For those aspiring to start a business, one of the most challenging parts is not necessarily coming up with a good idea, but rather being willing to leave a stable career to take a chance that may not succeed. Even Jeff Bezos, who now owns a fortune of $357 billion, has faced such a decision.
Before founding Amazon, Bezos had a high-paying job at a hedge fund in New York. With the rise of the internet, he saw an opportunity to build a big business by selling books online, but he still hesitated about giving up his current career.
In a 2001 interview with the “Achievement Academy” ( Academy of Achievement ), Bezos said, “The framework I found that makes decisions extremely easy to make, which I call—only nerds would name it this way—‘The Regret Minimization Framework.’” This interview later went viral on social media.
"I want to project myself into the age of 80, look back on my life, and say, 'Alright, now as I reflect on my entire life, I hope to minimize the number of regrets I have.'"
Bezos said that his wife at the time, Mackenzie Scott, “100% supported” his decision, but one of the biggest challenges he faced was to resist short-term temptations, such as giving up an annual bonus. It was only when he thought from a long-term perspective that the decision became clear to him.
"If you can project yourself into the age of 80 and think about 'how will I be thinking at that time?' it can help you get out of some of the daily confusions," he added.
“I know that if I fail, I won’t regret it; but I also know that the only thing that could make me regret is not having tried at all, and I know that would haunt me every day.”
How Bezos turned a blank sheet of paper into Amazon
In retrospect, Bezos' decision to found Amazon seems obvious today – the e-commerce giant generated revenues of about $716 billion in 2025 and now ranks at the top of the Fortune 500 list. However, he says that building a company from scratch is far from that simple.
"The stage of starting from a blank page is one of the most difficult stages," Bezos said.
On his road trip from New York by car across the United States to Seattle, he drafted what would later become a roughly 30-page business plan for Amazon. However, he also realized that this document could not accurately predict how the business would develop; after all, the company began in his very own garage.
“A business plan won’t survive its first encounter with reality,” he said. “It’s always different; reality is never what the plan predicts. But the discipline of writing a plan forces you to think about certain issues and makes you more familiar with that environment mentally.”
Even the name of the company went through several trials and errors. Initially, Bezos registered the company as “Cadabra”, which was a parody of “abracadabra”. However, realizing that this name sounded too similar to “cadaver” (which means “body”), he changed it to “Amazon” three months later.
Even with meticulous planning and hard work, it cannot be guaranteed that a startup will become the next big company. Bezos said that entrepreneurs also need to recognize that timing and luck play an important role in transforming a small company into a larger one.
"There are many entrepreneurs, and many very smart and hardworking people, but few truly encounter that combination of planetary alignments that allow a small company to grow into a substantial enterprise," Bezos said.
Bezos says that Generation Z should go to college before starting a business.
Just as Bezos saw opportunities in the internet back in those days, the era of artificial intelligence has also brought another round of significant opportunities for new types of businesses. However, this does not mean that he believes young people should immediately put everything aside to start their own startups.
"It is possible to drop out of college at the age of 18, 19, or 20 and then become a great entrepreneur," Bezos said last year at the Italian Technology Week. "We have famous success stories, such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and so on. But these people are exceptions."
On the contrary, this 62-year-old individual has always believed that accumulating experience first can increase the chances of success for aspiring entrepreneurs. Jeff Bezos himself graduated from Princeton University in 1986 with a degree in engineering before entering the financial industry and later turning to entrepreneurship.
I founded Amazon at the age of 30, not 20. I believe that those extra 10 years of experience actually increased the likelihood of Amazon’s success, he said. “So that has always been my advice: I completed my college education, and I think that was very helpful for me.”
In the end, Bezos suggested that people should find a balance between enjoying the present moment and making decisions that will leave them satisfied when looking back on their 80-year lives.
"You should live for the present," Bezos said to the Achievement Academy. "I think what you need to do is to consider the long span of time ahead and make sure that the plans you make will ultimately satisfy you."
