Jeff Bezos likes to say that it’s always Day 1 at Amazon. But now that the founding CEO is passing the baton to his lieutenant Andy Jassy, Day 2 may not be far away.
That might sound unfair, given that Bezos has defined Day 2 as “stasis, followed by irrelevance, followed by excruciating, painful decline, followed by death.” That seems a little extreme. But let’s face it, Jassy is stepping into shoes so big they aren’t available on Zappos. Bezos has built Amazon into a stunningly big conglomerate: Revenue grew 44% in the fourth quarter to $125.6 billion, bringing full-year revenue to $386 billion. Amazon is in so many businesses it’s hard to keep track, most obviously from e-commerce to Jassy’s public cloud empire to entertainment to advertising to logistics. Amazon employs 1.3 million people.