Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin | Lex Fridman Podcast #405

1. 0:00 – 0:24

   Introduction

   1. LFLex Fridman0:00

      The following is a conversation with Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Blue Origin. This is his first time doing a conversation of this kind and of this length. And as he told me, it felt like we could've easily talked for many more hours, and I'm sure we will. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. And now, dear friends, here's Jeff Bezos.

2. 0:24 – 4:02

   Texas ranch and childhood

   1. LFLex Fridman0:24

      You spent a lot of your childhood with your grandfather on a ranch here in Texas.

   2. JBJeff Bezos0:29

      Mm-hmm.

   3. LFLex Fridman0:30

      And I heard you had a, a lot of work to do around the ranch. So what's the coolest job you remember doing there?

   4. JBJeff Bezos0:35

      Wow. Coolest? Um...

   5. LFLex Fridman0:37

      Most interesting.

   6. JBJeff Bezos0:37

      (laughs)

   7. LFLex Fridman0:38

      Most memorable.

   8. JBJeff Bezos0:39

      Most memorable.

   9. LFLex Fridman0:39

      Most impactful.

   10. JBJeff Bezos0:40

       I mean, it was a, it was real, it's a real working ranch. Um, my gran... And I, I spent all my summers on that ranch from age four to 16. And my grandfather was really taking me those, in the summers. In the, in the early summers, he was letting me pretend to help on the ranch 'cause of course a four-year-old is a burden, not a help in real life. He'd been really just watching me and taking care of me. Um, uh, and he was doing that because my mom was so young. She had me when she was 17. And so he was sort of giving her a break. And my grandmother and my grandfather would take me for these summers. But as I got a little older, I actually was helpful on the ranch and I loved it. I was out there, like, my grandfather had a huge influence on me, huge factor in my life, and I did all the jobs you would do on a ranch. I've fixed windmills and laid fences and pipelines and, you know, done all the things that any rancher would do. Vaccinated the animals, everything. Um, uh, but we had a, you know, my grandfather... After my grandmother died, um, I was about 12, and I kept coming to the ranch. So it was, then it was just him and me, just the two of us. And he was completely addicted to the soap opera The Days of Our Lives.

   11. LFLex Fridman1:57

       Yeah. Mm-hmm.

   12. JBJeff Bezos1:57

       And we would go back to the ranch house every day around 1:00 PM or so to watch Days of Our Lives. Uh, like sands through an hourglass, so are the days of our lives. (laughs)

   13. LFLex Fridman2:07

       Just the image of that, the two of you sitting there-

   14. JBJeff Bezos2:10

       (laughs)

   15. LFLex Fridman2:10

       ... watching a soap opera-

   16. JBJeff Bezos2:12

       He had these-

   17. LFLex Fridman2:13

       ... two ranchers.

   18. JBJeff Bezos2:13

       ... big, crazy dogs. It was really a very formative experience for me. But the key thing about it, for me, the thi- the great gift I got from it was that my grandfather was so resourceful, you know. He did everything himself. He made his own veterinary tools. He would make needles to suture the cattle up with. Like, he would find a little piece of wire and heat it up and pound it thin and drill a hole in it and sharpen it. So, you know, you learn different things, um, on a ranch than you would learn, you know, growing up in a city.

   19. LFLex Fridman2:43

       So self-reliance.

   20. JBJeff Bezos2:44

       Yeah. Like, figuring out that you can solve problems with enough persistence and ingenuity and... My grandfather bought a D6 bulldozer, which is a big bulldozer, and he got it for, like, $5,000 'cause it was completely broken down. It was like a 1955 Caterpillar D6 bulldozer. New, it would've cost, I don't know, more than $100,000. And we spent an entire summer fixing, like repairing that bulldozer. We'd, y- you know, use mail order to, uh, to buy big gears for the transmission, and they'd show up and they'd be too heavy to move, so we'd have to build a crane. You know, just that kind of, kind of that problem-solving mentality. Um, he had it so powerfully, you know. He, he did all of his own, uh... He'd just, he didn't, he didn't pick up the phone and call somebody. He would figure it out on his own. He... Doing his own veterinary work, you know?

   21. LFLex Fridman3:39

       But just the image of the two of you fixing a D6 bulldozer and then going in for a little break at 1:00 PM-

   22. JBJeff Bezos3:45

       Watching...

   23. LFLex Fridman3:46

       (laughs) ... to watch soap operas.

   24. JBJeff Bezos3:47

       Watching Days of Our Lives. Laying on the floor. That's how he watched TV.

   25. LFLex Fridman3:50

       Yeah.

   26. JBJeff Bezos3:50

       He was a really, really remarkable guy.

   27. LFLex Fridman3:52

       That's how I imagine Clint Eastwood also.

   28. JBJeff Bezos3:54

       (laughs)

   29. LFLex Fridman3:55

       In all those Westerns, when he's (laughs) , when he's not doing what he's doing, he's just watching soap operas. All right.

3. 4:02 – 16:36

   Space exploration and rocket engineering

   1. LFLex Fridman4:02

      Uh, I read that you fell in love with the idea of space and space exploration when you were five-

   2. JBJeff Bezos4:07

      Hmm.

   3. LFLex Fridman4:07

      ... while watching Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. So let me, uh, ask you to look back at the historical context and impact of that. So the space race from 1957 to 1969 between the Soviet Union and the US was, in many ways, epic. It was, um, a rapid sequence of dramatic events. First satellite to space, first human to space, first space walk, first uncrewed landing on the moon. Then some failures, explosions, deaths on both sides actually. And then the first human walking on the moon. Uh, what are some of the more inspiring moments or insights you take away from that time, those few years, that just, uh, 12 years?

   4. JBJeff Bezos4:51

      Well, I mean, there's so much inspiring there. Um, you know, one of the great things to take away from that, one of the great von Braun quotes is, "I have, uh, I have come to use the word impossible with great caution." (laughs)

   5. LFLex Fridman5:05

      Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

   6. JBJeff Bezos5:07

      And so, uh, that's kind of the big story of Apollo is that things... You know, the, uh, going to the moon was literally an analogy that people used for something that's impossible. You know, "Oh yeah, you'll do that when, when, you know, men walk on the moon."

   7. LFLex Fridman5:22

      Yeah.

   8. JBJeff Bezos5:23

      And of course it finally happened. Um, so, you know, I think it was pulled forward in time because of the space race. I think, you know, with the geopolitical implications and, you know, how much resource was put into it. You know, at the peak that program was spending, you know, 2 or 3% of GDP, uh, on the Apollo program. So much resource that I think it was pulled forward in time. You know, we kind of did it ahead of when we "should have done it."

   9. LFLex Fridman5:52

      Yeah.

   10. JBJeff Bezos5:53

       Um, and so in that way it's also a technical marvel. I mean, it's truly incredible. It's, uh, you know, it's the 20th century version of...... building the pyramids or something. It's, you know, it's an achievement that, um, because it was pulled forward in time, and because it did something that had previously been thought impossible, it rightly deserves its place as, you know, in the pantheon of great human achievements.

   11. LFLex Fridman6:17

       And of course, you named, uh, the projects, the rockets that Blue Origin is working on after some of the folks involved.

   12. JBJeff Bezos6:24

       Yeah.

   13. LFLex Fridman6:24

       I don't understand why it didn't say New Gagarin. I, is that, is that-

   14. JBJeff Bezos6:27

       There's an American bias in the naming.

   15. LFLex Fridman6:29

       Oh, okay.

   16. JBJeff Bezos6:29

       I apologize, uh (laughs) Lex.

   17. LFLex Fridman6:30

       This is very strange. Just asking for friend, clarify.

   18. JBJeff Bezos6:33

       I'm a big fan of Gagarin's though. In fact, I, um, I think his, his first words in space, um, I think are incredible. He, uh, you know, he purportedly said, "My God, it's blue." And y- that really drives home, no one had seen the earth from space. No one knew that we were on this blue planet.

   19. LFLex Fridman6:55

       Yeah.

   20. JBJeff Bezos6:55

       No one knew what it looked like from out there, and Gagarin was the first person to see it.

   21. LFLex Fridman7:01

       One of the things I think about is how dangerous those early days were for Gagarin, for, for Glenn, for everybody involved, like, how, how big of a risk they were all taking.

   22. JBJeff Bezos7:10

       They were taking huge risks. I'm not sure what the, uh, Soviets thought about Gagarin's flight. But I think that the Americans thought that the Alan Shepard flight, the flight that, you know, New Shepard is named after, the first American in space, he'd gone on his suborbital flight, they thought he had about a 75% chance of success.

   23. LFLex Fridman7:30

       Mm-hmm.

   24. JBJeff Bezos7:31

       Um, so, you know, that's a pretty big risk, a 25% risk.

   25. LFLex Fridman7:36

       It's, it's kinda interesting that Alan Shepard is not quite as famous as John Glenn. So for people who don't know, Alan Shepard is the first, uh, astronaut.

   26. JBJeff Bezos7:44

       The first American in space.

   27. LFLex Fridman7:46

       American in suborbital flight.

   28. JBJeff Bezos7:48

       Correct.

   29. LFLex Fridman7:48

       And, and then the first orbital flight is John Glenn.

   30. JBJeff Bezos7:51

       And then John Glenn is the first American to orbit the earth. By the way, I have the most charming, sweet, incredible letter from John Glenn, which I have framed and hang on my office wall-
4. 16:36 – 26:10

   Physics

   1. LFLex Fridman16:36

      let me ask you just a step back to the old days. You were at Princeton, uh, with aspirations to be a theo- theoretical physicist.

   2. JBJeff Bezos16:45

      Yeah.

   3. LFLex Fridman16:46

      Um, what attracted you to physics, and why did you change your mind and not become... Why, why are you not Jeff Bezos, the famous theoretical physicist?

   4. JBJeff Bezos16:57

      So I loved physics, and I studied physics and computer science, and I was proceeding along, uh, along the physics path. I was planning to major in physics. And I wanted to be a theoretical physicist. And I wa- and the computer science was sort of something I was doing for fun. I really loved it. Um, and I, and I was very good at the programming and doing those things, and I enjoyed all my computer science classes immensely. But I really was determined to be a theoretical physicist. I- that's why I went to Princeton in the first place. It was definitely ... And then I realized I was gonna be a mediocre theoretical physicist, and there were, um, uh, there were a few people in my classes, like in quantum mechanics and so on, who they could effortlessly do things that were so difficult for me. And I realized, like, you know, there are 1,000 ways to be smart.

   5. LFLex Fridman17:50

      Mm-hmm.

   6. JBJeff Bezos17:50

      And to be really ... You know, theoretical physics is not one of those fields where the, uh, you know, only the top few percent actually move the state of the art forward (laughs) .

   7. LFLex Fridman18:02

      Mm-hmm.

   8. JBJeff Bezos18:02

      It's one of those things where you have to be really, uh, just your brain has to be wired in a certain way. And there was a guy named, um ... One of these people who was, uh, convinced me ... He didn't mean to convince me-

   9. LFLex Fridman18:15

      (laughs)

   10. JBJeff Bezos18:15

       ... but just by observing him-

   11. LFLex Fridman18:17

       Yeah.

   12. JBJeff Bezos18:17

       ... he convinced me that I should not try to be a theoretical physicist. His name was Yosanta. And Yosanta...... um, was from Sri Lanka, and he's- he was one of the most brilliant people I'd ever met. My, uh, friend Joe and I were working on a very difficult partial differential equations problem set one night. And there was one problem that we worked on for three hours.

   13. LFLex Fridman18:41

       Mm-hmm.

   14. JBJeff Bezos18:41

       And we made no headway whatsoever, and we looked up at each other at the same time, and we said, "Yosanta." So we went to Yosanta's dorm room.

   15. LFLex Fridman18:51

       Yeah.

   16. JBJeff Bezos18:52

       And he was there, he was almost always there. And we said, "Yosanta, we're having trouble solving this, uh, partial differential equation. Would you mind taking a look?" And he said, "Of course." He- by the way, he was the most humble, most kind person. And so he took our... he looked at our problem, and he stared at it for just a few seconds, maybe 10 seconds, and he said, "Cosine." And I said, "What do you mean, Yosanta? What do you mean, 'cosine'?" He said, "That's the answer."

   17. LFLex Fridman19:19

       Mm-hmm.

   18. JBJeff Bezos19:19

       And I said, "No, no, no. Come on." And he said, "Let me show you." And he took out some paper and he wrote down three pages of equations.

   19. LFLex Fridman19:27

       Mm-hmm.

   20. JBJeff Bezos19:27

       Everything canceled out.

   21. LFLex Fridman19:29

       Mm-hmm.

   22. JBJeff Bezos19:29

       And the answer was cosine. And I said, "Yosanta, did you do that in your head?"

   23. LFLex Fridman19:35

       Yeah. (laughs)

   24. JBJeff Bezos19:35

       And he said, "Oh, no, that would be impossible. A few years ago, I solved a similar problem, and I could map this problem onto that problem, and then it was immediately obvious that the answer was cosine." I had a few... you know, you have an experience like that, you realize maybe being a theoretical physicist (laughs) isn't your... isn't what your- your- your- what the universe wants you to be. And so, uh, I switched to computer science and, um, and, you know, that worked out really well for me. I enjoy it. I still enjoy it today.

   25. LFLex Fridman20:07

       Yeah, there's a particular kind of intuition you need to be a great physicist in- a- applied to physics.

   26. JBJeff Bezos20:12

       I think the mathematical skill required-

   27. LFLex Fridman20:15

       Yeah.

   28. JBJeff Bezos20:15

       ... today is so high. You have to be a world-class mathematician to be a successful theoretical physicist today. And it's not, you know, it- uh, uh, you probably need other skills too, intuition, lateral thinking, and so on. But without the- without just top-notch math skills, you're unlikely to be successful.

   29. LFLex Fridman20:39

       And visualization skill, you have to be able to really kind of do these kind of thought experiments, and if you want a truly great creativity. Actually, Walter Isaacson writes about you, uh, puts you on the same level as Einstein. Uh, and-

   30. JBJeff Bezos20:52

       Well, he's- he's... (laughs) that's very kind, but (laughs) I have-
5. 26:10 – 1:08:59

   New Glenn rocket

   1. LFLex Fridman26:10

      (laughs) All right. You gave me an amazing tour of Blue Origin rocket factory and launch complex in the historic Cape Canaveral. Uh, that's where New Glenn, the, the big rocket we talked about is, uh, being built and will launch. Can you explain what the New Glenn rocket is and, uh, tell me some interesting technical aspects of how it works?

   2. JBJeff Bezos26:29

      Sure. Um, uh, New Glenn is a, uh, uh, a very large, uh, heavy lift launch vehicle. It'll take about 45 metric tons to LEO, uh, very, uh, very large class. Um, it's about half the thrust, a little more than half the thrust of the Saturn V, uh, rocket. So it's about 3.9 million pounds of thrust on lift off. The booster has seven BE-4 engines. The, each engine generates a little more than 550,000 pounds of thrust. The engines are fueled by liquid natural gas, liquified natural gas, LNG as the fuel, and LOX as the oxidizer. The cycle is an ox enriched staged combustion cycle. It's a cycle that was really pioneered by the Russians. It's a very good cycle. Um, uh, and that engine is also going to power the first stage of the Vulcan rocket, which is the United Launch Alliance rocket. Um, then the second stage of New Glenn, uh, is powered by two BE-3U engines, which is a upper stage variant of our New Shepard liquid hydrogen engine. So the BE-3U has 160,000 pounds of thrust. So two of those, 320,000 pounds of thrust. And hydrogen is a very good propellant for upper stages because it has very high ISP. It's not a great propellant, in my view, for booster stages because the stages then get physically so large. Hydrogen has very high ISP, but liquid hydrogen is, uh, very, is not dense at all. So to store liquid hydrogen, you know, if you need to store many thousands of pounds of liquid hydrogen, your tanks, your liquid hydrogen tank gets very large. So, uh, you really, you get more benefit from the higher ISP, the specific impulse, you get more benefit from the higher specific impulse on the second stage. And that stage carries less propellant, so you don't get such geometrically gigantic tanks.

   3. LFLex Fridman28:40

      Mm-hmm.

   4. JBJeff Bezos28:41

      The Delta IV is an example of a vehicle that is all hydrogen. The booster stage is also hydrogen.

   5. LFLex Fridman28:47

      Mm-hmm.

   6. JBJeff Bezos28:47

      And I think that it's a very effective vehicle, but it never was very cost-effective. Um, so it's operationally very capable, but not very cost-effective.

   7. LFLex Fridman28:56

      So size is also costly?

   8. JBJeff Bezos28:58

      Size is costly. So th- it's interesting. Rockets love to be big.

   9. LFLex Fridman29:03

      Mm-hmm.

   10. JBJeff Bezos29:03

       Everything works better, uh-

   11. LFLex Fridman29:05

       What do you mean by that? You've told me that before. It sounds epic, but what does it mean?

   12. JBJeff Bezos29:08

       (laughs) I mean, when you look at the, kind of the physics of rocket engines, uh, and also when you look at parasitic mass, it doesn't, if you have, let's say you have an avionic system, so you have a guidance and control system, that is gonna be about the same mass and size for a giant rocket as it is gonna be for a tiny rocket.

   13. LFLex Fridman29:32

       Mm-hmm.

   14. JBJeff Bezos29:33

       And so, that's just parasitic mass that is very consequential if you're building a very small rocket, but is trivial if you're building a very large rocket. So you have the parasitic mass thing. And then if you look at, for example, rocket engines have turbo pumps. They have to pressurize the fuel and the oxidizer up to a very high pressure level in order to inject it into the thrust chamber where it burns. And those pumps, all rotating machines, in fact, get more efficient as they get larger. So really tiny turbo pumps are very challenging to manufacture, and any kind of gaps, you know, uh, or like, b- between the housing, for example, and the rotating impeller that pressurizes the fuel, there has to be some gap there. You can't have those parts scraping against one another.

   15. LFLex Fridman30:27

       Mm-hmm.

   16. JBJeff Bezos30:27

       And those gaps...... drive inefficiencies. And so, you know, if you have a l- very large turbo pump, those gaps in percentage terms end up being very small. And so, there's a bunch of things that, uh, that w- that w- you end up loving about having a large rocket-

   17. LFLex Fridman30:45

       Mm-hmm.

   18. JBJeff Bezos30:46

       ... and that you end up hating for a small rocket. But there's a giant exception to this rule, and it is manufacturing. So manufacturing large structures is very, very challenging. It's a pain in the butt. And so, you know, it's just h- ha- you know, if you have a ... If you're making a small rocket engine, you can move all the pieces by hand. You can assemble it on a table. One person can do it. Um, you know, you don't need cranes and heavy lift operations, and tooling, and so on, and so on. When you start building big objects, uh, the infrastructure, civil infrastructure-

   19. LFLex Fridman31:20

       Yeah.

   20. JBJeff Bezos31:20

       ... just like the launch pad, and the, you know, all this w- we went and visited.

   21. LFLex Fridman31:24

       Yeah.

   22. JBJeff Bezos31:24

       I took you to the launch pad, and you can see it's so monumental.

   23. LFLex Fridman31:27

       Yeah, it is.

   24. JBJeff Bezos31:28

       Um, and so just these things become major, uh, undertakings, both from an engineering point of view, but also from a construction and cost point of view.

   25. LFLex Fridman31:37

       And even the, uh, the foundation of the launch pad, I mean, this is Florida, like, isn't it, like, swamp land? Like, how deep do you have to go?

   26. JBJeff Bezos31:44

       (laughs) You have to, uh, at Cape Canaveral-

   27. LFLex Fridman31:46

       Yeah.

   28. JBJeff Bezos31:46

       ... um, and in fact, most ocean, you know, right, most launch pads are (laughs) are on beaches somewhere in the ocean side-

   29. LFLex Fridman31:52

       Yeah.

   30. JBJeff Bezos31:52

       ... 'cause you wanna launch over water for safety reasons. Um, the, uh ... Yes, you have to drive pilings, you know, dozens, and dozens, and dozens of pilings, you know, 50, 100, 150 feet deep to get enough structural integrity for these very large ... You know, it's, it's, uh ... Yes, these turn into major civil engineering projects.
6. 1:08:59 – 1:18:55

   Lunar program

   1. JBJeff Bezos1:08:59

   2. LFLex Fridman1:08:59

      You've mentioned the lunar program. Let me ask you about that.

   3. JBJeff Bezos1:09:02

      Yeah.

   4. LFLex Fridman1:09:03

      Um, there's, uh, a lot going on there, and you haven't really talked about it much. So in addition to the Artemis program with NASA, uh, Blue is doing its own lander program. Can you describe it? The, there's a- there's a sexy picture on Instagram with- with one of them. Is it the MK1, I guess?

   5. JBJeff Bezos1:09:20

      Yeah, the Mark I. Uh, the- the picture is m- me with Bill Nelson, the-

   6. LFLex Fridman1:09:24

      Yeah.

   7. JBJeff Bezos1:09:25

      ... NASA administrator.

   8. LFLex Fridman1:09:26

      Just to clarify, the lander is the sexy thing about the Instagram post.

   9. JBJeff Bezos1:09:30

      (laughs)

   10. LFLex Fridman1:09:30

       I really want to clarify that.

   11. JBJeff Bezos1:09:31

       I know it's not me. I know it's either you- the lander or Bill.

   12. LFLex Fridman1:09:34

       Okay. (laughs)

   13. JBJeff Bezos1:09:36

       Um, (laughs) -

   14. LFLex Fridman1:09:36

       I love Bill, but-

   15. JBJeff Bezos1:09:37

       Thank you for clarifying.

   16. LFLex Fridman1:09:37

       ... yeah, tha- okay.

   17. JBJeff Bezos1:09:38

       Um, the, uh, yes, the Mark I lander, um, is, uh, designed to take 3,000 kilograms to the surface of the moon in a cargo, expendable cargo. It's an expendable lander, lands on the moon, stays there, take 3,000 kilograms to the surface. It can be launched on a single New Glenn flight, which is very important. So it's a relatively simple architecture, just like the human landing system lander, the- they're called the Mark II. Mark I is also, uh, fueled with liquid hydrogen. And, uh, which is for- for high energy missions, like landing on the surface of the moon, the high specific impulse of hydrogen is a very big advantage. The disadvantage of hydrogen has always been that it's, uh, since it's such a deep cryogen, it's not storable. So it's constantly boiling off, and you're losing propellant, um, because it's boiling off. And so what we're doing as part of the l- of our lunar program is developing solar-powered cryocoolers that can actually make hydrogen a storable propellant for deep space. And that's a real game changer. Uh, it's a game changer for any high energy mission, so to the moon, but to the outer planets, to Mars, everywhere.

   18. LFLex Fridman1:11:00

       So the idea with Mark I, both Mark I and Mark II, is the New Glenn can, uh, carry it from the surface of Earth to the surface of the moon.

   19. JBJeff Bezos1:11:12

       Exactly. So the Mark I is expendable. The lunar- the lunar lander we're developing for NASA, the Mark II lander, that's part of, uh, the Artemis pro- they call it the Sustaining Lander Program. So that lander is designed to be reusable. It can land on the surface of the moon in a- in a single-stage configuration and then take off. So the whole, the, you know, the- if you look at the Apollo program, the lunar lander in Apollo was really two stages. It would land on the surface, and then it would leave the descent stage on the surface of the moon, and only the ascent stage would go back up into lunar orbit where it would rendezvous with the command module. Here, what we're doing is we have a single-stage lunar lander that carries down enough propellant so that it can bring the whole thing back up so that it can be reused over and over. And the point of doing that, of course, is to reduce cost so that you can make lunar missions more affordable over time. Which is, that's one of NASA's big objectives, because this time, the whole point of Artemis is go back to the moon, but this time to stay. So you know, back in the Apollo program, we went to the moon six times and then ended the program, and it really was too expensive to- to continue.

   20. LFLex Fridman1:12:36

       And so there's a few questions there, but one is, how do you stay on the moon? What- what ideas do you have about, uh-

   21. JBJeff Bezos1:12:44

       Yeah.

   22. LFLex Fridman1:12:44

       ... like a sustain- sustaining life where a few folks can stay there for prolonged periods of time?

   23. JBJeff Bezos1:12:51

       Well, um, one of the things we're working on is, um, using lunar resources, like lunar regolith, to manufacture commodities and even solar cells on the surface of the moon. We've already built a solar cell that is completely made from lunar regolith simulant, and this solar cell-... is only about 7%, uh, power efficient, so it's very inefficient compared to, you know, the more advanced solar cells that we make here on Earth. But if you can figure out how to make a practical solar cell factory that you can land on the surface of the moon, and then the raw material for those solar cells is simply lunar regolith, then you can just, uh, you know, continue to churn out solar cells on the surface of the moon, have lots of power on the surface of the moon. That will make it easier for people to live on the moon. Uh, similarly, we're working on extracting oxygen from lunar regolith. So lunar regolith, by weight, is- has a lot of oxygen in it. It's bound very tightly, you know, in- as oxides, with other elements. And so it- you have to separate the oxygen, which is very energy-intensive. So that also could work together with the, uh, solar cells. But if you can, uh... And then ultimately, we may be able to find practical quantities of ice, uh, in the permanently shadowed craters on the poles of the moon, and we know there is ice water, um, uh, in those, uh, or water ice, in those craters, and we know that we can break that down, uh, with electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen. And then you'd not only have oxygen, but you'd also have a very good, high, uh, efficiency propellant, uh, fuel in, in hydrogen. So there's a lot th- there's a lot we can do to make the moon more sustainable over time, but the very first step, the thing, the kind of gate that all of that has to go through, is we need to be able to land, uh, cargo and humans on the surface of the moon at an acceptable cost.

   24. LFLex Fridman1:15:16

       To fast-forward a little bit, is there any chance Jeff Bezos steps foot on the moon and on Mars, one or the other, or both?

   25. JBJeff Bezos1:15:27

       It's very unlikely. I think it's probably something that gets done by future generations-

   26. LFLex Fridman1:15:33

       All right.

   27. JBJeff Bezos1:15:33

       ... by the time it gets to me. I think in my lifetime, that's probably gonna be done by professional astronauts.

   28. LFLex Fridman1:15:40

       Mm-hmm.

   29. JBJeff Bezos1:15:40

       Sadly.

   30. LFLex Fridman1:15:41

       Yeah.
7. 1:18:55 – 1:36:16

   Amazon

   1. JBJeff Bezos1:18:55

   2. LFLex Fridman1:18:56

      All right, going back to, uh, sexy pictures on your Instagram. Uh, there's a video-

   3. JBJeff Bezos1:19:00

      (laughs)

   4. LFLex Fridman1:19:00

      ... of you from the early days of Amazon, um, giving a tour of your quote, "sort of offices." I think your dad is holding the camera.

   5. JBJeff Bezos1:19:07

      He is, yeah. I know, right? Yes.

   6. LFLex Fridman1:19:09

      (laughing)

   7. JBJeff Bezos1:19:10

      This is with the giant orange extension cord-

   8. LFLex Fridman1:19:12

      Yeah.

   9. JBJeff Bezos1:19:12

      ... and yeah.

   10. LFLex Fridman1:19:12

       And you're, like, explaining the- the genius of the extension cord-

   11. JBJeff Bezos1:19:16

       (laughs)

   12. LFLex Fridman1:19:16

       ... and how this is, this is a desk and the CRT monitor and sort of that's where the, that's where all the magic happens. I forget what your dad said, but this is, like, the- the (laughs) the center of it all. So, um, what was it like? What was going through your mind at that time? You left a good job.... in New York and took this leap. Were you excited? Were you scared? What was-

   13. JBJeff Bezos1:19:37

       So excited and scared, a-anxious, you know, thought the odds of success were low. Uh, told all of our early (laughs) investors that I thought there was a 30% chance of success, I me- by which I'd just been getting your money back, not like-

   14. LFLex Fridman1:19:51

       Mm-hmm.

   15. JBJeff Bezos1:19:51

       ... turning out what actually happened, because that's the truth. Every startup company is unlikely to work. It's helpful to be in reality about that, um, but that doesn't mean you can't be optimistic. So you kind of have to have this duality in your head. Like, you, on the one hand, you're, you know what the baseline statistics say about startup companies, and the other hand, you have to ignore all of that and just be 100% sure it's gonna work.

   16. LFLex Fridman1:20:18

       Mm-hmm.

   17. JBJeff Bezos1:20:19

       And you're doing both things at the same time. You're holding that contradiction in your head. But it was so, so exciting. I, I lo- uh, you know, every, from 1994 when, uh, the company was founded to 1995 when we opened our doors, all the way until today, it's, I find Amazon so exciting and that doesn't mean it's like full of pain, full of problems, f- you know (laughs) every, it's like there's so many things that need to be resolved and worked and made better and, and et cetera. But, but on balance, it's so fun. It's such a privilege. It's been such a joy. I feel so grateful that I've been part of that journey. Um, it's just been incredible.

   18. LFLex Fridman1:21:04

       So in some sense, you don't want a d- a single day of comfort. You've written about this many times. We'll talk about your writing, which, uh, I, I would highly recommend people read and just the letters to shareholders. Uh, so y- you wrote up, uh, explaining the idea of day one thinking. I think you first wrote about it in '97 letters to shareholders. Then you also, in a way, wrote about, sad to say, as y- your last letter to shareholders-

   19. JBJeff Bezos1:21:32

       (laughs) .

   20. LFLex Fridman1:21:32

       ... as CEO, um, and you've said that, "Day two is stasis followed by irrelevance, (laughs) followed by excruciating painful decline-"

   21. JBJeff Bezos1:21:44

       (laughs) .

   22. LFLex Fridman1:21:44

       "... followed by death. And that is why it's always day one."

   23. JBJeff Bezos1:21:47

       (laughs)

   24. LFLex Fridman1:21:49

       Um, can, can you explain this day one thing? Th- this is a really powerful way to describe the beginning and the journey of Amazon.

   25. JBJeff Bezos1:21:56

       It's, it's really a very simple and I think age-old idea about renewal and rebirth and, like, every day is day one. Every day, you are deciding what you're gonna do, and you are not trapped by what you were or who you were or any self-consistency. Self-consistency even can be a trap. And so day one thinking is kind of we start fresh every day, and we get to make new decisions every day about invention, about customers, about, uh, how we're going to operate, what our, even, even, even as deeply as what our principles are. We can go back to that. Turns out we don't change those very often, but we change them occasionally. And, um, when we work on programs at Amazon, we often, uh, make a list of tenets, and this, uh, th- the tenets are kind of, they're not principles, they're a little more tactical than principles, but it's kind of the, the main ideas that we want this program to embody, whatever those are. And one of the things that we do is we put, "These are the tenets for this program," and then in parentheses, we always put, "Unless you know a better way."

   26. LFLex Fridman1:23:21

       Mm-hmm.

   27. JBJeff Bezos1:23:22

       And that idea, unless you know a better way, is so important because you never want to get trapped by dogma. You never wanna get trapped by history. It doesn't mean you discard history or ignore it. There's so much value in what has worked in the past and, but you can't be blindly following what you've done, and that's the heart of day one, is you're always starting fresh.

   28. LFLex Fridman1:23:51

       And, uh, to the question of how to fend off day two, you said, "Such a question can't have a simple answer," as you're saying. "There will be many elements, multiple paths, and many traps. I don't know the whole answer, but I may know bits of it. Here's a starter pack (laughs) of essentials. Maybe others come to mind. For day one, defense, customer obsession, uh, a skeptical view of proxies, the eager adoption of external trends, and high-velocity decision-making." So we talked about high- velocity decision-making. That's more difficult than it sounds. Uh, so maybe you can pick one that stands out to you as you can comment on. Uh, eager adoption of external trends, high-velocity decision-making, skeptical view of proxies, how do you fight off day two?

   29. JBJeff Bezos1:24:36

       Well, you know, I'll talk about because I think it's the one that is maybe in some ways the hardest to understand, um, is the skeptical view of proxies. Um, one of the things that happens in business, probably anything that you're, where you're, you know, you have an ongoing program and something is, is underway for a number of years, is you develop certain things that you're managing to. Like, let's say the typical case would be a metric, and that metric isn't the real underlying thing. And so, uh, you know, maybe the metric is, um, efficiency metric around customer contacts per unit sold or something like... If you sell a million units, how many customer contacts do you get? Or how many returns do you get? And so on and so on. And so what happens is a little bit of a kind of inertia sets in.... where somebody a long time ago invented that metric, and they invented that metric, they decided, "We need to watch for, you know, customer returns per unit sold as an important metric." But they had a reason why they chose that metric, the person who invented that metric and decided it was worth watching. And then fast-forward five years, that metric is the proxy.

Episode duration: 2:11:31