It’s still “Day One” for America
Old Glory of the 4th of July
It’s Still DAY ONE for America
This is the title of the speech Jeff Bezos presented to Congress 26 years after launching Amazon reflecting on his vision and the American dream…
Determination comes with the Bezos name:
(To paraphrase) My mother Jackie had me at age 17 in high school. Its was not popular to be pregnant in high school in Albuquerque in 1964. Grandpa fought the principal to allow her to finish her diploma. She was determined to get a college education and took classes that allowed me to be there. In college she met my adoptive father, Miguel Bezos. He was 16 when he came to the United States as a refugee from Cuba. He arrived in America alone and didn’t speak a word of English. His parents thought he would be safer here. His mom imagined America would be cold, so she made him a jacket sewn entirely out of cleaning cloths, the only material they had on hand. We still have that jacket; it hangs in my parents’ dining room.
Growing up in the South West, I learned a lot of life lessons from Grandpa Gise on his ranch, to take on hard problems and invent solutions to get to a better place. Because of Pa Gise I became a garage inventor, my mom spent countless hours driving me to and from Radio Shack, sometimes up to 3 times per day.
“The concept for Amazon came to me in 1994.The idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles- something that simply couldn’t exist in the physical world- was exciting to me.”
Back then most people didn’t know what the internet was, including my parents who invested their life savings in the launch.
“Unlike many other countries in the world, this great nation we live in supports and does not stigmatize entrepreneurial risk-taking. Amazon’s success was anything was preordained… It took a lot of smart people with a willingness to take a risk with me, to stick to our convictions, for Amazon to survive and ultimately thrive.”
A “Day One” Company
The early years of Amazon involved 12-hours days where my wife and I would crawl on our hands and knees on the concrete floor of our Seattle home garage, scrambling to fill book orders, all the while thinking, how to better serve our customers.
“Since our founding, we have strived to maintain a “Day One” mentality at the company. By that I mean approaching everything we do with the energy and entrepreneurial spirit of Day One. Even though Amazon is a large company, I have always believed that if we commit ourselves to maintaining a Day One mentality as a critical part of our DNA, we can have both the scope and capabilities of a large company and the spirit and heart of a small one.
(As the largest selling platform in existence, the company still looks to the garage days as an inspiration for thrift and resourcefulness in the quest to be the world’s most customer-obsessed company.)
“It’s not a coincidence that Amazon was born in this country. More than any other place on Earth, new companies can start, grow, and thrive here in the U.S. Our country embraces resourcefulness and self-reliance, and it embraces builders who start from scratch. We nurture entrepreneurs and start-ups with stable rule of law, the finest university system in the world, the freedom on democracy, and a deeply accepted culture of risk-taking.”
(No matter the challenges we face as individuals or a nation)- “the rest of the world would love even the tiniest sip of the elixir we have here in the US. Immigrants like my dad see what a treasure this country is- they have perspective and can often see it even more clearly than those of us who were lucky enough to be born here.”
“It’s still Day One for this country, and even in the face of today’s humbling challenges, I have never been more optimistic about our future.” End quote.
America is a start-up and her business is unlocking human potential.
As long as you and I wake up each morning, dreaming the biggest dream, holding a vision up as a standard, and pursue it with relentless optimism and enthusiasm- then it’s still Day One for this country.
