đź’¨ Good Friday morning ...
đź’¨ Good Friday morning ...
Jeff Bezos gave a master class on life and business onstage in Washington last night, with this keeper advice: "All of my best decisions in business and in life have been made with heart, intuition, guts, ... not analysis."
"Everything I have ever done has started small," Bezos added, drawing laughter at the 32nd anniversary dinner of the Economic Club of Washington, D.C.:
Amazon's president, CEO and chairman was interviewed at the Washington Hilton for 70 minutes by David Rubenstein, co-founder and co-executive chairman of The Carlyle Group (one of the world’s largest private equity firms), and president of the Economic Club.
Bezos, 54, owns The Washington Post, where today he'll cut the ribbon on a newsroom expansion to accommodate 850 journalists and 350 engineers. He drew applause with his defense of the press:
Turning to business best practices, Bezos said he sets his first meeting at 10 a.m.:
Bezos said he gets eight hours of sleep:
"All of our senior executives operate the same way I do. They work in the future, they live in the future."
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Jeff Bezos and his wife, novelist MacKenzie Bezos, said yesterday that their new Bezos Day One Fund will spend $2 billion on a) nonprofit organizations working on homelessness and b) creating a network of free, Montessori-inspired preschools for low-income areas.
These efforts combine charity with Silicon Valley methods and mindset:
And these gifts influence big social debates:
"President Trump insisted [yesterday] that he was 'under no pressure to make a deal with China,' signaling a readiness to escalate his trade war," the WashPost's David Lynch writes:
Be smart: "[R]epeated crowing about China’s financial woes is contributing to a nationalist backlash that may prolong the dispute, with the Chinese concluding that Trump is seeking more than just a level playing field for trade."
Waves slam the Oceana Pier and Pier House Restaurant in Atlantic Beach, N.C. (Travis Long/Raleigh News & Observer via AP)
Hurricane Florence, now Category 1, is making landfall in North Carolina with a life-threatening storm surge that pushed water inland for miles, and screaming winds that destroyed buildings in its path. AP reports.
Axios science editor Andrew Freedman:
Be smart, from Houston meteorologist Matt Lanza, who knows what slow-moving hurricanes can do:
"Since his appointment 16 months ago as special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III has granted no interviews and held no news conferences," the N.Y. Times' Michael Grynbaum points out:
Be smart: It's working. CNN reported this week: "Mueller's approval rating for handling the Russia investigation stands at 50% in a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS. That outpaces ... Trump's approval rating on the matter by 20 points."
Big picture on #MeToo era ... The damage of a misogynistic culture extends "well beyond the primary victims whose careers ... were irrevocably derailed," WashPost media columnist Margaret Sullivan writes on the Style front ('Media men, and how the world sees women"):
Be smart: "A media figure doesn’t have to show up for a business meeting in an open bathrobe to do harm, though that strange practice has turned out to be something of a leitmotif."
Facebook will expand its fact-checking operation to vet photos and videos, Axios' Sara Fischer writes:
Mark Zuckerberg writes in a 3,200-word Facebook post, "Preparing for Elections":
Yesterday's elections in New York ended the primary season with this big takeaway, AP's Bill Barrow writes: The political left has exploded since Trump's election.
Be smart ... Matt Bennett, co-founder of the centrist Third Way, emails:
At California Gov. Jerry Brown’s global climate summit in San Francisco this week, "some of the world’s biggest companies are in the spotlight as partners in tackling global warming," the L.A. Times' Tony Barboza writes:
"VW to stop making iconic Beetle next summer," AP reports:
"The last of the original bugs was produced in Puebla, Mexico, in 2003."
P.S. "The company plans to roll out an electric version of the old Bus in 2022 called the I.D. Buzz."
Thanks for reading. See you all weekend on Axios.com.