Bronte Media

Caterina Fake, the co-founder of Flickr and Hunch, wrote an excellent blog post recently entitled “Working Hard is Overrated“. The point she was making was that in hindsight with her experience all the ‘hard work’ was actually fear and running around in circles worrying about what other people thought (competitors, investors, etc).

Now comes empirical evidence with this little Jeff Bezos chestnut in Ken Auletta’s book excerpt about Google that was run in this week’s New Yorker:

In being one of the four investors in Google’s initial angel financing round that stake is now worth $1.5bn at today’s prices. Bezos’ total net worth according to Forbes’ latest estimate was $6.8bn. Now that figure was as at the end of 2008 and Amazon’s stock has risen 75% since then.

But roughly one-sixth of Bezos’ wealth came in that one decision. The legacy and company he has created at Amazon is truly amazing, and perhaps he wouldn’t have even been able to have the opportunity to invest if he hadn’t already started that journey but it does go to show that life comes to down to just a few moments.