I just interviewed the man who invented Amazon Prime.

He started a business worth $40 billion today and served on Amazon's board for 15 yrs.

Here are lessons from Bing Gordon that'll save you years of mistakes:

When you have a business idea, take action now before it dies.

• Write 1 paragraph about the idea

• Write a 4 slide business plan

• Write your 1st line of code
When you start a job, ask your boss 2 questions:

1) Who is the best boss you've ever had and what does that mean for me?

2) What does top 10% performance look like?
Hold yourself accountable for high achievement.

If you're a cab driver, drive the most miles

if you're a fisherman, get on the best boat.
How to succeed

• Be a learning machine.
• Find a way to maintain high energy
In college, you don't take classes for content.

You take classes for great professors.

Same with your job.

Pick a company for a great boss.
The best interview question:

"What's your strategy for learning?"
How to set goals:

1) Clear and unambiguous

2) Stretch, but not impossible

3) Under your personal control

4) Time sensitive + context relevant
Don't invite someone to be on your board that you wouldn't pay to have dinner with.
When pitching your startup, your goal is to share 1 insight to investors that they didn't know before.
If you want to help the next generation of business builders, retweet the first tweet below!

https://t.co/IfjYJJnl48
for more top-secret insights, follow me @chrishlad
if you really like this, check out my newsletter where I share frameworks, systems for success and wild business stories:

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"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."


We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.

Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)

It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.

Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".