In 1996, David Risher told Bill Gates he was quitting his management role at Microsoft, then already one among the world’s largest corporations with annual income of practically $8.7 billion, to take a job at a “tiny, little bookstore online,” known as Amazon.
“It wasn’t an entirely rational move,” Risher, who’s now CEO of Lyft, admitted on an episode of the Fortune Leadership Next podcast that aired on Sept. 30. Risher served as Amazon’s senior vice chairman of U.S. retail between 1997 and 2002.
In truth, Bill Gates tried to discuss Risher out of the transfer, he mentioned on the podcast, reminding him he’d been “successful” at the bigger firm, the place Risher had developed Microsoft’s first database product, known as Access.
Gates — then the world’s wealthiest individual, with a internet value estimated by Forbes at $18 billion in September 1996 — was shocked Risher would need to go away Microsoft for an web startup that reported annual income of simply $15.7 million in 1996, solely two years after Jeff Bezos based the firm.
“‘Things are going well [here]. You mean to tell me you’re leaving this company for some tiny, little internet bookstore that nobody’s ever heard of … that has got to be the stupidest decision I’ve ever heard anyone make,'” Risher mentioned Gates instructed him at the time. A spokesperson for Gates didn’t instantly reply to CNBC Make It’s request for remark.
While Risher understood the inherent threat of leaving a longtime tech big for a a lot smaller, and unproven, startup, Amazon’s founder had made a convincing case, Risher mentioned.
‘We’ll be a billion-dollar enterprise’ by 2000
Risher truly first met Bezos over the cellphone a yr earlier than becoming a member of Amazon, when the founder known as him to examine a piece reference for an additional new worker Bezos was hiring.
“We had a great conversation and I was really impressed by the questions he asked, and that the CEO of Amazon would take 45 minutes to personally do a background check,” Risher instructed journalist Danielle Newnham in a 2015 interview.
By 1996, Risher had develop into so impressed with Bezos and Amazon that he started interviewing for a job at the younger startup. There have been two issues about Bezos that convinced Risher he was making the proper determination, he mentioned. The first was Bezos’ obsession with the buyer expertise.
“The idea that you, personally, can improve the lives of millions of customers if you take the responsibility seriously is very powerful,” he instructed Newnham.
The different a part of Bezos’ pitch that received over Risher was the entrepreneur’s confidence that Amazon may very well be the subsequent large tech firm.
At the time, Amazon had a “relatively small business” that initially only focused on selling books. But, Bezos had a transparent imaginative and prescient that may begin with books and ultimately broaden to increasingly product classes till Amazon grew to become the “everything store” it’s right this moment.
“‘I think if we do everything right, by the time we’re in the year 2000, we’ll be a billion-dollar business,'” Bezos mentioned, in accordance to Risher.
A ‘very compelling’ alternative
Risher clearly purchased into Bezos’ imaginative and prescient for Amazon. He discovered the alternative to be at the forefront of that type of huge, fast progress to be “very compelling,” he mentioned.
“I thought to myself: ‘How often do you get to be at a company that’s right at this crazy intersection of technology and culture and all these different things, and build something that could be a billion-dollar company?'” he instructed Fortune.
Amazon ended up beating Bezos’ prediction by one yr, hitting $1.6 billion in annual income in 1999. Risher was an enormous a part of that progress, becoming a member of Amazon as the firm’s thirty seventh worker total, he mentioned. Risher’s function concerned increasing Amazon into quite a lot of new product classes, together with music, motion pictures and toys.
When Risher left the firm to develop into a enterprise professor at the University of Washington in 2002, Amazon’s annual income was $3.9 billion.
Now 60 years outdated, Risher has led Lyft since 2023 and he nonetheless takes management inspiration from his former bosses, the billionaires Gates and Bezos, Risher often says. He additionally fondly remembers the pleasure of Amazon’s early years.
“It was really quite a rocket ship, which is always a fun thing to be on,” Risher mentioned. “That building of something that hadn’t been built before at that scale was really very exciting.”
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