Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
In 1996, David Risher told Bill Gates that he was leaving his management role in MicrosoftAt that time, one of the largest companies in the world with an annual revenue of nearly $ 8.7 billion to deal with a “little bookstore online” called Amazon.
“It was not a completely rational move,” Rishire, who is now CEO of Lyft, admitted in an episode of Fortune Leadership Next Podcast aired on September 30th. Richre was Amazon’s senior Vice President of US retail trade between 1997 and 2002.
In fact, Bill Gates tried to get Rishire out of the move, he said in a podcast, reminding him that he was “successful” in the biggest company where Risher had developed the first product of the Microsoft database called Access.
Gates – Then the most rich person in the world, with net value calculated by Forbes in $ 18 billion In September 1996 – was surprised that Risher would like to leave Microsoft to start on the Internet that reported annual revenue from Just $ 15.7 million In 1996, only two years after Jeff Bezos founded the company.
“” Things are going well (here). You want to tell me that you are leaving this company for a tiny, small internet bookstore that no one has ever heard of … It must be the most gluple decision I have ever heard of someone, “Risher told him at the time. A Gates spokesman did not immediately answer CNBC to make his request for comment.
While Risher understood the inherent risk of leaving an established technological giant for a much smaller and unproven start -up, the founder of Amazon made a convincing case, Richire said.
“We will be a billion dollar business” by 2000.
Risher actually first met Bezos on the phone a year before joining Amazon when the founder called him to check a job reference for another new Bezos employee was hired.
“We had a great conversation and I was really impressed with the questions he asked, and that the Amazon CEO would take 45 minutes to make a personal check,” Richire told journalist Daniel Newnam in a Interview for 2015S
Until 1996, Richer became so impressed with Bezos and Amazon that he began interviewing a job in the young startup. There were two things about Bezos who convinced Risher that he was making the right decision, he said. The first was Bezos’s obsession with the client experience.
“The idea that you can personally improve the lives of millions of customers if you take serious responsibility is very powerful,” he told Newnham.
The other part of Bezos’ terrain he won over Risher was the entrepreneur’s confidence that Amazon could be the next huge technology company.
At that time Amazon had a “relatively small business” which Originally focused on the sale of booksS But Bezos had a clear vision that would start with books and eventually expands to more and more categories of products until Amazon becomesall the shops“It’s today.
“” I think if we do everything right, by the time we are in 2000, we will be a billion dollar business, “Bezos said, according to Richire.
“Very fascinating” opportunity
Richire has apparently bought Bezos’s vision for Amazon. He found the opportunity to lead this kind of massive, rapid growth to be “very compelling,” he said.
“I thought,” How often do you have to be in a company that is exactly in this crazy intersection of technology and culture and all these different things, and build something that can be a billion dollar company, “he told Fortune.
Amazon eventually defeated Bezos’ estimate by one year, reaching $ 1.6 billion annual revenue in 1999. Richire was a huge part of this growth, joining Amazon as the 37th company employee as a whole, he said. Richire’s role included expansion of Amazon in various categories of new products, including music, movies and toys.
When Risher left the company to become a business professor at the University of Washington in 2002, Amazon’s annual revenue was $ 3.9 billion.
Now 60 years old, Richire runs a lift from 2023 and still draws leadership inspiration from his former bosses, billionaires gates and Bezos, Richer often saysS He also does not remember the excitement of the early years of the Amazon.
“It was a really pretty rocket ship that is always fun to be,” Risher said. “This building of something that was not built before on this scale was really exciting.”
Do you want to be your own boss? Sign up for the new CNBC online course, How to start business: For the founders for the first timeS Find a step -by -step guidance to start your first business, from testing your idea to increasing your revenue.
Plus this, Sign up for CNBC, make your newsletter get tips and tricks for success in work, with money and in life, and Request for joining our exclusive community in LinkedIn contact experts and peers.
