Jeff Bezos explains how he decided to quit his job and start Amazon

Before starting Amazon, Jeff Bezos had a very good Wall Street job. At the age of 30, he was the fourth senior vice president at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw.

When he told his boss about his idea to start an internet book store, his boss replied:

“I think this is a good idea, but it would be an even better idea for somebody who didn’t already have a good job.”

That made logical sense to Jeff, but he ultimately decided that the best way to make a very personal decision like this was to project himself forward to age 80:

“When I’m 80 years old, I want to have minimized the number of regrets that I have. I don’t want to be 80 years old, in a quiet moment of reflection, thinking back over my life and cataloging a bunch of major regrets.”

And Jeff believes that our biggest regrets are acts of omission:

“It’s paths not taken that haunt us. We wonder what would have happened: I loved that person and I never told them, and then they married somebody else.”

Once Jeff thought about it this way, the answer was immediately obvious to him:

“I knew that when I’m 80, I would never regret trying this thing that I was super excited about and failing. If it failed, fine. I would be very proud of the fact when I’m 80 that I tried. And I also knew that it would always haunt me if I didn’t try.”

Jeff believes this regret-minimization framework is a useful lens for any important life decision.

Full video: Summit “Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and brother Mark give a rare interview about growing up and secrets to success” (Nov 2017)

P.S. We’ve put together a YouTube playlist with every Jeff Bezos insight we’ve ever shared. You can watch it here: "Best startup advice from Jeff Bezos"