A CEO has revealed the major differences between working for Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
A mogul in his own right, Lyft CEO David Risher spent over 10 years working for two of the most successful businessmen in the world.
Risher has since revealed that he learned a lot from Gates and Bezos, even using lessons he’d been taught by Gates when he first took on the top job at Lyft back in 2023.
At Microsoft, Risher had worked as a general manager in charge of the Access database, whereas at Amazon, he was the senior vice president of retail.
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In a letter he wrote to Lyft employees as he joined the company, Risher said: “I joined Microsoft in the early 90s because I was fired up at Bill Gates’ vision of software taking over the world; under my leadership, Microsoft Access grew from nothing to the market-share leader, and then I led the development of Microsoft’s earliest web properties.
“After Microsoft, I joined Amazon when it was a small internet bookstore and worked for Jeff Bezos to grow it to a $4B everything store. (Jeff’s line to me as he was recruiting me in 1996: “I think if you do your job well, we might someday be a $1B company.” Turns out he underestimated what we could do together!)”
He continued: “From Microsoft, I learned how to compete. At the time, competition was the energy drink that drove Microsoft. I drank all the Gatorade.
“From Amazon, I learned how to obsess over customers. Everything starts there.”
Speaking to Fox Business last year, Risher said: “[Gates] just very honestly, and frankly, very directly said, ‘I don’t spend any of my time thinking about Excel because I know that right now we’ve got [around] 60% market share, and I know that’s going to go to 80 or 90 ... I don’t have to worry about that. I don’t have to think about that.”
In a letter Risher wrote to his shareholders in April, the CEO said: “Every six weeks or so, I open my Lyft Driver app and hit the road. It’s the best way to understand the experience of drivers, to pick up on frustrations we can improve upon, and to talk to riders. I love every minute of it.”
He went on to add: “Over the years, I’ve made mistakes on both ends — avoiding the work of diving into a troubled area, swooping down on issues that don’t matter, the works, but I’ve never met a great leader who isn’t curious about the details.”