Adam Selipsky

Andy Jassy wasn't only one of his longest tenure lieutenants, but the architect of Amazon's multi billion dollar cloud business, Amazon Web Services, a moonshot that helped transform Amazon into not just e commerce but enterprise Jugger dot Jass then needed to find his own successor, tapping a former colleague who helped grow a WS in its earliest days but had since left to run Seattle software giant Tableau his job to continue the reinvention of a WS and in

turn Amazon. Joining me on this edition of Bloomberg Studio one point oh with the view of the spheres from Amazon Headquarters, New AWS CEO Adam Slipski. Adam, thank you so much for Joe us. Thanks for having me. It's great to be with you. It's great to be here in front of the spheres and everything. Yes, are really unique biospheres with the hundreds of engangent plants from around

the world. It's a really special place. You worked for a WS for eleven years and then went on to become CEO of Tableau Software in then you get a call from Amazon to come back and run a WS as CEO. Tell me about that call. Well, I was having a one on one at at my prior company, and my Apple News alerts went off like everybody else's did.

And a Jeff Bezos has taking on a new role, and Andy Jason's taking on the CEO role of Amazon, And of course Andy and I worked shoulder to shoulder about twenty ft apart for eleven years, so of course I reached out and congratulated him and we started talking and um, you know, the conversation turned to just some of the possibilities and next thing I know a little while later, uh here I am back at Amazon, absolutely the lie I didn't honor to be the CEO of

AWS and helping to shepherd this, uh this amazing business for our customers in that process. Did you talk to Jeff as well? I had some communication, but it was you know, principally with Andyo. Of course was you knew the A of U S business best and of course was taking on the CEO role but yeah, there was you know, contact as you might expect with a small

handful of other people. So what did Andy tell you he wanted In the next chapter for a WS, Andy reminded me nothing I needed reminding, but that it has really still day one for AWS and for our customers. It is still so early in this business, and we shouldn't think that just because the business has grown rapidly, uh, or just because we're currently the leader in the in

the cloud, uh, that it's anything close to mature. And so he really reminded me that we have to stay hungry innovate as quickly as we ever have done in the past. You're about half a year into the job. What changed while you were gone that surprised you? Well, I think that's so many more customers have really adopted the cloud and really decided that they're they're going all in. So, I mean, it was a pretty decent sized business when I left, but it's really grown and the customer base

has really expanded. And so now we have very deep relationships at the CEO level, the ce IO level, across every country, every industry, every use case, and we're regularly interacting with the most senior people at our client organizations. So you were working at real networks in the early two thousands, and I understand you were offered a job at AWS without even really knowing what it was. I guess AWS was in stealth mode. It was very secret.

So it was it was, it was. It was hard that you know, the company didn't want to talk too much about it, but of course, you know, we had to talk a certain amount about it. So the call I got when something like, we have this initiative to turn the guts of Amazon inside out and expose it to other people, and it sounded intriguing, although I confessed

I didn't fully understand what that was all about. So I can amen and started talking to Andy and a few of the other senior leaders and eventually to Jeff, and I would have to say that even by the time I took the job, I thought, I mostly understand what they're talking about, and it sounds like a good idea, and I'm in. But I also was like, well, you know, we'll just have to see how it goes and uh and and you know, Amazon is a big, big place, and so I think we've got a lot of a

lot of intent to succeed here. And that's the thing that impressed me was Amazon really had the desire and the intent and the belief that this could be a really good business. AWS comes out of stealth mode and is the first to market with a cloud infrastructure service in two thousand and six. How important was that first start and and do you think AWS still has an

advantage today because of that? I think the time to market advantage that we had, which was probably honestly five to seven years head start before other companies really started to take this seriously, was an enormou Frankly, it was um just one of the biggest things that happened to us in the early years because at the beginning a lot of people didn't get it. I would get asked a lot at two thousand and six, so what does

this have to do with selling books? And I even had to slide with the kind of a pile of books on it and a question mark next to it, and the answer was, it has nothing to do with selling books. But the technology which enables us to sell books, being global, being at a massive scale, being secure, being low cost, being highly performant. All that technology has everything to do with offering these types of services. Externally. Now AWS isn't a scrappy startup anymore, and you do have

big rivals. Even though AWS is still the leader, Microsoft and Google are big rivals. How do you make sure that being big doesn't slow you down. It's a great question because we are currently the leader, and I mean depending on which you know, third party, you you you look at, we're probably a little bit more than twice as big as as as number two. And it's really important to continue to act as if you know, we're insurgents and to be insurgents and not to start to

act like incumbents. And I like to talk about actually managing the business. We want our senior leaders to be managing product and managing customers. And I think as you get bigger and you put more and more layers into your company, it's it's all too frequent that you start managing math, you start managing ratios and percentages and growth, and I think it's it's a real disease if you if you stray away from really focusing in a deep way on the product you're building and in a deep

way on what your customers are telling you. And so we try and organize both with our org structure as well as just with with our culture and what we choose to focus on, and really making sure that everybody is thinking about one or both of those two things, product and customers. And if you keep even the most senior leaders engaged at that level, then all of a sudden, you you maintain the urgency and you keep acting like an insurgent. We got to feel that urgency every day,

So keep acting like an insurgent. That's the motto. Absolutely, and structure yourself and build a culture that allows you to It's one thing to say it, but it's easy to say it, but it's much harder to put in place enabling mechanisms that enable you to do so. And

we focus a lot of effort on those mechanisms. Now, um, do you think the cloud keeps getting bigger and that AWS and Microsoft and Google just get bigger pieces of an ever expanding pie, or at some point does it become a zero sum game and that fight for market share becomes more brutal and more bloody. Well, this is a very large market segment. And if you look at global I T spend, it's it's in the trillions of dollars. I've seen estimates like three trillion dollars, doesn't really matter

how many trillions it is. It's very, very large. And we've always believed that this was too good a market segment opportunity for the really to only be one winner.

And sure enough you've seen robust competition emerge and we all compete vigorously, but uh, it is the segment is just growing so rapid Leah, that I think, uh, really, for us, we believe that you know, the winning business strategy for a long time to come, and I would maintain forever is to focus not on the competitors, but to focus maniacally on customers and wake up every day understanding exactly what it is that they need us to build next, and then work backwards from there, back internally

to how can we build those things? And if we if we do the best job at building the most quickly the things that are most important for our customers, then I'm really not worried about what the competitors will do. This is my conversation with Adam Selipski, CEO of AWS, coming up insight into the newly minted CEOs relationship with Amazon CEO Andy Jasey and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also an update on an AWS investigation into allegations of discrimination

and bias at the company. I'm Emily Jang. This is Bloomberg Studio at one point. Oh, stay with us. You worked ten feet away from Andy Jase in the early days. Tell us something about the Amazon CEO that no one knows but you. You're gonna get me in trouble. We has you know, I grew up in Seattle, and uh Andy coming from New York has this fascination I don't understand with with New York sports teams. So I've had to endure that for that for a lot of years.

Uh new Yorkers. Yeah, so what are you gonna do? Although he's you know, he's he's I think, come, come, come to adopt you know, some of the Seattle teams, particularly the new hockey team, the crack in here as he should exactly. Um So, how do you expect Andy will be different from Jeff or how has Andy already been different from Jeff? Well? I think you know, we're all different as leaders. Um, I think it's all important that we it's it's important that we all bring our

own stamp to it and and operate within ourselves. Uh I don't think I would be a very good Andy. Uh. I don't want to presume, but I would assume that Andy would wouldn't be a great Jeff because you know,

Jeff's Jeff. Andy's Andy and UH and I'm me. So I think that uh Andy will certainly bring a great depth of experience from AWS, which is, you know, one important part of the business, and uh will having operated that business for so long, and I expect that will also give him an opportunity although he was involved in other parts of Amazon, certainly for for for a number of years. Uh, we'll be able to bring a fresh perspective to the whole company, just as I hope to

bring to AWS. And I think that fresh perspective is often helpful. I think, uh, just the mere act of change is useful for for the business, for customers, for employees, and just to shake things up a little bit. So I think, just a fresh perspective. How will you be different from Andy? Well, I think that the world around this is changing so so much that we're going to

have to be different. It doesn't matter what we did yesterday and right after I joined, we actually added to new leadership principles, which is very exciting ones around striving to be Earth's best employer, and the second around focusing on the fact that that success and scale bring broad responsibility.

And those are things about which I personally am very passionate, and so I really personally look forward to digging in and helping the company to figure out what are those things that we have to figure out where can we innovate to to be Earth's best employer? And then also to figure out externally, what can we do to to really be great citizens of our local communities, to be great citizens of our national communities, and to be great

citizens of the global community. And I'm I'm I care a lot about those things, as a lot of other people do here, but I plan to put a good amount of energy and time and folk because hopefully help Amazon innovating all of those areas. How closely do you work with Andy day to day? Does he, you know, regularly weigh in on AWS decisions or not? Uh? Well, he's he's got a pretty broad scope of things to worry about now, so he's got a pretty uh, pretty

intense day job, I believe. Uh So he's really folkused across the company as you would expect him to be. But that being said, obviously AWS remains an important part of Amazon, and so we touch based regularly, be it in person or you know, via email, just on the most important things going on in the business. Does Jeff ever weigh in on AWS decisions? Yes, I mean really from the beginning, Jeff was involved at the very very beginning at some of the most fundamental decisions. How do

you price e C? Two? You know, what do you name as three? What does the detailed page look like? Obviously, over time, um, we the business grew, and but at this Jeff was always available when we needed him. And uh, I certainly anticipate that will be the same going forward. So is he still available now and what do you what do you understand that jeff priorities are well, let's let's just speak to his own priorities. But but but certainly

Jeff has been available when Uh. For example, we've been doing our our our annual planning cycle, as many companies have, and it's been great to have have have Jeff, you know, weigh in on really and where we're heading for the next year and beyond, and to just make sure it's easy to get focused on the details of the business and it's it's great to have multi multiple people who can help you pick your eyes up a little bit.

Now you joined AWS in the middle of a pandemic, you came back to a w S in the middle of a pandemic that's hopefully moving into the rear view mirror. Maderna is one of AWSS biggest customers. If it weren't for the cloud, if it weren't for a WS, would we have had a vaccine as quickly as we did, I've got to tell you, But it's been an absolute privilege to for us to work with Maderna because what they're doing, obviously is literally life saving, and they've been

so innovative and so creative. So Darna took a drug development process to get to the to a vaccine candidate. That process would typically have taken them twenty months, and doing that on a WS and conjunction with all the the innovation on their side, reduced that twenty months to forty two days. Forty two days to get the the vaccine candidate, the m m R and a vaccine candidate

for for COVID nineteen and UH. That was really um running on on running multiple parts in moderna on a w S. So, uh, if you look at the drug design part, they had their their drug design studio running on AWS all the way to manufacturing with the new digitized manufacturing that they call their their digital Manufacturing platform.

So it's really end to end and the ability to use massive amounts of resources and to pick the exact type of service and capability for for for each part of the job, and and and to really bring the full set of resources to bear in addition to not having to focus on the in the infrastructure and the technology and rather letting you know, moderna focus on on the all important job of drug discovery. So working in partnership, it was was just magnificent to uh, to see what

they accomplished. Since you joined a WS, a number of long time AW left S leaders have moved on to Microsoft to strive to Tableau. Does that concern you, Well, actually, retention has has been very good. If you you mentioned the senior leaders. If if you look at the VP plus ranks, the VP and above ranks at Amazon, the average tenures is over a decade, over ten years, so

that's actually very very strong retention. So of course you're always going to have some level of people coming and people going and at the end of the day, that's actually healthy for the business. You want new perspectives to come in, of course, in the right proportion. Amazon has opened an investigation after five fifty employees supported a petition

claiming a culture of discrimination, harassment, bullying, and bias. What's the status of this, Well, we are incredibly focused and I personally believe it's incredibly important to really have a a very diverse, inclusive, and equable environment and we're going to uh make sure that whatever it takes that we've got that. So we believe that we're really doing a

lot of things to uh to deliver on that. And I've got a lot of innovative efforts around bringing in a diverse workforce, which we have to have both because we're gonna serve our customers best they're diverse, we have to match that diversity. And also I just believe it's our responsibility and it's the right thing to do. Any time there is any possibility that things are not something is not gone the way we wanted to, we're going

to investigate it thoroughly. That's what we're in the middle of doing in this case, and we'll make sure that we're operating in a way that's consistent with our values and and that's that's always the only goal. If you could rewind to the W two thousands, the earliest days of of a WS, is there anything you would have done differently to build an inclusive culture, to start with a more inclusive culture, to make sure that it didn't become a you know, a boys club. Uh, well, I

I I don't think that's what we have. Um. I think that we do have a really fun, exciting innovation led an inclusive culture. And that being said, these are hard problems. You know, we I think We've done a lot, but we we are nowhere close to where we need to be. We're gonna be restless and dissatisfied with our our progress on d E and I, just as we are with every other part of our part of our business. You're listening to my conversation with a WS CEO Adam Salipsky.

Up next, how AWS is navigating some of the most challenging issues in corporate America from privacy to security. And we look into the future, will Amazon have a role in the metaverse. I'm Emily Chang. This is Bloomberg Studio at one point. Oh, stay with us. A WS has the biggest trove of sensitive corporate data in the world. I'm curious how you think about the balance between data and privacy and freedom and civil liberties in the modern era.

I mean, there are governments, there are nation states around the world that want that information. Hackers and criminals want that information. Well, we're very clear to start with that our first job is security. We often say security is job zero. It was on the first page of our of our operating plan pretty much every year, every year that I can remember. But what about when governments requests

that information so subpoena that information. Sure, well, we are very clear that our customers data is their data, so the data belongs to our customers. Not everybody operates that way. We we are not going to look at customers data. We are not going to compete against our customers using

their data. Their data is their data. And furthermore, we have all sorts of architectural best practices that our customers should be and are using for any sensitive data and and so a lot of that really relies around encryption. And so we built a lot of different encryption capabilities so that any sensitive data and which could leak for any reason, be to a government, be it to a hack, or be it to anyone else, any form of security breach,

that it's encrypted and useless to anybody else. Given the the the broad array of encryption solutions that we that we provide, it's actually very doable and powerful for our customers to to safeguard their data. That way, Mark Zuckerberg is making a big bet on the metaverse. Is AWS going to have a role in the metaverse? I think a but yes, already has a big role in the metaverse.

So I think the cloud enables the metaverse. So if you if you think about all of the compute capacity, all of the storage, all of the machine learning which is required to create compelling and delightful end user experiences in the metaverse, a lot of that is already today

running on AWS. So um, if you take Epic Games for example, so Epic runs Fortnite, you know, massively popular game, fifty million users worldwide, and Epic runs almost everything on AWS, from the back end servers to the analytics and and everything in between. So I think that's a great example of the of the metaverse at work and all that's happening today on aws and we participate. That's only gonna grow really rapidly in the future. How big do you

think it's going to be? Uh? Such an interesting sentence. The metaverse is real and yet it's virtual at the same time. I think that if we continue to do do what we've always done, which is to provide a technology platform that allows organizations to transform, then these gaming and entertainment and social media and other other companies will be able to do what they do best, which is focus on innovating on behalf of their end users. And I think that the metaverse and in many other areas,

will will will be rich with inventions. So this next conversation will have will happen in the spheres in the metaverse. That that's where we'll next meet That that could be I'll meet you in the metaverse, all right, see you there. Now. I know that climate change, you know, and stopping climate change and your data center footprint is a big passion of yours. How fast will Amazon's data centers get to

carbon neutral? Amazon is already the largest purchaser of renewable energy in the world, and we're we intend to be renewable energy by the we originally said we actually accelerated that by five years. And that's part of our our broader Climate Ledge that Amazon created and to which we've now gotten two hundred other organizations to sign on to. And uh, the Climate Pledge is to be uh nets or a carbon by ten years ahead of the Paris of Court targets. So we know how to do some

of that. Other part are going to require invention, but we really look forward to it and I think it's it's it's uh, it's one of the most important things we can do for the for our generation. Amazon count some of the biggest oil and gas producers as its customers. Isn't that a contradiction should you be kicking them off

your platforms? Those customers are trying to get to sustainable business models, which rely on a new energy sources, and so many of those customers are figuring out how do they get to win, how do they get to solar,

how do they get into batteries? Uh, all new business models relying on renewable energy, and I think rather than abandoning them and having them uh maybe dig in more on on fossil fuel, if we can enable them to to move faster, to be more innovative and to be more agile in figuring out new business models, new technical solutions, experimenting, failing fast and moving on to the next next idea. Then the whole world will get to to the renewable

energy solutions that we need. At this year's Reinvent conference, it'll be the first time that Andy Chassie is not giving the keynote. You will be give us a preview. What can we expect to hear? We're gonna have a lot of really exciting announcements. So I think across our service portfolio you'll see that we have a lot of exciting partner announcements. Partner ecosystem still remains to this day so important to what a WS is doing, and we

have some great announcements lined up for that. Uh. And then I think people are gonna wanna see that we're making it easier and easier for them to consume the cloud and to work with AWS. And so we're going to continue to in addition to building more powerful basic capabilities, we're continue to make it easier and easier in a variety of ways to interact with AWS. Adam Selipsky, CEO of a w S, thank you so much for joining us on this edition of the show. Thank you, Emily,

I appreciate it. Bloomberg Studio at one point I was produced by Lauren Ellis. Our managing editor is Daniel Culbert Soup, with production assistance from Mallorie Abelhausen and Matt Tomlin. If you like our show, please share it or write a review wherever you get your podcasts. And I'd like to thank our longtime producer and editor Kevin Hines for his incredible work on so many episodes of this show. We will miss you. I'm Emily Changing, your host and executive producer. This is Bloomberg