Who better to talk about on Black Friday than Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Supposedly he’s now worth $100 billion.

I just finished watching this short 60 Minutes clip about Amazon from 1999. If you can’t see it below, click here.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjjUOemW-_Q?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

Amazon was founded in 1994, so this was 5 years in. Already the company had gone public and had a market cap of somewhere around $30 billion.

Now, keep in mind that this was right in the middle of the dot com bubble, but already Bezos was a billionaire on paper.

What is clear from the above clip is just how obsessed Bezos was and is on the long game (”I don’t go in for carpe diem”) and on his customers. Here he is worth quite a bit, but driving around in a Honda Accord. 

Bob Simons, the interviewer, pokes fun at him a few times for his reluctance to spend money. But Bezos says that it’s all about spending money on things that matter to customers and not spending money on the things that don’t.

That’s customer obsession.

P.S. The title of this post will make sense once you watch the video.