Jeff Bezos says he does not want any employee at Amazon celebrating what was never really…
Jeff Bezos has just been handed the one milestone most founders would frame and hang on a wall, and his response was to wave it off. Speaking to Fortune from the original door-slab desk he built in his Bellevue garage in 1995, now sitting in his Washington, D.C., study, the Amazon founder said bigness was never the objective. “I don’t want us to take pride in being big,” he said, adding that the pride should sit with serving customers, and that growth follows from doing that well. The comment lands as Amazon takes the No. 1 spot on Fortune’s Global 500, making it the largest company in the world by revenue and ending Walmart’s decade-plus run at the top. Bezos told Fortune the outcome was not a complete surprise, which is a very Bezos way of saying he had done the math. Amazon is now valued at about $2.6 trillion and is widely expected to become the first company to cross $1 trillion in annual revenue.
