20VC: Top Three Lessons from Working with Jeff Bezos for 23 Years at Amazon, How the Best Leader Hire, Fire, Prioritise and Make Decisions & How to Be Responsible for 1M Employees and Be a Rockstar Husband and Father with Dave Clark @ Flexport
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 17 July 2023
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dave Clark is the CEO of Flexport, the global freight forwarder and logistics platform that has now raised over $2.5BN to build the category leader. Prior to Flexport, Dave began his career at Amazon in 1999 as an Operations Manager, working his way up to become the CEO of Amazon’s worldwide consumer business in 2021. By the time Dave left, he was responsible for over 1 million employees. Dave spearheaded the launch of Amazon Robotics and grew the company’s logistics divisions to include Amazon’s own planes, trailers, and last-mile delivery vehicles through Amazon’s own delivery network (which today ships more packages than FedEx and UPS). Huge thanks to Ryan Peterson for some amazing question suggestions today.
In Today's Episode with Dave Clark We Discuss:
1. From Operations Manager to CEO @ Amazon:
- How did Dave Clark make his way into the world of startups with Amazon in 1999?
- What are 1-2 of his biggest lessons from spending 23 years at Amazon?
- What are 1-2 of his biggest takeaways from working alongside Jeff Bezos for 23 years?
2. How Big Leaders Make Big Decisions:
- What is Dave's decision-making framework when it comes to big decisions?
- What is the biggest decision Dave made that went wrong? How did it impact his mindset?
- How does Dave think through prioritisation as a leader today?
- What are the biggest mistakes founders make when it comes to focus?
3. How Big Leaders Hire Big Talent:
- What are 1-2 of Dave's biggest lessons on what it takes to acquire the best talent?
- Does Dave believe that people can scale with the scaling of the company?
- How does Dave think through the challenge of promoting internally vs bringing in external talent?
- Why does Dave like to hire people straight out of college? What are the benefits?
4. How Big People Deal with Big Problems: Kids, Money and Ego
- What are 1-2 of Dave's biggest lessons when it comes to parenting?
- How does Dave think about giving his kids the same hunger and ambition, when they are brought up in such affluent environments?
- How does Dave assess his own relationship to money? How has it changed over time?
- What does a truly great marriage mean to Dave? Where do so many go wrong in trying to find work-life balance?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I think what Jeff is good is he is one of the best simplifiers, if not the best simplifiers I've ever met. |
| 0:06.9 | He can context shift incredibly well. |
| 0:09.4 | He can quickly sort out the 90% that isn't hard. |
| 0:13.1 | He doesn't need to worry about because somebody will figure out. |
| 0:15.1 | And he can very quickly narrow down to the 10% that requires sort of his level of intellect or a senior level intellect to |
| 0:22.8 | figure out how to solve and what's most important. Welcome back to 20 VC with me, Harry Stebbings, |
| 0:27.9 | and this show is just freaking awesome. I mean, this is one of the best operators of the last two |
| 0:31.9 | decades. Check this out. When this guest left his last position, he was responsible for over |
| 0:37.0 | one million people, a million |
| 0:39.1 | people. Dave Clark, CEO of Flexport. I'm so excited to welcome today. Now, prior to joining Flexport, |
| 0:44.8 | Dave began his career at Amazon in 1999, and he worked his way up to become the CEO of Amazon's |
| 0:50.6 | worldwide consumer business in 2021. There, he spearheaded Amazon robotics and |
| 0:55.5 | grew the company's logistics divisions to include Amazon's own planes, trailers, last mile |
| 1:00.5 | delivery vehicles through Amazon's own delivery network. And I want to say a huge thank you to |
| 1:05.1 | Ryan Peterson and Kelly Cheeseman for some amazing question and suggestions today. But before we |
| 1:09.9 | dive into the show today, |
| 1:11.0 | this episode is brought to you by Teegas, the go-to research destination for bold investing. |
| 1:16.0 | Teegas curates expert insights, analysis and financial data to give you powerful perspective |
| 1:21.3 | for your investment decisions. With lightning fast access to over 60,000 transcripts across 20,000 companies, you'll discover a wealth |
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| 1:35.5 | and even model outcomes, all on Teegas. As a 20-minute VC listener, try it for free at teagas.com |
| 1:41.5 | forward slash growth. And speaking of tools we can't live without like Teegas there, |
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