In July 2021, Jeff Bezos announced he would step down as CEO of Amazon at the end of the year and become its executive chair. In his last letter to Amazon’s shareholders as CEO, Bezos talked about the company’s employees and customers, as well as biology, death, democracy, and tyranny.
“We all know that distinctiveness – originality – is valuable. We are all taught to ‘be yourself.’ What I’m really asking you to do is to embrace and be realistic about how much energy it takes to maintain that distinctiveness,” Bezos wrote. “The world wants you to be typical – in a thousand ways, it pulls at you. Don’t let it happen.”
“Being yourself is worth it, but don’t expect it to be easy or free. You’ll have to put energy into it continuously,” he added.
In later interviews, Bezos cited a desire to work on Blue Origin as a major reason for his stepping down as CEO. In December 2023, he told podcaster Lex Fridman that “most of my time is spent on Blue Origin, and I’m so deeply involved here now for the last couple of years.”
