Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

“Keep inventing, and don’t despair when at first the idea looks crazy. Remember to wander. Let curiosity be your compass. It remains Day 1.”

Notes from Jeff Bezos’ announcement that he was stepping aside as CEO.

This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name. The question I was asked most frequently at that time was, 'What’s the internet?'

This reminds me of Sam Altman’s post The Strength of Being Misunderstood, which doesn’t mention but was likely inspired by Bezos’s quote “One thing I learned within the first couple of years of starting a company is that inventing and pioneering involve a willingness to be misunderstood for long periods of time.”

I find my work meaningful and fun.

I can’t help but wonder how many people never, ever feel this way about their job or professional career. Sure, he could be lying, and sure it might be easier for the world’s richest man to enjoy his job due to the, but I believe him. It’s hard to fake this happiness over years and years and years.

If you get it right, a few years after a surprising invention, the new thing has become normal. People yawn. And that yawn is the greatest compliment an inventor can receive.

It’s a tired point to make that pretty much every smartphone on the market today looks and acts, both in hardware and UX/UI, like the original iPhone. Many scoffed at the original iPhone.

Keep inventing, and don’t despair when at first the idea looks crazy. Remember to wander. Let curiosity be your compass. It remains Day 1.

When he says “don’t despair when at first the idea looks crazy” my mind jumps to the fact that the team who created the ill-fated, dead-on-arrival Fire Phone is the same team that created the game-changing Alexa and Amazon Echo.