, in a mall near the University of Washington. Its very existence near the fashion store of the Banana Republic company and opposite the sporting goods store Tommy Bahama is very ironic for the company, which many consider responsible for the disappearance in the near future of bookstores that make up the bookselling network. Once, before the arrival of Amazon, the store of the largest book selling company in the United States, Barnes & Noble, was located here ( BKS 0.99% ).

As concept stores evolve, Amazon Books will grow smarter. Everything, except the center, is given to books established by app. in 10 rows; All books are covered with covers to the buyer. (Other booksellers blame publishers for their desire to put books in front, but Amazon does this in the belief that customers are attracted to it.) Posters below books contain testimonials from Amazon.com customers who have been specially selected by the company's employees. In the center of the store there is a hall for the demonstration of devices developed by Amazon, including personal assistants of Echo and Kindle tablets of various sizes for reading electronic books; here is a large flat screen displaying TV and movie offers from the company. Shop features are limited. He, for example, does not offer receipt of goods purchased on Amazon.com, or return them. Other ideas demonstrate the prospect of combined retail sales offline / online. For example, if you use a credit card associated with your account at Amazon, the invoice will quickly go to your email. All prices in stores are exactly the same as on the Amazon website.


Inside the first bookstore of the company “Amazon” in the shopping center of Seattle, in the room, which was previously used by the bookseller “Barnes & Noble”

An hour later, at Amazon headquarters, I told Bezos where I was and what I bought at his store the book Coraline by Neil Gaiman for my daughter. He thanked me for the purchase and laughed out loud, but I replied that this was unlikely to significantly help his financial affairs: a paperback book costs 3.94 dollars plus tax. Bezos laughed again.

From each, of course, a little bit, but as a result, the huge empire of the company grows with fantastic speed. Amazon’s web services business, which reached $ 7.8 billion in sales in 2015, has become so ubiquitous that it now, essentially, levies a tax — as venture entrepreneur Chamet Palihapitiya said — from every startup for conducting the business. Every day, it seems, brings another experiment. Attempts by Amazon to compete with Apple’s iPhone ( AAPL 1.92% ) ended in failure. But Amazon’s personal assistant, Echo from Amazon, has received rave reviews for his great work compared to Apple’s Siri. Amazon spun the ambitious “same-day delivery” program, becoming the main force in TV and movies, and took steps to create its own air and sea fleets to transport goods.

All this is too much for Bezos to manage in detail, and he acknowledges the choice of some of his points. His latest passion was “high fashion” - an area that Amazon has been modernizing in recent years; Bezos says he focuses on Amazon plans for his own personal brand. “I think there are still many opportunities for the new,” he says. “It is extremely difficult to do online. Therefore, the process is partially offline. People appreciate the approach with support when choosing. ”This, says Bezos, is a significant deviation for Amazon. “We didn’t oversee the choice of books.” As for Bezos’s other areas of interest at Amazon, he says that he’s been involved in “certain AWS elements (infrastructure of Amazon’s cloud web services), but only a few years,” and also Alexa "And acquisition centers owned by the company. As for specific features, “I cannot really participate in everything, because there are too many problems of fundamental importance.”

One of the reasons that Bezos can afford to aim at something concrete in Amazon is the tenure of his high-ranking deputies. Jeff Wilk, for example, joined Amazon in 1999, and today he runs Amazon's consumer business, which he calls Amazon Classic. He says that Amazon’s annual planning process — and the detailed references that managers prepare — enable Bezos to reliably monitor the company's performance. In addition, Wilk says, “I would say that his style has changed from a few prescriptive to educational and clarifying.” Jeff Blackburn, an 18-year-old Amazon veteran who manages the company's M & A and content business, describes Bezos as extremely consistent. in his selection process. “He still works 65 hours a week. He is still tied to the office and doesn't move very much. He now goes into the same problems as many years ago. "

“I would say that Bezos’s style has changed from a few prescriptive to educational and clarifying.”
- Jeff Wilk, Amazon First Vice President, Consumer Products Sector

One thing that has changed at Amazon is the level of observation this company is exposed to. Brad Stone's “Shop of Everything” book, published in 2013, extolled the success of Amazon, while at the same time portraying its treatment with partners and suppliers as ugly. A report in the New York Times in 2015 showed Amazon’s inner life only slightly more tolerant than in the worst prisons in the world. The critical description collapsed through the newspaper, and Bezos told staff that “the article is not about the company Amazon, which I know.” The question of how this criticism affected him and Amazon, Bezos rejects with ease the policy. “A company of the size of Amazon will inevitably be under constant surveillance,” he says. "This is useful. And, indeed, it is a great honor to have a company that has turned into something worthy of such close attention. ”

It has long been known that the company "Amazon" is a very difficult place to work, but the article "The Times" struck a chord. Amazon fired back, criticizing newspaper journalism through the Medium platform, as did its first vice president of communications, Jay Carney, the former spokesman for President Obama (and a former writer for Time, a subsidiary of Fortune). The controversy came to naught and, according to information from Amazon, did not affect the recruitment of personnel. To this day, Bezos insists that cultivating intensive work at Amazon is a strength, not a weakness of the company. A company spokesperson notes that Amazon made several modifications for staff — such as, for example, an improved parental leave program — but hastens to add that these changes were worked out even before the Times article came out. In the end, we have to agree that the inner life at Amazon is as tough and demanding as it was before. Did you, in fact, expect Bezos to abandon the approach that brought him here?

“The article is not about the company Amazon, which I know,” said Bezos about the investigation of the New York Times newspaper, which showed the hardest working conditions in the company.
- Bezos on how the inner life of his company was presented

V.

Bezos is now 52. (“A full deck of cards,” he blurts out and laughs loudly at his own joke. “The joker will fall out next year.”) He feels his strength and is ready to have fun with thoughts of becoming a high-ranking statesman. When asked if he has any role models at this phase of his career, he expands the wording. “I have been lucky all my life to have great role models.” These include his parents, as well as Jamie Dimon from JP Morgan Chase ( JPM -1.39% ) (“I often ask Jamie. I think he really has a good idea of ​​life, and he really inspires me. ”) and Warren Buffet. “If my opinion is different from that of Warren Buffet, then I respect this person so much that I always assume my own omission.”

Bezos is now taking on the role of an influential thinker. At the end of March, Amazon held a very unusual conference in Palm Springs. For the event, called "MARS" and covering the directions of "machine learning, home automation, robotics and space exploration," Bezos and some leading parliamentarians gathered a group of influential intellectuals and "scientists, university professors, entrepreneurs, just passionate about these areas of people and creative developers" in these areas for discussion and demonstration. Each of these areas has a direct relationship to Amazon or Blue Origin, but the company focused the participants on the fact that the conference is strictly non-commercial. Amazon did not try to directly sell anything to anyone. Bezos said before the start: “I’ll be happy if every participant leaves from here, acquiring a couple of new friends, getting some pleasure and maybe inspired by something amazing.”

The literary interests of our billionaire have always been eclectic, often simply unpredictable. When I interviewed him in 2012, he had just finished reading the science fiction book “Hydrogen Sonata” by Iain Banks. He is now reading Jonathan Franzen’s new novel Purity (Clean), about which he says that “three different people have recommended it to me.” He also just finished reading the first four chapters of his wife’s unnamed novel, Mackenzie, which he spoke about in great detail, but demanded that I would not write anything of this without receiving her permission — which she later refused. “I have been happily married for 23 years, and would like to keep everything unchanged,” he says. There are limits, in the end, even the possibilities of Jeff Bezos.