Word: told
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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There was a time when Bezos could say, "If I had a nickel for every time a potential investor told me this wouldn't work..." and then lapse off into head shaking. Now he follows that line with a wild, giggly laugh. No wonder: as of last week, Bezos had 200 billion nickels. A rich reward, to be sure, but how on earth can you compensate a man who can see the future? Perhaps by inaugurating him into that club of men and women selected for having had, "for better or worse," the biggest impact in a given year. Welcome...
...Anyway," he adds quickly, self-deprecatingly, in probably the same way he told people his start-up had only a 30% chance of success, "it'll be a long time before we build a lasting company." And then he laughs and laughs and laughs...
...very next day in Los Angeles. He flew out and spent the weekend roaming the aisles and taking a crash course in the business. Everything he learned encouraged him. The two big wholesalers for books were Ingram and Baker & Taylor. "So I went to their booths and told them I was thinking of doing this." Books, it turns out, are among the most highly databased items on the planet. The wholesalers even had CD-ROMs listing them. It seemed to Bezos as if all the stuff "had been meticulously organized so it could be put online...
Bezos figured that the average Net start-up had a 1 in 10 chance of success; he gave himself a 30% chance. "That's actually a very liberating expectation, expecting to fail," he says. That's exactly what he told his first investors--family and friends: "I think there's a 70% chance you're going to lose all your money, so don't invest unless you can afford to lose...
While Americans may be unaccustomed to being told they're in danger of being blown to bits on the streets of their own cities, raising public awareness can actually help foil terrorist plots. "Washington is treading a middle path between spreading panic and making the public more alert," says TIME correspondent William Dowell. "Of course it's possible that nothing will happen, but there's also obviously a real threat. The guy traveling with Ressam remains at large, and Ressam's travel bookings suggest he was planning to leave the bomb equipment for someone else to assemble." In public...