Page 28 - Forbes - Asia (September 2018)

FORBES ASIA
JEFF BEZOS

Bezos

Unbound

America’s most innovative—and feared—business leader is coming of a
three-year run that has made him the richest person of all time. Now he tells

Forbes he’s only begun to grow. Corporate America, you’ve been warned.

BY RANDALL LANE

nlike America’s other tech ence: he retail market, Amazon’s original ting out billions—and Bezos has the market
giants, Amazon doesn’t have quarry, is “many trillions,” as is, he says, the credibility to reinvest it in pretty much any
a traditional campus. he cloud market that Amazon Web Ser vices way he wants. Second, the scale that Ama-
45,000 or so employees and (AWS) pioneered. “here are diferent busi- zon needs for growth practically demands
Uexecutives in Seattle, out of nesses where the market is limited,” adds the aggressiveness. And, inally, by dominat-
575,000 worldwide, fan across numerous man whose company should hit $210 billion ing retail and digital business services, both
high-rises downtown and in the South Lake in revenue this year. “But we just don’t have of which touch almost every other indus-
Union neighborhood. Amazon’s “head- that issue.” try, he’s now positioned to move adjacently
quarters” defaults to where Jef Bezos, the If Jef Bezos is already the world’s most into just about any business where he inds
company’s founder and CEO, happens to feared businessperson, the prospect of him added value. He’s playing in the multibillions
be, currently Day 1 Tower. Its name comes “unconstrained” should sober every corpo- in at least four markets—healthcare, enter-
from a perpetual Bezos maxim: that, rel- rate leader. Yes, he’s ruthless and a master of tainment, consumer electronics and adver-
atively, we’re still at “day one” of the inter- the long game, but Bezos’ greatest strength, tising—that constitute many of the compa-
net—and, by extension, that Amazon is just borne out over the past few years, has been nies not already terriied of Amazon. It’s no
getting started. his ability to shape-shit Amazon into adja- coincidence that each of those four either
hat’s getting harder to say with a straight cent businesses—some of which were adja- hits or approaches the “trillions” potential
face, with sales, proits and the stock price all cent only in retrospect—on a massive scale. Bezos alluded to.
soaring, the latter up 270% over three years “What Jef Bezos has done and is likely to While his pioneering peers of the irst
and 103% in the past 12 months. Amazon do is perhaps the most remarkable achieve- dot-com era embraced and popularized the
is closing in on Apple to become the world’s ment I’ve seen,” Warren Bufett told me last “open kimono,” Bezos has always viewed
most valuable company, and Bezos, whose year, ater I asked him, open-ended, to name stealthiness as an asset, masking new initia-
personal net worth approaches $160 billion, the most impressive business mind in his tives inside larger expenditures and feign-
has in the process become the planet’s rich- almost eight decades of market-watching. ing disinterest in burgeoning favorites. As
est person by far. “Because he’s taken two very major indus- Bezos’ public proile has expanded, public
Nevertheless, Bezos talks about Ama- tries, and simultaneously, and sort of under ut ter ances and interviews (despite his own-
zon like it’s a giddy startup that just closed the nose of competitors, he’s become in ef- ership of the Washington Post) have become
its Series A. “For all practical purposes, the fect the leader and is redeining them and increasingly rare. Bezos refuses to discuss
market size is unconstrained,” says Bezos, succeeding at really big businesses.” Donald Trump, who has taken to beating up
his rolled-up sleeves showing of Popeye- hough Bezos and Bufett were referring on him and the Post on Twitter, but he clear-
like forearms, the product of midlife weight to retail and the cloud, Bezos is actually un- ly understands he has a target on his back.
training that has produced buzzed-about re- constrained in far more ways. First, thanks When asked, as the head of an ascendant ad- MICHAEL PRINCE FOR FORBES
sults for the 54-year-old. His growth ratio- to AWS, the company famous for emphasiz- vertising company, whether he took any les-
nale comes from a “super-lucky” con u- ing growth over proitability is inally spit- sons from Facebook’s travails last year, his

26 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2018