it is hard to imagine life without
amazon dot com
even for someone at my advanced age
after all where else can a few clicks of a mouse
take you from the latest novel by Toni Morrison
to an eighteenth-century addition up the works of John Locke
having stopped in power tools
and women shoes along the way yet the founder and chief executive officer of
the world's largest
e-tailer whose net sales surpassed 20 4.5 billion dollars in 2009
is only forty six-years-old an amazon dot com has only existed
since 1995 making it even younger
then the class of 2010 the moral of this story
is that the right idea in the right hands
at the right time can change the way we leave our lives the idea in this case
was harnessing the power up the nascent internet to create a virtual bookstore
up limitless proportions their hands
where those a bar speaker Jeff basis
a self-described nerdy commuter
to you computer science and electrical engineering major
who graduated from Princeton with highest honors
in 1986 and the time was 1994
when he and his wife Mackenzie total basal
subclass 1992 exchange the security on wall street. where they worked at DE
Shaw & Company
for the uncertain prospects up a dot com
start-up at Themis Jap points out failure
is an essential component innovation an invention
if you know it's going to work it's not an experiment
an amazon dot com was nothing
if not a grand experiment working on him provides tables in the garage at the
Seattle home
and using his parents saving the startup capital
Jeff 25 the horses that cause most young companies to fail
partly he admits sheer good fortune
but also because it isn't wavering determination
to create the world's most customer-centric company
and if he notes in his company's latest annual report
a .452 goal
than Amazon dot com has set for itself this year
360 up now will directly affect the customer experience
well the word revenue is used on only
eight occasions I do not advise you
to start off with 452
goals this year by the way but this is just wanna
the keys to Jeff 6s another live in is exceptional ability to marry commerce
and technology in creative way
in if she reinvented net and willingness to take the risks inherent
in this process indeed the history
a Bama Sonntag com is wanna daringly one such leap involve creating the capacity
to search inside the book sold by his company
not by designing a modest pilot project
by committing the resources to make it possible
to scour the text of more than a hundred and twenty thousand volumes
when this feature debuted in 2003
other innovations have included one-click shopping
online product reviews by customers and of course
the Kindle reading device which we test drove in three courses this fall
nearing the rapid growth of Amazon itself
the number of books available through the US Kindle Store top
460,000 in 2009
just two years after its launch
and there's no turning back our vision
is every book every printed
in any language all available in less than 60 seconds
jeff has stated an odd day shift from proposition to be sure
but as they'll albert Einstein once observed
if it first the idea is not absurd then there's no hope for it
perhaps the american academy of achievement summarized our speakers
impact bath
when it noted having already revolutionize the way the world
lies blocks Jeff basil's is now transforming the way we
read them as well I like to think the Princeton helped to lay the groundwork
for this revolution
dreamer and doer entrepreneur
engineer refreshingly
unassuming evening in the face of unimaginable success
geoff has done his alma mater proud it is a true
honor and pleasure to welcoming him back to old Nassau
today
as a kid
I spent my summers with my grandparents
on the ranch in Texas helps fix windmills
vaccinate cattle and do other chores
we also watch soap operas every afternoon
especially days of our lives my grandparents
belonged to a Caravan Club a group
airstream trailer owners who travel together
around the US and Canada and every few summers
we join the care we hit up the airstream
to my grandfather's car an off week ago
allying with 300 other
airstream adventurers I loved and worshipped
my grandparents and I really look forward to these trips
a one particular trip
I was about 10 years old I was rolling around
in the big bench seat back to 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 take any excuse to make
estimates in two minor arithmetic a calculator gas mileage
figure out useless statistics on things like grocery spending
I've been hearing an ad campaign about smoking
I can't remember the details
but basically the ad said every popper the cigarette
take some number of minutes of your life I think it might have been two minutes
per pop
at any rate a I decided to do the math for my grandmother
estimated the number of cigarettes per day
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 the car tapped my grandmother
on the shoulder and proudly proclaimed at two minutes per pop
you've taken nine years of your life
have a very vivid memory of what happened next
and it was not what I had expected I expected to be applauded for my
cleverness
am i refer tech skills Jeff you're so smart
you had to have made some tricky estimates
figure out the number of minutes in a year
do some division that's not what happened
instead
my grandmother burst into tears i sat
in the back seat didn't know what to do well my grandmother is crying
my grandfather who'd been driving in silence
pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway got out the car
and came round open my door waited for me to follow
was I in trouble my grandfather was a highly intelligent
quiet man he had never set a harsh word to me
maybe this was to be the first time or maybe
he would ask today get back in the car and apologize to my grandmother
I had no experience in this realm with my grandparents
in 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
chapter one day
you understand that it's harder to be kind
and clever but i wanna 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 gaps
I'm sure one of your guess is the gift to the 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 Admissions wouldn't have let you in your smarts will come in handy
because
you will travel and marbles we humans
applauding as we are will astonish ourselves
will invent ways to generate clean energy and a lot of it
Adam by Adam will symbol small machines the container cell walls and make
repairs
this month comes the extraordinary but
inevitable news that we've synthesized life in the coming years will not only
synthesize it but engineer to specifications
I believe you'll even see us understand the human brain
Jules Verne Mark Twain
Callao Newton all the curious from the ages
would have wanted to be alive most a ball
right now as a civilization
we will have so many gifts just is use individuals
have so many individual gifts as you said before me how you use these guess
and you take pride in your gifts for pride in your choices
I got the idea to start eMS on 16 years ago
I came across the fact that web usage
was growing at twenty three hundred percent per year
had never seen or heard have anything grew that fast
idea building an online bookstore
with millions of titles something that simply couldn't exist in the physical
world
was very exciting to me I just turned 30 years old
and I've been married for a year I told my wife Mackenzie
but I wanted to quit my job ago did this crazy thing
the probably wouldn't work since most startups
don't and I wasn't sure what would happen after that
Mackenzie also Princeton grad and sitting here in the second row
told me I should go for it as a young boy ahead
been a
garage inventor and invented in automatic gate closer
assessment filled tires solar cooker
didn't work very well have an umbrella in aluminum foil 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 buncha very smart people and had a brilliant boss I'm much-admired
I went to my boss and told him I was going to start a company
sign books on the Internet it took me on a long walk in Central Park
listen carefully to me and finally said
that sounds like a really good idea but it would be even better idea
for someone who didn't already have a good job
that logic made some sense to me
any convince me to think about it for 48 hours
before making final decision seen in that light
there 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 decision to not try at all after much consideration
I took the last 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 we use your guess
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
ease for a life of service
an adventure we willed
under criticism for you follow your convictions
you block it out when you're wrong
we apologize you guard your heart
against projection we
act when you fall in love you play it safe will you be a little bit
swashbuckling
when it's top 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
for you be kind
I'll hazard a prediction when you are eighteen-years-old
in a quiet moment a reflection
narrating for only yourself
the most personal version your life story
the telling
the will be most compact and meaningful
will be the series of choices you have made
in the and we are
our choices build yourself
a great story thank you
and good luck