Jeff Bezos to employees: 'Amazon will fail' but we need to delay it
On the heels of Amazon’s mega announcement of building two more second headquarters in New York City and Arlington County, Virginia, and investing more than $5 billion to create jobs for more than 50,000 Americans, CEO and founder Jeff Bezos admits the whole company is doomed to fail one day.
“Amazon is not too big to fail,” Bezos is heard saying in a recording obtained by CNBC during an all-hands meeting with Seattle employees last week.
In fact, the billionaire admits he predicts that “Amazon will fail one day” and even “go bankrupt,” when an employee asked him about the company’s future and what he has learned by all the recent retail bankruptcies, including Sears and Toys “R” Us.
“If you look at large companies, their lifespans tend to be 30-plus years, not a hundred-plus years,” he said, adding that the true key to any business is to prolong that demise “for as long as possible” and for the company and its employees to “obsess over customers.”
"If we start to focus on ourselves, instead of focusing on our customers, that will be the beginning of the end," he added.
An Amazon spokesperson did not immediately respond to FOX Business’ request for comment on the report or to confirm Bezos’ comments.
But the comments do come at a time when many critics are expressing concern over Amazon growth in recent years and its expansion plans in the years ahead. Over the last eight years alone, the company’s workforce has grown 20-fold to over 600,000 employees and its stock price has more than quadrupled since 2013.
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