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Jeff Bezos’ Princeton Commencement Speech: What Matters More Than Your Talents

April 5, 2019

This speech was originally given to graduates of Princeton University, May 30, 2010. Jeff Bezos closes with:

I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story. Thank you and good luck!

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Speech Transcript

As a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparents on their ranch in Texas. I helped fix windmills, vaccinate cattle, and do other chores. We also watched soap operas every afternoon, especially “Days of our Lives.”

My grandparents belonged to a Caravan Club, a group of Airstream trailer owners who travel together around the U.S. and Canada. And every few summers, we’d join the caravan. We’d hitch up the Airstream trailer to my grandfather’s car, and off we’d go, in a line with 300 other Airstream adventurers.

I loved and worshipped my grandparents and I really looked forward to these trips.

On one particular trip, I was about 10 years old. I was rolling around in the big bench seat in the back of the car. My grandfather was driving. And my grandmother had the passenger seat. She smoked throughout these trips, and I hated the smell.

At that age, I’d take any excuse to make estimates and do minor arithmetic. I’d calculate our gas mileage — figure out useless statistics on things like grocery spending…

I’d been hearing an ad campaign about smoking. I can’t remember the details, but basically the ad said, every puff of a cigarette takes some number of minutes off of your life: I think it might have been two minutes per puff.

At any rate, I decided to do the math for my grandmother. I estimated the number of cigarettes per days, estimated the number of puffs per cigarette and so on. When I was satisfied that I’d come up with a reasonable number, I poked my head into the front of the car, tapped my grandmother on the shoulder, and proudly proclaimed, “At two minutes per puff, you’ve taken nine years off your life!”

I have a vivid memory of what happened, and it was not what I expected.

I expected to be applauded for my cleverness and arithmetic skills. “Jeff, you’re so smart. You had to have made some tricky estimates, figure out the number of minutes in a year and do some division.”

That’s not what happened. Instead, my grandmother burst into tears. I sat in the backseat and did not know what to do. While my grandmother sat crying, my grandfather, who had been driving in silence, pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway.

He got out of the car and came around and opened my door and waited for me to follow.

Was I in trouble?

My grandfather was a highly intelligent, quiet man. He had never said a harsh word to me, and maybe this was to be the first time? Or maybe he would ask that I get back in the car and apologize to my grandmother.

I had no experience in this realm with my grandparents and no way to gauge what the consequences might be.

We stopped beside the trailer. My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, “Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.”

What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices.

Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice.

Gifts are easy — they’re given after all.

Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to the detriment of your choices.

This is a group with many gifts. I’m sure one of your gifts is the gift of a smart and capable brain. I’m confident that’s the case because admission is competitive and if there weren’t some signs that you’re clever, the dean of admission wouldn’t have let you in.

Your smarts will come in handy because you will travel in a land of marvels.

We humans — plodding as we are — will astonish ourselves. We’ll invent ways to generate clean energy and a lot of it. Atom by atom, we’ll assemble tiny machines that will enter cell walls and make repairs. This month comes the extraordinary but also inevitable news that we’ve synthesized life. In the coming years, we’ll not only synthesize it, but we’ll engineer it to specifications.

I believe you’ll even see us understand the human brain. Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Galileo, Newton — all the curious from the ages would have wanted to be alive most of all right now. As a civilization, we will have so many gifts, just as you as individuals have so many individual gifts as you sit before me.

How will you use these gifts? And will you take pride in your gifts or pride in your choices?

I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago.

I came across the fact that Web usage was growing at 2,300 percent per year. I’d never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast, and the idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles — something that simply couldn’t exist in the physical world — was very exciting to me.

I had just turned 30 years old, and I’d been married for a year.

I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go do this crazy thing that probably wouldn’t work since most startups don’t, and I wasn’t sure what would happen after that. MacKenzie (also a Princeton grad and sitting here in the second row) told me I should go for it.

As a young boy, I’d been a garage inventor. I’d invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires, a solar cooker that didn’t work very well out of an umbrella and tinfoil, baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings.

I’d always wanted to be an inventor, and she wanted me to follow my passion.

I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people, and I had a brilliant boss that I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I wanted to start a company selling books on the Internet.

He took me on a long walk in Central Park, listened carefully to me, and finally said, “That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn’t already have a good job.”

That logic made some sense to me, and he convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision.

Seen in that light, it really was a difficult choice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn’t think I’d regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all.

After much consideration, I took the less safe path to follow my passion, and I’m proud of that choice.

Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life — the life you author from scratch on your own — begins.

How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make?
Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?
Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?
Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?
Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?
Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong, or will you apologize?
Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?
Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling?
When it’s tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?
Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?
Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?

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Why you should listen

Jeff Bezos didn't invent online shopping, but he almost single-handedly turned it into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise. His Amazon.com began as a bookstore in 1994, and quickly expanded into dozens of product categories, forcing the world's biggest retailers to rethink their business models, and ultimately changing the way people shop . But Amazon.com isn't just an internet success story. It's the standard by which all web businesses are now judged -- if not by their shareholders, then by their customers. Amazon set a high bar for reliability and customer service, and also introduced a wide range of online retail conventions -- from user reviews and one-click shopping to the tab interface and shopping cart icon -- so commonplace we no longer think of them as once having been innovations. When the Internet bubble burst, Amazon.com took a hit with the other e-commerce pioneers, but the fundamentally sound company hung tough. It now sells more than $10 billion a year of goods, profitably , and its technology will influence the changes to business and media that will come next. Amazon recently released Kindle, a wireless digital reading device, giving the term "page turning" a completely new definition. Bezos, meanwhile, is one of the few early Web CEOs who still run the companies they founded. Outside of his work with Amazon, he recently founded Blue Origin , a space-flight startup.

What others say

“If the Internet was the new rock and roll, Jeff Bezos…was its Elvis … [Today he’s] the ultimate dotcom survivor.” — BBCNews.com

Jeff Bezos’ TED talks

The electricity metaphor for the web's future

What matters more than your talents

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Over the past week, we’ve noticed a lot of fascinating TED-related news items. Here, some highlights. Jeff Bezos, the co-founder of Amazon (watch his TED Talk), made waves on Monday when it was announced that he will buy The Washington Post for $250 million. “The paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to […]

New Best of the Web talk: Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos: What matters more than talents In this Princeton University graduation address, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos makes the case that our character is reflected not in the gifts we’re endowed with at birth, but by the choices we make over the course of a lifetime. Watch Jeff Bezos’ talk >>

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Jeff Bezos: What Matters More Than Your Talents Speech (Full Transcript)

February 14, 2019 11:06 am August 2, 2023 3:54 am
by Pangambam S
Inspiration

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ famous speech “What Matters More Than Your Talents” with ENGLISH SUBTITLES which was delivered at 2010 Commencement address at Princeton University.

Listen to the MP3 audio of this speech:

Below is the full text [ verbatim transcript ] of Jeff Bezos’ speech “What Matters More Than Your Talents.”

TRANSCRIPT :

As a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparents on their ranch in Texas. I helped fix windmills, vaccinate cattle, and do other chores.

We also watched soap operas every afternoon, especially Days of Our Lives. My grandparents belonged to a caravan club, a group of Airstream trailer owners who traveled together around the US and Canada. And every few summers, we’d join the caravan.

We’d hitch up the Airstream to my grandfather’s car and off we’d go, in line with 300 other Airstream adventurers. I loved and worshipped my grandparents. And I really looked forward to these trips.

On one particular trip — I was about 10 years old — I was rolling around in the big bench-seat in the back of the car. My grandfather was driving and my grandmother had the passenger’s seat. She smoked throughout these trips. And I hated the smell.

At that age, I’d take any excuse to make estimates and do minor arithmetic. I’d calculate our gas mileage, figure out useless statistics on things like grocery spending. I’d been hearing an ad campaign about smoking. I can’t remember the details but basically, the ads said: “Every puff of a cigarette takes some number of minutes off of your life.” I think it might have been 2 minutes per puff.

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Princeton University, May 30, 2010

… one day you will understand that it is harder to be kind than to be clever.

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Jul 20, 2021

Blue Origin Jeff Bezos Post-Flight Press Conference Transcript

Jeff Bezos, Mark Bezos, Wally Funk, and Oliver Daemen held a press conference after their Blue Origin flight to space on July 20, 2021. Read the transcript of the news briefing here.

Wally Funk: ( 14:28 ) We’re all here.

Speaker 1: ( 14:34 ) Please take your seats.

Ariane Cornell: ( 16:56 ) Good morning, everybody. My name is Ariane Cornell, Director of Astronaut Sales here at Blue Origin, and it is my pleasure to emcee today’s press-

MC: ( 17:03 ) …at Blue Origin and it is my pleasure to MC today’s press conference with the newest international astronauts. The first human flight crew of New Shepard. Another round of applause.

MC: ( 17:20 ) And without further ado, I think it is time to pin these four wonderful people astronauts. And with that, I’d like to introduce to the stage Jeff Ashby, our Senior Director of Safety and Mission Assurance, as well as former space shuttle commander. Jeff.

Jeff Ashby: ( 17:41 ) I am deeply honored today to represent all of the Blue Origin employees, especially the New Shepard team, past and present, and awarding wings to the first four Blue Origin astronauts. These astronauts will wear a set of wings in the shape of the letter A. The side pieces represent the road to space and our feather logo is the crossbar, and at the top a tiny blue sapphire to remind these folks that they are from planet Earth and that they have a mission to protect this home. With that said, Oliver, would you join me? They didn’t make this easy. I practiced. Let me say something. Oliver, you have received a special gift of the astronauts’ perspective. I know that you will do good things with it and make the world a better place. Congratulations.

Oliver Daemen: ( 19:18 ) Thank you very much.

Jeff Ashby: ( 19:31 ) Mark, would you join me please?

Mark Bezos: ( 19:32 ) Gladly.

Jeff Ashby: ( 19:32 ) It’s so exciting for you guys.

Jeff Ashby: ( 19:40 ) Any pain yet?

Mark Bezos: ( 19:55 ) Not yet. Just pound it into me.

Jeff Ashby: ( 19:58 ) Yeah.

Mark Bezos: ( 19:58 ) I know you want to.

Jeff Ashby: ( 19:59 ) I’m going to hand you this…

Mark Bezos: ( 19:59 ) Thank you.

Jeff Ashby: ( 20:06 ) Mark, I hope this experience will help you to continue to do the great things you’re doing for humankind. Congratulations.

Mark Bezos: ( 20:13 ) Thank you, Jeff.

Jeff Ashby: ( 20:13 ) Jeff, would you join me please? This is so cool.

Jeff Bezos: ( 20:29 ) I’m so happy. Thank you, Jeff.

Jeff Ashby: ( 20:44 ) This is such a privilege.

Jeff Ashby: ( 20:45 ) There are few people I know more deserving of this, Jeff. Seriously. And I don’t know what you’re going to do next, but I can’t wait to watch. Congratulations.

Jeff Bezos: ( 20:57 ) Thank you.

Jeff Ashby: ( 21:09 ) And Wally, would you join me please? All right. Sixty years, Wally. And I get to pin this on.

Wally Funk: ( 21:27 ) Wow. It’s the best pin I’ve ever had in my life and I’ve had lots of them.

Jeff Ashby: ( 21:30 ) Wally, you continue to inspire us. Thank you so much for doing that and God bless you. Congratulations.

Wally Funk: ( 21:40 ) Thank you. More to come.

Jeff Ashby: ( 21:41 ) Yes.

Wally Funk: ( 21:41 ) It was great! Fabulous!

Jeff Ashby: ( 22:06 ) The first four of millions to follow.

MC: ( 22:11 ) Again, the newest international astronauts. The crew of New Shepard. Congratulations to all four of you.

MC: ( 22:23 ) So without further ado, how was it?

Wally Funk: ( 22:26 ) Whew, it was great!

MC: ( 22:28 ) Jeff, what was it like? Was it everything you imagined?

Jeff Bezos: ( 22:32 ) I’m going to answer that question, but just real quick.

MC: ( 22:34 ) Please.

Jeff Bezos: ( 22:35 ) I want to thank a few people. First of all, all of the engineers at Blue Origin who have toiled hard to get this done. The people who built the vehicle, all of our manufacturing people. This is a big team. They’ve been working on it for many years and they have done an extraordinary job of building the most reliable, most beautiful, most fun, I mean I can vouch for that and I’ll get to that in a second, vehicle. We owe them a deep gratitude. And the people who kept us safe today, who operated the vehicle, our trainers, everybody. It’s just huge.

Jeff Bezos: ( 23:15 ) I also want to thank the town of Van Horn. This is a small and amazing little town and we’re making a dent in it, and we appreciate you for allowing us to be part of your town. And then, I also want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all this. So seriously, for every Amazon customer out there and every Amazon employee, thank you from the bottom of my heart very much. It’s very appreciated.

Jeff Bezos: ( 23:59 ) And now onto how it felt. Oh my God! My expectations were high and they were dramatically exceeded. We were talking about this a little bit in the car ride on the way back and I don’t know, the zero G piece may have been one of the biggest surprises because it felt so normal. It felt almost like we were, as humans, evolved to be in that environment, which I know is impossible, but it felt so serene and peaceful, and the floating. It’s actually much nicer than being in full on gravity. It’s a very pleasurable experience. Just from the sheer, just the way it feels, the tactfulness of it. The most profound piece of it for me was looking out at the Earth and looking at the Earth’s atmosphere. Every astronaut, everybody who’s been up into space, they say this. That it changes them and they look at it, and they’re kind of amazed and awe struck by the Earth and its beauty, but also by its fragility. I can vouch for that.

Jeff Bezos: ( 25:14 ) When I look out… You know, when we’re sitting in this room or we’re driving our cars and we’re moving around the planet in our normal ways the atmosphere is so gigantic. We’re these tiny little things and the planet, the atmosphere is so big. But when you get up above it, what you see is it’s actually incredibly thin. It’s this tiny little fragile thing and as we move about the planet we’re damaging it. So, that’s very profound. It’s one thing to recognize that intellectually, it’s another thing to actually see with your own eyes how fragile it really is. And that was amazing. Who wants to add?

MC: ( 25:52 ) Oliver, you want to tell us how it was? Our first paying customer. You feel like you got your money’s worth sir?

Oliver Daemen: ( 25:59 ) For sure. For sure. No, it was so amazing to see it from above and to move around. Like yeah, I totally agree, it feels so natural. Almost like we should be doing this. We are one of the first and let’s hope that many, many more people can do this because this experience you should share with more and more people. It’s so amazing.

MC: ( 26:22 ) And a special congratulation to you on becoming the youngest person to have ever flown in space.

Oliver Daemen: ( 26:28 ) Thank you.

MC: ( 26:34 ) You brought with you up there the next generation of space explorers, but certainly another flag up there, the Netherlands. To everybody out there, the Netherlands, there’s the new Dutch flying man. There you go.

Jeff Bezos: ( 26:49 ) Mark, you should say that thing you told me in the car about the G forces. I thought that was really interesting.

Mark Bezos: ( 26:54 ) Well, I was surprised. I mean, they had told us what the G forces would feel like on the way up. Again, it’s one of those things that you hear about and you anticipate, but you really feel them on the way up. It was incredibly exhilarating. And then on the way back down, what I had not anticipated. We hit five Gs briefly on the way back down and that’s a lot of pressure. And unfortunately, during the-

Jeff Bezos: ( 27:20 ) Status check.

Mark Bezos: ( 27:20 ) Yeah, the status check for each astronaut. By the time they got to Astronaut Demo, which is the name I was flying under, we were at five Gs. And so, they were like, “Astronaut Demo, how you doing?” I was like, “I’m doing okay.” I had a hard time responding, but… I’m not sure what that video footage will look like. Probably not very pretty, but it was so exciting.

Jeff Bezos: ( 27:44 ) By the way, if you haven’t figured it out yet, Wally might be the oldest person ever in space and Oliver the youngest person every in space, my brother is the funniest person ever in space for sure.

Jeff Bezos: ( 27:57 ) I want to do a couple more things before we maybe go to next questions, which is I want to recognize two people here in the audience. We are honored today to have Alan Shepard’s daughters, Laura and Julie. Could you stand up just briefly, so we can say…

Jeff Bezos: ( 28:14 ) And of course, Alan Shepard was an Apollo moon walker and has a gigantic list of accomplishments. But for our purposes today, the thing that is most interesting about Alan Shepard is that he is the namesake for this vehicle New Shepard. And that is because the mission profile that we did today is very similar to the one that Alan flew when he became the first American in space, I guess 60-ish years ago. So, we are very honored to have you guys here. Thank you for joining us. It’s incredible. I got some pictures with them backstage and those are getting blown up big. Thank you.

Jeff Bezos: ( 29:03 ) And then I have a couple things to show. Do you want to talk about the couple things we flew? Like the… Go ahead.

Mark Bezos: ( 29:14 ) So, we had the opportunity to bring with us, it was actually on loan from The Explorers Club, we were able to fly with a piece of canvas from the Wright flyer. So the plane that the Wright brothers flew, we brought a piece of that canvas with us, which was really powerful. As well as a bronze medallion that was made from the first hot air balloon flight in 1783, which was the first time man every left the Earth in controlled flight. So, we were very thrilled to be able to bring both of those along with us.

Jeff Bezos: ( 29:48 ) And we brought those precious objects back.

Mark Bezos: ( 29:50 ) Yes, we did. And The Explorers Club will be pleased to hear that.

Jeff Bezos: ( 29:53 ) Yes. They’re very happy about that. And we have one more thing, which I would actually just like to show you, if you could… Who has the goggles? Could you please bring them up to me?

Jeff Bezos: ( 30:02 ) Yeah, would you hold that for me?

Wally Funk: ( 30:02 ) This is incredible.

Jeff Bezos: ( 30:07 ) All right. Why don’t you stand so I can face it to… This also flew… These are Amelia Earhart’s goggles. The ones she flew across the Atlantic with, solo. And you can see she put tape over them to kind of have less light come in because it was just so bright all of the day and she was flying for so long. And they’re just… I like to think that if Amelia were here she would be very, very proud of Wally.

Jeff Bezos: ( 30:37 ) And I just can’t… I can’t resist doing this. So, thank you Amelia wherever you are. We hope you’re watching all of this. Thank you. I’ll give these back to you. These are precious. Precious cargo. There you go.

MC: ( 31:04 ) And well, on that note, Wally-

Jeff Bezos: ( 31:08 ) Oh, I’m sorry.

MC: ( 31:08 ) Oh, please go ahead.

Jeff Bezos: ( 31:09 ) Thank you. Lauren just reminded me, I have one more thing, which is… Christina, I might need your help on this. Mom, could you come up for a second? Where’s my mom? Okay, you don’t have to come up. I can come to you. I have… I wore this necklace and it is a Blue Origin feather, and I wore it up into space and now it’s for you.

Jeff Bezos: ( 31:55 ) I would put it on her myself, but I would need my reading glasses.

Jeff Bezos: ( 31:57 ) Okay.

MC: ( 31:57 ) And now, Wally. Last, but not least. Amelia Earhart, what a lovely transition. An aviation icon and now an aerospace, a space icon. What was it like?

Wally Funk: ( 32:17 ) Whew! I can’t tell you! I had such a good instructor. He took us through everything that we were going to do, so when I went up this morning the noise wasn’t quite as bad and we went right on up, and I saw darkness. I thought I was going to see the world, but we weren’t quite high enough and I felt great. I felt like I was just laying down and I was going into space. And I want to thank you sweetheart because you made it possible for me. I’ve been waiting a long time to finally get up there. I’ve done a lot of astronaut training through the world, Russia, America, and I could always beat the guys on what they were doing because I was always stronger. And I’ve always done everything on my own. And, I didn’t do dolls. I did outside stuff. And I flew airplanes. I have 19,000 some hours. I loved it and I love being here with all of you and your family, and the four of us. We had a great time. It was wonderful.

Jeff Bezos: ( 33:33 ) That’s true.

Wally Funk: ( 33:33 ) I want to go again, fast! And then, when I got off the ship they gave me the tail end of one of the balloons, and I’m going to cherish that forever.

Jeff Bezos: ( 33:50 ) And by the way, we can confirm that Wally once again in training out performed the men on the mission, 100%.

MC: ( 33:57 ) I was going to say, she beat the three boys up to the top of the crew access area. Everybody saw that.

MC: ( 34:03 ) … three boys up to the top of the crew access. Everybody saw that. There’s video footage.

Jeff Bezos: ( 34:05 ) We have proof.

MC: ( 34:06 ) Indeed, darling, you did. You did. Well, so, Wally Funk, now the world’s oldest astronauts who have ever gone to space and perhaps the first founding member of our Blue Origin frequent flyer program.

Wally Funk: ( 34:17 ) Surprise to me.

MC: ( 34:19 ) [crosstalk 00:34:19] It sounds like she’s ready for it.

Wally Funk: ( 34:25 ) When I do lectures or wherever I am around the world and the United States, I’m only 45.

MC: ( 34:34 ) You’re being generous. I keep saying every time somebody says, “Oh, she’s 82,” I think there’s a typo. You’re 28, Wally. We know this. Well, no. Well, thank you so much for giving us your impressions, but let’s see it with our own eyes. I’d like to roll the tape of what it was like in the [inaudible 00:34:50].

Oliver : ( 34:52 ) [inaudible 00:34:52]. Okay.

Jeff Bezos: ( 34:52 ) Oh, wow.

Mark Bezos: ( 34:53 ) Oh, wow.

Oliver : ( 34:55 ) Oh, wow. That’s incredible.

Mark Bezos: ( 34:58 ) … to space. [crosstalk 00:35:00].

Wally Funk: ( 34:59 ) Oh!

Jeff Bezos: ( 34:59 ) Is it everything you thought it would be?

Wally Funk: ( 35:04 ) Fantastic.

Jeff Bezos: ( 35:05 ) Here, look. Oliver.

Mark Bezos: ( 35:10 ) Move your head just a little.

Wally Funk: ( 35:11 ) Oh, that’s great.

Mark Bezos: ( 35:11 ) Can you move your head a little, Wally, for us?

Wally Funk: ( 35:11 ) Oh, yeah. Hi, Mom! I love it.

Jeff Bezos: ( 35:11 ) Oh, wow, wow, wow.

Wally Funk: ( 35:18 ) Look at the blackness of space and below. [inaudible 00:35:21].

Mark Bezos: ( 35:24 ) Here, catch.

Oliver : ( 35:26 ) Oh, yeah. Give me the ball.

Mark Bezos: ( 35:26 ) Ready?

Wally Funk: ( 35:26 ) Woo-hoo!

Mark Bezos: ( 35:26 ) Here it comes. You just have to wait for it. Who wants a Skittle?

Oliver : ( 35:26 ) Oh, yeah, yeah. Throw one.

Mark Bezos: ( 35:48 ) All right. See if you can catch this in your mouth. Yeah, I love that. Well done. Here, toss me one. Good job. Here it goes. That was a mid foul [inaudible 00:35:53].

Jeff Bezos: ( 35:54 ) Here, try again.

Wally Funk: ( 35:55 ) I can’t get it up.

Oliver : ( 35:56 ) I got you, I got you.

Mark Bezos: ( 35:56 ) Oh, wow. Awesome. So good. Oh, wow.

Jeff Bezos: ( 35:56 ) Oh, my God.

Mark Bezos: ( 35:56 ) It’s absolutely-

Jeff Bezos: ( 35:56 ) This is incredible.

Wally Funk: ( 36:08 ) Oh, I love it. I love it.

Mark Bezos: ( 36:09 ) Oh, wow, wow, wow.

Wally Funk: ( 36:09 ) Man, this is different, isn’t it?

Jeff Bezos: ( 36:09 ) It’s a little different.

Wally Funk: ( 36:17 ) I could not-

Jeff Bezos: ( 36:17 ) Oh, wow. So let’s take a moment to look outside.

Wally Funk: ( 36:17 ) Thank you, sweetheart. You were wonderful.

Jeff Bezos: ( 36:17 ) Woo!

Mark Bezos: ( 36:17 ) That was a good catch.

MC: ( 36:30 ) Wally … Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Mark.

Mark Bezos: ( 36:32 ) I was going to say that was a good catch.

MC: ( 36:35 ) Wally, was it everything you expected and more? You’ve been waiting, as you said, 60 years to experience this.

Wally Funk: ( 36:39 ) I loved every minute of it. I just wish it had been longer because I had been in space before, not in space, but up in that area and could do a lot more rolls and twists and so forth. But there was not quite enough room for all four of us to do all those things. It was great. I loved it. I can hardly wait to go again.

Jeff Bezos: ( 36:58 ) Amen. Next next stop for you is the moon, Wally.

Wally Funk: ( 37:02 ) Yes, sir.

MC: ( 37:03 ) Any other impressions, now having seen the video of it? Is it one of those things where you just took it in and it’s hard to compare to video? What are other sensations that come from having seen that right now? All of you.

Oliver : ( 37:16 ) Felt way cooler than it looked.

MC: ( 37:23 ) Well, so after, of course, their four minutes of weightlessness, the fun that you had, of course, we got you buckled back in and you descended under those beautiful three parachutes. I think we’ve got another video here of your descent back to our beautiful West Texas Valley. Why don’t we roll that right now?

Mark Bezos: ( 37:49 ) That moment felt pretty good. I’m not going to lie.

Jeff Bezos: ( 37:51 ) That’s true. When you see the three main shoots out, that’s relaxing.

Wally Funk: ( 37:56 ) That was so easy. It was just incredible.

MC: ( 38:01 ) Whoa.

Wally Funk: ( 38:03 ) I didn’t feel that.

Jeff Bezos: ( 38:04 ) Well, that’s because it’s dust kicked up by a cushion of air that makes you only hit at about one mile an hour. It feels like if you were to stand up, you’re just going to plop. Woo! [inaudible 00:38:11].

Oliver : ( 38:11 ) Oh, it was so cool.

Wally Funk: ( 38:33 ) Oh, my God. It was so great.

MC: ( 38:38 ) What-

Jeff Bezos: ( 38:38 ) Our family was happy to see us. That’s a good sign.

MC: ( 38:41 ) What was that moment like coming back and seeing your friends and your family here? You have supported them … or they have supported you, that is, your dreams to get to this point. Oliver, your father’s here. Joseph, thank you so much for being here. What was that like?

Oliver : ( 38:56 ) It was a bit more emotional than I would have thought. Everyone on the ground was way more emotional than we were. We were just having fun.

Mark Bezos: ( 39:05 ) That is so true. Yeah. Yeah, I think that our family has been extremely supportive through all of this. I think that … I know that my wife was an absolute rock leading up to this, which made the adventure much easier for me. But I know that when we came down, it was time to let those emotions out a little bit. So it was great to see everybody and yeah, it was a little more emotional than I had anticipated as well.

MC: ( 39:32 ) Jeff?

Jeff Bezos: ( 39:33 ) Yeah. I wasn’t that nervous, but my family was somewhat anxious about this. It was so sweet actually to get hugged by them after landing, especially my kids and Lauren and my mom and dad, and really all of you guys. We have a bunch of close here, too, and it just makes me realize how much I love you and how much I’m loved.

MC: ( 40:05 ) Wally, your friend Mary is here.

Wally Funk: ( 40:08 ) Yes, I am so happy she’s here. She knows what I’m going through. She has been … She was one of my flight students and I’ve had many, many, over 3000 flight students. I don’t know if they’re going to get to see this or not, but I felt so charged. I was not nervous. I was just normal, normal person going up into space. That’s what I wanted to feel. Nothing here.

Jeff Bezos: ( 40:32 ) I can confirm that Wally was never nervous.

Mark Bezos: ( 40:37 ) She was wondering what was taking so long.

Jeff Bezos: ( 40:42 ) It’s true. We had a six minute hold on the pad. Wally was like, “Are we going to go or not? What the hell? We’re burning daylight. Let’s go.”

MC: ( 40:55 ) But then, Wally, once we got you going, we got you going fast, going over Mach 3. It’s this beautiful rocket behind us here, our New Shepard rocket that got the team up to space. By the way, it also of course, made its landing back on the landing pad. Why don’t we take a look at that landing that we have here?

Mark Bezos: ( 41:15 ) Woo! That was a bullseye.

MC: ( 41:44 ) Absolutely bulls-eye. Jeff, a beautiful piece of engineering that our team here at Blue Origin has developed. Would you like to talk to us a little bit about why we chose vertical takeoff, vertical landing, being powered by this BE3 engine? because today is not the end, right? We’re going further with this technology.

Jeff Bezos: ( 42:05 ) No, that’s a helpful question because the fact of the matter is that the architecture and the technology we have chosen is complete overkill for a suborbital tourism mission. We have chosen the vertical landing architecture. Why do we do that? Because it scales. It’s an architecture that can grow to a very large size. So we want to have experience with architectures that can grow big to New Glenn and one day to New Armstrong. So to have the idea that you want to build big from the beginning, lets you choose an architecture, because the whole point of doing this is to get practice.

Jeff Bezos: ( 42:44 ) Other kinds of architectures don’t scale in the same way to very large size. Vertical landing does. In fact, you can think about it very easily because if you try to … When you are landing a rocket vertically, you are solving, what’s called the inverted pendulum problem and you are balancing a broomstick on the tip of your finger. You can balance a broomstick on the tip of your finger. You know what you can not balance on the tip of your finger? A pencil.

Jeff Bezos: ( 43:09 ) So basically the smaller the object, the harder it is to balance. As the object gets bigger and bigger and bigger, it gets easier and easier and easier to balance. It’s a very simple because this has more momentum. So it’s easier to get under it. So that architecture scales. That’s why we chose it.

Jeff Bezos: ( 43:27 ) Then the second thing that is a very puzzling architecture choice for most people who know a lot about rockets, you would never choose liquid hydrogen for a suborbital tourism mission. It’s completely unnecessary. It’s the most powerful, highest performing rocket fuel in the world. There are two reasons we chose it. The first is again, practice. We shows that propellant because what you see behind me is basically the second stage of New Glenn.

Jeff Bezos: ( 43:58 ) So every time we fly this tourism mission, we’re practicing flying the second stage of New Glenn. That’s where you really do want hydrogen, on the second stage of a vehicle that is designed not only to go into low earth orbit, but to bodies outside of low earth orbit.

Jeff Bezos: ( 44:15 ) Then the other reason we chose it is because it is the most environmentally benign propellant you can choose. When you burn hydrogen and oxygen, you get H2O. H2O is water. So that is another thing. For a tourism mission, that was really important to us as well. So that’s why we chose this architecture you see behind me and the engineering team did an incredible job. They also really built two vehicles. What you see is not really a vehicle because I can assure you, the escape system was at least as complicated, hard to design and to test and demonstrate as the main booster itself. So it’s almost like building a whole separate vehicle. I’m also extremely happy we didn’t test it today.

MC: ( 45:06 ) Thank you so much. Again, congratulations to you all. With that, I’m going to turn it over to Linda Mills, Head of Communications here at Blue Origin to start the press conference. Thank you very much.

Jeff Bezos: ( 45:17 ) Woo!

Linda Mills: ( 45:19 ) Let’s give another round of applause to our amazing newly-minted astronauts. All right. I would like to give a thank you to our journalists who showed up at 2:30 this morning to get set up.

Jeff Bezos: ( 45:33 ) Thank you.

Linda Mills: ( 45:33 ) I know it’s been a long day for all of you, so thank you.

Jeff Bezos: ( 45:37 ) I can’t believe you guys are still smiling. Thank you.

Mark Bezos: ( 45:39 ) Thank you.

Linda Mills: ( 45:40 ) So we’ll be able to take a few questions and then we’ll just pose for a few photos. So, Rachel, why don’t you start? Rachel with CNN.

Rachel: ( 45:48 ) Yeah, Rachel Crane with CNN. Congratulations, you guys, on your astronaut wings.

Jeff Bezos: ( 45:52 ) Thank you, Rachel.

Rachel: ( 45:53 ) Jeff, you have said in the past that the work you’re doing with Blue Origin is the most important of your career. You’ve recently stepped down as CEO of Amazon. Can we expect for you to be more hands-on with Blue Origin? Is this going to be your new focus?

Jeff Bezos: ( 46:06 ) Yes. So I’m going to split my time between Blue Origin and the Bezos Earth Fund. So the Bezos Earth Fund is about climate change and sustainability. That is those two things. There’s going to be a third thing and maybe a fourth thing, but I don’t know what those are yet. I’m not very good at doing one thing.

Rachel: ( 46:25 ) Are you going to be flying again soon?

Jeff Bezos: ( 46:26 ) Hell, yes. How fast can you refuel that thing? Let’s go.

Linda Mills: ( 46:30 ) All right, next question. Let’s go Reuters.

Reuters: ( 46:44 ) Thank you. Eric Johnson, Reuters News. Jeff, I have two quick questions. One is what is your plan of [inaudible 00:46:45] launching, as far as the cadence? Then second, you talked about [inaudible 00:46:49]. You mentioned the Armstrong. Walk us through some of the technical aspects of it and the timing of the [inaudible 00:46:55].

Linda Mills: ( 46:56 ) So Eric asked about the cadence and the capabilities.

Jeff Bezos: ( 47:00 ) Okay. We’re going to fly the human missions twice more this year, and what we do in the following year, I’m not sure yet. We’ll figure that out and what the cadence will eventually be. We want the cadence to be very high. One thing we’ve found out through the auction process and what we’ve been doing is private sales. We’re approaching a hundred million dollars in private sales already, and the demand is very, very high. So we’re going to keep after that because we really do want to practice with this vehicle. So we’re going to have to build more boosters to fly more frequently. We’re going to be doing that and working on all the operational things we need to do, all the things we learned.

Jeff Bezos: ( 47:43 ) What practice does is lets you get better. We want to be able … Right now we have a mission life, we think, somewhere between 25 and 100 flights for one of these vehicles. We’d like to make that closer to 100 than to 25. Then once it’s close to 100, we will push it past 100. That’s how you get operational usability. You have to remember, big things start small. I told this crew when we got in today and we were sitting there on the pad waiting to lift off. We had time to ourselves and I just said, “Guys, if you’re willing, if you let me invite you, when we get up there, there’s going to be all kinds of adrenaline, all kinds of excitement and novelty, but take a minute, take a few seconds to look out and calmly think about what we’re doing is not only adventure. It is adventure and it is fun, but it’s also important because what we’re doing is the first step of something big.”

Jeff Bezos: ( 48:48 ) I know what that feels like. I did it three decades ago, almost three decades ago, with Amazon. Big things start small. But you can tell, you can tell when you’re onto something and this is important. We’re going to build a road to space so that our kids and their kids can build the future. We need to do that. We need to do that to solve the problems here on earth. This is not about escaping Earth. Every time I read an article about people wanting to escape Earth, no, no, no, no, no. The whole point is this is the only good planet in this solar system.

Jeff Bezos: ( 49:29 ) We’ve sent robotic probes to all of them. This is the only good one. I promise you and we have to take care of it. If you go into space and see how fragile it is, you’ll want to take care of it even more. That’s what this is about. We have to take, and this is going to take decades. This is a big vision, but big things start small and this is how it starts. We are going to build an infrastructure.

Jeff Bezos: ( 49:53 ) Just like when I started Amazon, I didn’t have to build the Postal Service or Royal Mail or Deutsche Post. There were already gigantic worldwide infrastructure to deliver packages. That infrastructure today is, for space, just way too expensive, and it doesn’t work. But if we can practice with the suborbital tourism mission and continue and build bigger and bigger vehicles, timelines on new Armstrong and so on, I can’t really give because we don’t know. But what I can tell you is we’re going to keep working at those things, step-by-step ferociously. I want to emphasize the ferociously.

Linda Mills: ( 50:31 ) All right. We have time for one last question. Tom Costello with NBC.

Tom Costello: ( 50:40 ) Tom Costello with NBC News. Congratulations to all of you. Jeff, to follow up on that question and your discussion there, how do you make this more reasonable for everyday people who would like to fly? It’s pretty steep right now. How do you bring the cost down so that this can be more accessible for everybody?

Jeff Bezos: ( 50:59 ) It’s a great question. How do you bring the costs down over time, so it’s more accessible to everyone? You-

Jeff Bezos: ( 51:03 ) How do you bring the costs down over time so it’s more accessible to everyone? You’ve got to do it the same way we did it with commercial airline travel. We’re really almost in the barnstormer phase, right? So these are biplanes and they’re flying into a farmer’s field and charging a small price to fly people around for a few minutes in the air. That’s what we’re doing right now. But you know where that barnstorming phase leads? To 787s. And that’s what we have to do.

Linda Mills: ( 51:33 ) All right. Let’s give it a hand. I’m afraid that’s all the time we have for questions today. These astronauts have had a very long day, so let’s give another round of applause for our astronauts. And then, Jeff, you have one more thing.

Jeff Bezos: ( 51:48 ) Yeah, guys, I have one more thing. I have a little surprise for you. I am announcing today a new philanthropic initiative. And if you could put the slide up so people can see it. It is called the Courage and Civility Award. It recognizes leaders who aim high and who pursue solutions with courage and who always do so with civility. Well, let me tell you how I feel about this. I feel strongly enough I actually wrote something down. We live in a world where sometimes instead of disagreeing with someone’s ideas, we question their character or their motives. And guess what? After you do that, it’s pretty damn hard to work with that person.

Jeff Bezos: ( 52:48 ) And really what we should always be doing is questioning ideas, not the person. Ad hominem attacks have been around a long time, but they don’t work. And they’ve been amplified by social media. We need unifiers and not vilifiers. We want people who argue hard and act hard for what they truly believe, but they do that always with civility and never ad hominem attacks. And unfortunately, we live in a world where this is too often not the case. But we do have role models. And this award, do you have another slide here? Go ahead. I didn’t tell you what the award was yet. I thought there was a slide for that.

Jeff Bezos: ( 53:37 ) Here’s what the award is. You see who the first recipient is, but let me tell you what the award is. The Courage and Civility Award is a $100 million award so that the awardee, the recipient, can give $100 million to the charities, the nonprofits of their choice. And these are people who have demonstrated courage. By the way, it’s easy to be courageous but also mean. Try being courageous and civil. Try being courageous and a unifier. That’s harder. And way better. And it makes the world better. So we have two awardees today. They’ll each be getting $100 million to direct to the charities of their choice as they see fit. No bureaucracy, no committees. They just do what they want. They can give it all to their own charity or they can share the wealth. It’s up to them. And the first Courage and Civility award goes to Van Jones. Van, come on up.

Van Jones: ( 54:55 ) Thank you, brother. Sometimes dreams come true. Sometimes dreams come true. And the headlines around the world should be anything’s possible if you believe. And Lauren and Jeff don’t do nothing small, man. They don’t do anything small. They just don’t do it. They dream big, they love big and they bet big. And you bet on me and I appreciate it. And I’m going to tell you, the only thing I worried about when you say courage, I haven’t always been courageous. But I know the people who are, and they get up every day on the front lines, grassroots communities, they don’t have much, but they’re good people and they fight hard and they don’t have enough support.

Van Jones: ( 55:52 ) Can you imagine grassroots folks from Appalachia, from the hood, Native American reservations, having enough money to be able to connect with the geniuses that have disrupted the space industry, disrupted taxis and hotels and bookstores to start disrupting poverty, to start disrupting pollution, to start disrupting the $90 billion prison industry together. If you take people on the front lines and their wisdom and their genius and their creativity, and you give them a shot, they’re not just going to turn around neighborhoods, they’re going to turn around this nation. That’s what’s going to happen. And I appreciate you for lifting the ceiling off of people’s dreams.

Van Jones: ( 56:39 ) You have lifted the ceilings off of the dreams of humanity today. And that’s an important thing. Don’t be mad about it. When you see somebody reaching for the heavens, be glad. There’s a lot more heaven up there to reach for. And we can do that together. And the last thing I’ll say is this; if this small group of people can make miracles happen in outer space, a bigger group of people can make miracles happen down here. And we’re going to do it. Thank you very much.

Jeff Bezos: ( 57:08 ) Thank you.

Van Jones: ( 57:12 ) Love you, brother.

Jeff Bezos: ( 57:12 ) Hey guys, can you roll a little video we put together about Van Jones. Can you roll that little video please? Short video.

Speaker 2: ( 57:22 ) Van has been a part of much change. He has birthed a number of different grassroots community organizations. He also helped us bring together climate justice and racial justice, and what that meant in particular for low income communities of color.

Van Jones: ( 57:41 ) You can’t live in a country where you just have sacrifice zones, whether we’re talking about South Central or Appalachia or The Rust Belt. And no political party stands up for them effectively.

Speaker 3: ( 57:51 ) He was always so ahead of the curve that a lot of people didn’t understand him. So that was always hard to watch because I know his love for people and for justice. It doesn’t matter to him what people say. He continues to do the work that needs to be done.

Speaker 4: ( 58:07 ) I think about what he’s done within the criminal justice system, what he’s done with making bipartisanship real, not just what think tanks are doing, not researching the idea, not exploring in history how bipartisanship worked. He’s been rolling up his sleeves, he’s been doing the work in real life.

Jeff Bezos: ( 58:32 ) And I know that Van Jones is going to do something amazing with that $100 million. I don’t know what yet. I bet he doesn’t know what yet. But it’s in your hands, Van Jones. However you’re going to do it, it’s going to work. We had lunch together a couple weeks ago and he was just telling me some of his life story. And he mentioned that when he was a young activist he was angry, there’s a big transformation that happened over the years. He said that the acronym that he used was RAP, for reward and punishment. And if the mayor or whoever it was that they were going up against did something they liked, they rewarded him. And if they did something they didn’t like, they punished him.

Jeff Bezos: ( 59:19 ) And he said, “Honestly, Jeff, I wasn’t very good at the reward part. I really focused on the punishment part.” And then he changed. Really, the transformation when you hear his story is unbelievable and profound and inspiring. And I think about this for myself, every night when you go to sleep, you get the chance to wake up better tomorrow. Now we have another awardee. Let’s roll that video.

Anderson Cooper: ( 59:55 ) Jose Andres calls himself a pilgrim from Spain. A chef who arrived here 20 years ago with just 50 bucks in his pocket. But these days it’s hard to call him anything less than an amazing American success story.

Jose Andres: ( 01:00:07 ) I know you.

Hillary Clinton: ( 01:00:08 ) His love of his fellow men and women, his love of eating, which he shares with all of us. He is bigger than life. A force of nature and a real gift.

Stephen Colbert: ( 01:00:20 ) Michelin star chef who has won James Beard Awards for both outstanding chef and humanitarian of the year.

Speaker 5: ( 01:00:26 ) Jose Andres is turning several of his DC and New York City restaurants into community kitchens.

Judy Woodruff: ( 01:00:33 ) He has helped feed those in disaster areas in the US and around the world.

Trevor Noah: ( 01:00:39 ) Every time I meet you, it’s because there’s a disaster somewhere in the world. And like a superhero of food, you’ve stepped in to help feed people.

Speaker 6: ( 01:00:47 ) He wants to bring people together and he uses food to do that.

Speaker 7: ( 01:00:52 ) Someone who’s extremely generous and gives so much to people in need without asking anything.

Jeff Bezos: ( 01:01:02 ) Jose, please come on up. And he makes a hell of a paella too, I’ll tell you.

Jose Andres: ( 01:01:22 ) I’m so honored. Really grateful for this award and the incredible support from you, Jeff, and the entire Bezos family. World Central Kitchen was born from the simple idea that food has the power to create a better world. A plate of food is a plate of hope. It’s the fastest way to rebuild life and communities. And this award itself can not feed the world on its own. But this is a start of a new chapter for us. It’s allows us to think beyond the next hurricane to the bigger challenges we face. People of the world, now is the time to think really big to solve hunger with the first urgency of now. The only thing we want to do is revolutionize disaster and hunger relief. People don’t want our pity. People want our respect. It’s the least we can do is be next to them when things get tough.

Jose Andres: ( 01:02:40 ) We want to double food aid around the world, and we want to change the way 3 billion people, mainly women, cook their food today from dirty cookstoves to clean cookstoves. We think globally, but we feed locally. And the pandemic drove tens of millions into hunger and starvation last year, this year. The climate crisis is driving millions more across borders. We can and we must respond together, governments, business, nonprofits, every single citizen. Out of empathy, for sure, but also to keep our world safe, stable, and sustainable. We will be there with our boots on the ground when disaster strikes. But we will also shoot for the stars, Jeff, fighting hunger and the causes of hunger. Because whether you are on the ground or on the top of the world, it’s obvious that we the people, we are one people, one planet sharing our daily bread together.

Jose Andres: ( 01:03:55 ) I always say that I believe in longer tables, not higher walls. So Jeff, let’s go and let’s feed the world. Thank you. Thank you.

Jeff Bezos: ( 01:04:14 ) Long tables and not higher walls. That’s incredible, Jose. And I don’t know what you’re going to do yet, but I know whatever it is you’ll figure something amazing out to do. I know you will. And you’re just an inspiration. A huge inspiration. Thank you.

Linda Mills: ( 01:04:34 ) We’re going to take a photo, if that’s all right?

Jeff Bezos: ( 01:04:36 ) Yeah.

Linda Mills: ( 01:04:36 ) Because I think a lot of our journalists would love to get a photo of the three of you together.

Jeff Bezos: ( 01:04:46 ) Does my flight suit look good?

Speaker 8: ( 01:04:47 ) Eyes here, eyes here. Perfect.

Linda Mills: ( 01:05:08 ) All right. Well, thank you all for joining us. This wraps our press conference. I’m going to let Oliver lead our astronauts out. And thank you all.

Jeff Bezos: ( 01:05:17 ) Thank you guys. We know it’s not easy to get here. We know you put a lot of work into coming to this launch and supporting us. And I hope you had some fun and I hope that it was inspiring for you as well. But no matter what, thank you for coming. Very much appreciated. Thank you.

Linda Mills: ( 01:05:37 ) All right. What we’re going to do next is we’re going to have the opportunity for you to get back onto the coaches. We’re going to take some photos at our landing pad. And so there will be some marked areas for you to stand behind. I just ask that you follow our guides to do that. And so media, please exit out the back. Thank you.

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Big dreams —

Jeff bezos unveils his sweeping vision for humanity’s future in space, "it's time to go back to the moon—this time to stay.”.

Eric Berger - May 10, 2019 1:22 am UTC

Jeff Bezos, owner of Blue Origin, spoke Thursday during an unveiling of his Blue Moon lunar lander. Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Blue Origin has proposed a "Blue Moon" lander to send cargo and potentially humans to the Moon. Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Jeff Bezos had hoped to build a lunar lander for NASA. Mark Wilson/Getty Images
The company plans had already hotfired the lander's engine, named BE-7. Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Bezos also extolled the virtues of O'Neill cylinders, shown on screen at left. Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Here's a diagram of the new BE-7 engine. Blue Origin

WASHINGTON D.C.—The world's richest person, Jeff Bezos, unveiled his sweeping vision for humanity on Thursday afternoon in a Washington D.C. ballroom. With the lights dimmed, Bezos spoke on stage for an hour, outlining plans for his rocket company, Blue Origin, and how it will pave the way to space for future generations.

We have seen bits and pieces of Bezos' vision to use the resources of space to save Earth and make it a garden for humans before. But this is the first time he has stitched it together in such a comprehensive and radical narrative, starting with reusable rockets and ending with gargantuan, cylindrical habitats in space where millions of people could live. This was the moment when Bezos finally pulled back the curtain, in totality, to reveal his true ambitions for spaceflight. This is where he would like to see future generations one day live.

His speech felt akin to the talk SpaceX founder Elon Musk delivered at an international space conference in 2016. Mexico City is where Musk first unveiled a design for a super-large rocket and starship, as well as his plans for millions of humans to live on Mars and make a vibrant world there.

First, the news

As part of his speech, Bezos revealed new details about a large lunar lander, called "Blue Moon," capable of delivering up to 3.6 tons of cargo and scientific experiments to the lunar surface. Blue Origin has spent three years working on the vehicle, he said.

The company also has a brand-new engine, not previously known, named BE-7 that has 10,000 pounds of thrust. It will power the Blue Moon vehicle during its descent to the lunar surface. The company will perform its first hotfire test of the BE-7 engine this summer in West Texas, Bezos said.

Near the end of his speech, Bezos praised the goal set by Vice President Mike Pence of landing humans on the Moon by 2024. "I love this," Bezos said. "It's the right thing to do. We can help meet that timeline but only because we started three years ago. It's time to go back to the Moon—this time to stay."

A Blue Moon lander with an ascent vehicle (built by another company) on top.

Bezos, who is self-funding Blue Origin at a rate of approximately $1 billion a year, did not say whether he would fund the development of Blue Moon without NASA contracts for cargo delivery to the lunar surface or the descent module contract for the crew lander.

O’Neill cylinders

Throughout his speech, Bezos displayed his enthusiasm for this topic. He was five years old when he watched the Apollo 11 lunar landing. Spaceflight, and the possibilities it offers for humanity, have fascinated him ever since. "You don't choose your passions—your passions choose you," he said Thursday.

During the first part of his talk, Bezos spoke about the world's looming energy crunch. Human energy use grows at a rate of 3 percent a year, he said, and this figure factors in increasing efficiency in computing, transportation, and other sectors. Today, all of humanity's energy needs could be met by a solar farm covering an area the size of Nevada. In a couple of centuries, a solar farm to meet our needs would cover the entire planet.

At some point, unless humans expand into the Solar System, this growing energy demand will meet with finite resources and energy rationing. "That's the path that we would be on, and that path would lead for the first time to your grandchildren having worse lives than you," he said.

An artist's rendering of a manufactured environment that could exist in space in the future. Blue Origin
The design was inspired by Gerard O'Neill, a professor Jeff Bezos met when he was a student at Princeton University. Blue Origin
Bezos said the cylinders could have natural environments or cities within. Blue Origin
Up to 1 million people could live in each habitat. Blue Origin
Bezos views this as a more viable outcome for human growth than other worlds such as Mars. Blue Origin

Other worlds in the Solar System lack Earth's atmosphere and gravity. At most, they could support perhaps a few billion people, Bezos said. The answer is not other planets or moons, he said, but rather artificial worlds or colonies in space known as O'Neill cylinders.

These are named for their creator, Gerard O'Neill, who was a professor at Princeton University where Bezos attended college in the early 1980s. In his book The High Frontier, O'Neill popularized the idea of free-floating, cylindrical space colonies that could have access to ample solar energy. Bezos was hooked then and became president of the campus chapter of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space.

And he is still hooked today, imagining up to 1 million humans living in each cylinder built from asteroid materials and other space resources. Each environment would be climate controlled, with cities, farms, mountains, or beaches. "This is Maui on its best day all year long," Bezos said. "No rain. No earthquakes. People are going to want to live here." And when they need to, they could easily fly back to Earth.

Brave and bold

This is a far-flung future, certainly. Bezos said the challenge for this generation is to build the "road" to space that could, one day, lead to in-space activity that creates such a future.

He cited two "gates" holding back human development of space. One is low-cost access to space, and he noted that his company has already built the reusable New Shepard launch system and will fly the much larger New Glenn rocket into space in 2021.

The second limiting factor is that, to thrive, human activity must rely on resources in space, water from the Moon, metals from asteroids, and energy from the Sun. To this end, Blue Origin has been working on the Blue Moon lander to deliver small rovers and other scientific packages to the Moon. The rovers would suss out information about water ice on the Moon and how it might be harvested for use as rocket fuel. (Conveniently, the Blue Moon lander will use liquid hydrogen).

Bezos said he believes that—if this generation builds the infrastructure needed to enable humans to get into space and develop an economy there—future generations will pick up the ball and run. "People are so creative once they're unleashed," Bezos said.

It was brave and bold of Bezos to put his entire vision for humanity's aspirations out there all at once. Like with Musk in 2016, it opens him up to criticism for being too dreamy about outer space or not caring about the immediate problems here on Earth. But the reality is that, while Earth has plenty of problems today, humanity faces existential concerns in the decades and centuries to come. It is good to think about these problems and plant the seeds for solutions that may one day solve them.

It is all the better when the dreamer proposing them has enough money to get the ball rolling.

Listing image by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

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Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice: Jeff Bezos

"choices can be hard. you can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful. and if you do, it will probably be to the detriment of your choices," he said.

At Princeton University, Founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos spoke about his early life. Recalling an incident, he shared what he learnt from it. “What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift. Kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy — they’re given, after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful. And if you do, it will probably be to the detriment of your choices. This is a group with many gifts. I am sure one of your gifts is the gift of a smart and capable brain. I am confident that’s the case, because admission is competitive, and if there weren’t some signs that you’re clever, the Dean of admissions wouldn’t have let you in.”

He added, “Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life, the life you author from scratch, on your own, begins. How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make? Will inertia be your guide or will you follow your passions? Will you follow dogma or will you be original? Will you choose a life of ease or a life of service and adventure?

ALSO READ | Accept the world for what it is, and at the same time, make it your own: Jane Lynch

Will you wilt under criticism or will you follow your convictions? Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong or will you apologise? Will you guard your heart against rejection or will you act when you fall in love? Will you play it safe or will you be a little swashbuckling? When it’s tough, will you give up or will you be relentless? Will you be a cynic or will you be a builder? Will you be clever at the expense of others or will you be kind?”

Answering this himself, he said, “I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old and, in a quiet moment of reflection, narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life’s story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story.”

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Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Other Top Entrepreneurs on What You’ll Need To Do To Be One

M any people dream of being their own bosses and becoming self-made millionaires . News outlets often highlight individuals who drop out of college to pursue their dreams and make it big. However, becoming a successful entrepreneur requires certain traits and actions. Some of the world’s most famous entrepreneurs have weighed in on what it takes to be successful in this field .

Find Out: Robert Kiyosaki: 5 Side Hustles You Can Work From Anywhere in the World

Read More: 5 Unusual Ways To Make Extra Money (That Actually Work)

Work 25 Hours a Day, 8 Days a Week

“Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary has said entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone. Only one-third of the workforce has decided to try to work for themselves. He explained that becoming an entrepreneur is all about how you view your future self and work toward that version of yourself.

Being an entrepreneur requires a lot of sacrifice. According to O’Leary, if you’re willing to “work 25 hours a day, eight days a week,” you’re an entrepreneur. Putting in a hefty amount of work during your 20s and 30s will let you reap the benefits of more free time later on in life.

Create Change

In an interview with former President Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerburg, the founder of Facebook, stated that entrepreneurship is about creating change more than starting a company. The most effective entrepreneurs find motivation for their work through missions and creating improvements. Some entrepreneurs don’t even set out to start companies at all.

When Zuckerberg started Facebook, he wanted to give everyone the opportunity to share what was important to them. He didn’t think that his project would become a company. With each step and improvement to Facebook, he would receive criticism that it wouldn’t catch on and that there was no money in it. Facebook grew into the major social media giant it is today because Zuckerburg cared deeply about it.

Learn More: Passive Income Expert: I Make $27,000 Every Week — Here’s How

Overcome Wishful Thinking

Zuckerberg isn’t alone in his views. SpaceX founder Elon Musk said it’s very important to focus on making something that will be highly valued by others. He also thinks that entrepreneurs must be meticulous when it comes to self-analysis.

One of the most significant challenges for an entrepreneur to overcome is wishful thinking. To be a successful entrepreneur, you’ll need to differentiate between really believing in your ideas and chasing an impossible dream.

Be Relentless and Flexible

Coming up with new and exciting ideas isn’t the most challenging part of being an entrepreneur. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos explained that successfully navigating the steps between coming up with an idea and turning it into a successful product takes a combination of stubborn relentlessness and flexibility. In addition, influential entrepreneurs must know when to exercise each trait.

Bezos said you need to be relentless when it comes to your vision. Without that persistence, you may stop tying altogether. On the other hand, your preconceptions won’t always be correct. The best way forward is to be flexible about the details and make adjustments as needed to stay aligned with your overarching vision.

Be Attuned to What’s Happening

To be a successful entrepreneur, Michael Dell said you can’t wait for change to happen to you. You’ve got to go out and make the changes first. While this sounds obvious, it requires entrepreneurs to be very aware of what’s going on in their industries and how it will affect the future.

Dell, the founder of Dell Technologies, explained that business changes quickly. Predicting how things will evolve and what you’ll need to do to take advantage of it is a key skill that entrepreneurs must have. The ability to do this will maintain and increase your relevancy.

Have Passion

When asked for the single most valuable piece of advice he’d give an entrepreneur, Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, referenced passion. The process requires entrepreneurs to continue on their paths for so long that most rational people would give up. Jobs joked that the entrepreneurs who quit are the sane ones because of how challenging of a task it is. When looking at successful entrepreneurs, he said they love what they do.

Find Smarter People

When Alibaba founder Jack Ma started out, he admitted he didn’t know a lot about technology or management. Some entrepreneurs might feel like they should be the smartest person in the room, but Ma took a different approach. Instead of trying to learn everything, Ma always tried to hire and work with people who were smarter than him.

He explained that his job is to make sure smart people can work together. Ma joked that it’s not very hard to get stupid people to work together, but getting smart people on the same page and in agreement can be challenging. However, when smart people work together, it’s easier to achieve your vision.

Be Grounded

Oprah Winfrey, the world-renowned talk show host, spoke at the Stanford Graduate School of Business about why she has achieved so much success over the years. She attributes her success to staying grounded. When hiring new employees, she would often ask candidates what practices they do to take care of themselves and stay centered.

According to Winfrey, the motivation behind her work was for her to be a better person. She explained that her show worked because she knew there wasn’t any difference between her and her audience. This allowed the audience members to develop a deep connection with her.

While many famous entrepreneurs preach that you need passion, love and motivation to become a successful entrepreneur, Mark Cuban said you need money. Cuban, a successful businessman and “Shark Tank “ personality, gave some advice to aspiring entrepreneurs: Save your money first.

While many love the romantic idea of quitting their jobs and becoming their own bosses, it’s essential to prepare for how much it will cost. Cuban pointed out that most people don’t hear the stories of the many entrepreneurs who fail in their endeavors or give up. Before starting a new business, Cuban said you should have at least six months of income saved up in case your business doesn’t take off right away.

Know How To Convince Others

While giving a speech, Bill Gates, a founder of Microsoft, explained that entrepreneurs need sales skills to succeed. Gates said that you not only need to convince customers to buy your product or service, but you also need to sell investors and employees on your vision.

In the beginning, your company will be very small. Because you’re hoping to grow your business, you want to find employees who are overqualified and will continue to excel as the business expands. Having the ability to convince skilled candidates to work for your company is another vital part of being an entrepreneur.

Don’t Fear Failure

Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, reflected on his early days in entrepreneurship. He said that he had been taught not to fear failure, but to fail a lot early on to learn how to succeed. He came up with a slogan called “healthy disregard for the impossible.” This idea would drive him to write down things that seemed impossible, but that he may be able to achieve.

Page said that it’s necessary to take risks and fail. He took a lot of risks that didn’t achieve any success but also came up with Google. Because he took a lot of risks, he didn’t worry about the things that didn’t work out. Page encourages entrepreneurs and business owners to take more risks in order to find success.

New FTC transcript reveals juicy details on how Jeff Bezos and other top Amazon execs used disappearing messages

Jeff Bezos faced FTC questioning over his use of the Signal app's auto-delete function.
The FTC accused Amazon execs of intentionally deleting Signal messages that may be relevant to its antitrust case.
Bezos denied using Signal for issues related to the lawsuit but admitted using it for other company matters.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos faced a barrage of questions from the Federal Trade Commision over his use of the encrypted messaging app Signal and its auto-delete function, according to a recently released transcript of his testimony.

The previously unreported transcript was part of a new complaint the FTC filed last week that accused Bezos and other top Amazon executives of intentionally deleting Signal messages to destroy potential evidence that could be used in an on-going antitrust lawsuit against the company.

Amazon executives continued to delete Signal messages that could have been related to the case, even after the agency requested in 2019 to preserve all relevant documents and correspondence, the FTC alleged. The court filing asks Amazon to produce additional documents about its use of ephemeral messaging apps, including Signal.

Signal is a popular encrypted messaging app that comes with an option to permanently auto-delete messages. Bezos encouraged other Amazon executives to communicate with him through Signal, the FTC wrote in its filing last week.

During testimony to the FTC in October 2022, Bezos mostly denied or refused to answer the agency's questions. But he also indicated that he may have continued to use Signal and the auto-delete function until 2022 for sensitive company issues unrelated to the lawsuit. He also gave vague answers when asked if he had received full legal guidance over the need to preserve all relevant information, the transcript shows.

"I don't know exactly when I stopped using it," Bezos said, according to the transcript. "But I tried very hard to be careful not to use it, to preserve messages and only use disappearing messages on things that were not, you know, responsive to these document preservation requests."

The transcript offers a rare and detailed look at the tense meeting between Bezos and the FTC at a time when the e-commerce giant had become a major target of the agency's antitrust enforcement efforts. Last year, the FTC sued Amazon for allegedly using its dominant market position to increase prices and reduce competition.

In an email to Business Insider, Amazon's spokesperson said the FTC's contentions are "baseless." The company also denied the agency's antitrust allegations, calling the lawsuit "misguided."

"Amazon voluntarily disclosed employees' limited Signal use to the FTC years ago, thoroughly collected Signal conversations from its employees' phones, and allowed agency staff to inspect those conversations even when they had nothing to do with the FTC's investigation. The FTC has a complete picture of Amazon's decision-making in this case including 1.7 million documents from sources like email, internal messaging applications, and laptops (among other sources), and over 100 terabytes of data."

An FTC representative declined to comment.

'Better way to communicate with me'

In his testimony, Bezos said he started using Signal in early 2019 after his phone got hacked . Signal offers better security than normal text messages because it is end-to-end encrypted.

Bezos encouraged some of Amazon's most senior executives to get on Signal because it was "more secure," though he said he never required it. In one instance, Bezos told Amazon's video streaming chief Mike Hopkins that Signal is a "better way to communicate" with him.

Bezos still uses Signal occasionally for work purposes, he said in the 2022 testimony, but he turned off all disappearing message functions "some number of months ago." His Signal use at work is limited to only the most sensitive issues that have nothing to do with the FTC investigation, he added. In the past, he set Signal messages to automatically delete after one week.

"I try to use that for things that I considered especially sensitive, like the data security, certain personnel issues, certain sensitive PR issues. So I would turn it on and off, leaving the – only for those issues," Bezos said, according to the transcript.

While Bezos acknowledged having received a document-preservation notice related to FTC's investigation, he declined to answer whether the notice had covered Signal messages as well. He also said he couldn't remember when exactly he received that notice, nor the legal guidance on Signal from Amazon's lawyers ("a year-ish ago maybe," he said).

An FTC lawyer asked if Bezos had continued using Signal's disappearing message feature through at least 2021, roughly 2 years after the agency had first informed Amazon about preserving relevant documents. Bezos said he wasn't sure, but he might have.

"I may have made mistakes in that regard from time to time," Bezos said. "I never would have used Signal under any circumstances with disappearing messages on or off to discuss any complicated business issues. It just doesn't make sense."

'I can make a mistake'

The FTC lawyer pointed out that Bezos received legal guidance on document preservation in 2020 and 2021, and yet he still used Signal's disappearing messaging feature until 2022. Did Bezos simply ignore advice from legal counsel about turning off the auto-delete feature?

Bezos said he wouldn't have done that, as he follows the advice of legal counsel as long as he understands it.

'I don't remember'

Bezos repeatedly told the FTC lawyer that he didn't remember much about the legal guidance regarding Amazon's document preservation obligations, including those related to "secure messaging apps." He also said he couldn't recall ever reading a document titled "Legal Hold FAQ" or separate legal guidelines for Wickr, an Amazon-owned secure messaging app the company leaders started using in 2022.

"I don't remember it. It's possible," Bezos said.

When asked if Bezos had received the document preservation notice shared internally in April 2020 — almost two years before he stopped using Signal's auto-delete function — he gave an ambiguous answer.

"I can't confirm that for you. I have no reason to doubt it," Bezos said.

JEDI Contract

The FTC lawyer also showed Bezos a log of Signal messages that were used with the disappearing message feature activated. Some of those logs were a thread between Bezos and Andy Jassy, Amazon's current CEO, between October 2019 and March 2022.

Bezos said those conversations were not "sensitive personnel issues," and had nothing to do with Jassy's appointment as Amazon's next CEO in 2021.

"If you're referring to the very first time I approached the idea with him, it was by phone, not by Signal," Bezos said about how he notified Jassy about his CEO position. "These kinds of matters are best handled – it would be best handled in person. And the pandemic was probably interfering with some of the in-person conversations, so it probably happened mostly by phone."

Bezos also said it's possible that he and Jassy discussed the controversial JEDI cloud computing contract for the Defense Department in 2019 on Signal.

"There was a dispute with Microsoft Azure and AWS and the Department of Defense and Donald Trump putting his thumb on the scale, and it was a – you know, this could have been a very simple, you know, PR thing, but a sensitive one perhaps. I don't know," Bezos said.

Single question mark message

The FTC also drilled into whether Bezos had used his famous one-question mark emailing method on Signal. Bezos has a notorious habit of sending single question mark emails to his executives when there's a customer complaint or other company issues he's worried about. Those who receive the dreaded question mark email often have to drop everything and produce a well-crafted response on short notice.

Those one question mark emails often turn into serious business discussions later when the responsible team prepares its response. If Bezos had used the same communication method on Signal, it would imply he used the app for substantive company matters.

Bezos said he doesn't recall ever sending just a one question mark message on Signal, according to the transcript. He also disputed that the single character emails are "substantive," though the team's response to it "could be substantive" if it turns into a meeting with long reports. In fact, when the FTC lawyer said there's an "entire series of protocols" internally at Amazon on how to respond to those question mark emails, Bezos seemed confused.

"I'm not aware that there's an entire series of protocols," Bezos said. "That sounds a little dramatic to me."

"I don't know what that is"

In another transcript released recently, Jeff Blackburn, who previously ran Amazon's entertainment business, told the FTC that he used Signal at work to communicate with Bezos, Jassy, and Hopkins, among others. While he said he "probably" talked about Prime Video on Signal, his use was mostly limited to simple requests, like setting up a time for a phone call. He also said he didn't think he ever used Signal's disappearing message feature for texts about Prime Video.

But when the FTC lawyer showed a screenshot of a Signal thread with other Amazon execs that seemed to indicate he had set up a one-week auto-delete period, Blackburn said "I don't know what that is." One of the threads also appeared to show Blackburn discussing specific Prime Video shows and their value to the company. Blackburn wasn't clear on when or how he received legal guidance on document preservation. He said he "did not" know Signal messages were covered by those legal guidelines.

In a separate notice in 2022, filed last week, Amazon told the FTC that it had collected Signal messages from some of its top executives, including Bezos, Blackburn, and Jassy. None of the messages were relevant to the FTC's investigation, the company said.

However, Amazon told the FTC that there are no Signal messages on both Jassy and Blackburn's phones from the period before June 2021 and May 2021, respectively. The company was "unable to determine" why that's the case, but said it's possible Signal messages were deleted when they got new phones. Jassy had two phones, a Blackberry Key 2 and an iPhone XR, when they were scanned in January 2022. Blackburn's was an iPhone 12 Pro Max.

Do you work at Amazon? Got a tip?

Contact the reporter, Eugene Kim, via the encrypted-messaging apps Signal or Telegram ( +1-650-942-3061 ) or email ( [email protected] ). Reach out using a nonwork device. Check out Business Insider's source guide for other tips on sharing information securely.

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Maya Rudolph Channels Beyoncé and Madonna in ‘SNL’ Opening Number ‘Mother’

By Alison Herman

Alison Herman

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Maya Rudolph opened the Mother’s Day episode of “Saturday Night Live” with a tribute to mothers — in every sense of the term.

Hosting the sketch show’s penultimate episode of the season, Rudolph began her monologue by noting she’s a four-time mom herself. “But Maya, look — you’re not just a mom,” cast member Bowen Yang reminded her. “You’re mother ,” invoking the term’s use in queer slang to describe powerful, aspirational women. “You were the first to slay the house down boots, queen!”

Popular on Variety

Rudolph currently stars in “Loot,” the sitcom currently airing its second season on Apple TV+. Rudolph plays Molly Wells, a woman whose divorce from a Jeff Bezos-like billionaire inspires her to channel her wealth into nonprofit work. She also appears as a voice actor in “If,” the movie written and directed by John Krasinski that enters wide release on May 17.

Rudolph is hosting “Saturday Night Live” for the third time since departing the show. She first MCed in 2012 with musical guest Sleigh Bells, and again in 2021 with musical guest Jack Harlow. Rudolph has also made several cameos over the years, including as Vice President Kamala Harris.

Next week’s episode of “Saturday Night Live” will be Seasn 49 finale, featuring host Jake Gyllenhaal and musical guest Sabrina Carpenter.

Watch the sketch below:

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"What Matters More Than Your Talents" by Jeff Bezos speech transcript
A transcript of Jeff Bezos's speech delivered at Princeton University in 2010, where he shares his personal story of starting Amazon and his advice on how to balance gifts and choices. He explains how he discovered his passion for bookselling, how he faced challenges and opportunities, and how he chose to be kind over clever.
Jeff Bezos: What matters more than your talents
Jeff Bezos | Princeton University • May 2010. In this Princeton University graduation address, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos makes the case that our character is reflected not in the gifts we're endowed with at birth, but by the choices we make over the course of a lifetime. business; creativity;
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Read the full text of Amazon CEO & founder Jeff Bezos' commencement address to the Princeton University class of 2010. Full transcript of his May 30, 2010 commencement speech here: Try Rev and save time transcribing, captioning, and subtitling. As a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparents on their ranch in Texas.
2010 Baccalaureate Remarks
By Staff on May 30, 2010, 4:35 p.m. "We are What We Choose". Remarks by Jeff Bezos, as delivered to the Class of 2010. Baccalaureate. May 30, 2010. As a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparents on their ranch in Texas. I helped fix windmills, vaccinate cattle, and do other chores. We also watched soap operas every afternoon, especially ...
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J eff B ezos. Opening Statement to Congress on Amazon.com, Inc. delivered 29 July 2020, Washington, D.C. Audio of Address. Written Statement.pdf. [AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED: Text version below transcribed directly from audio] Thank you, Chairman Cicilline, Ranking Member Sensenbrenner, and Members of the Subcommittee: I was born into great wealth ...
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Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice: Jeff Bezos
At Princeton University, Founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos spoke about his early life. Recalling an incident, he shared what he learnt from it. "What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift. Kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy — they're given, after all. Choices can be hard.
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