Transcript
0:04 What drives us every day is giving you all the freedom to invent. There's a bunch of launches that AWS is very excited about. We're witnessing an explosion of invention with AI. It is incredible to feel the energy as you walk through the halls here in Las Vegas. Dive deep into the details and start inventing. And we're just getting started.
0:34 Please welcome the CEO of Amazon Web Services, Matt Garmin. How >> you going, Matt? >> Good to see you. Thanks for being here. Nice to see you. Yeah. >> Well, hope you hope you haven't been too busy this week. >> No, just been hanging out. I was out by the pool. thanks. >> Let's see. I've seen you on Jim Kramer. I've seen you on TBPN. no poolside in either of them. >> No. No.
1:05 >> How many of these media things have you done so far this week? >> I've done a bunch. But it's awesome. It's it's such a great opportunity. it's so awesome to have all of our customers here. and and as I think I just said in the the the thing on the video and and hopefully you guys have experienced the the energy and excitement that we have when you get this many people together not just to learn about AWS but they learn about our partners. They learn from each other.
1:28 it's a cool opportunity then. it's been fun to build and this is our 14th year. I remember the first year here, I think we had two or three thousand people and I thought it was crazy that two or three thousand people would get together to talk about our technology and we've grown since then. >> When you had told somebody back in the do era Yeah. >> that in 2025 Amazon would be convening 60,000 developers >> in Las Vegas.
1:59 >> Yeah. like >> >> it's a lot of books or something. What's the I distinctly remember when we launched AWS we we went to you know I can't even remember what conference it was but like we had one of these like booths right that we were saying like hey we're starting a new thing called Amazon web services people are like >> why would I buy computers from a book seller like they were very confused for for a while and we eventually got them over that but yeah >> all right so I wanted to start today we've been talking a lot about AI I wanted to ask you if you could honestly put yourself in the headsp space of summer 2022 before the chat GPT moment.
2:35 And if I had come up to you and said, "Hey, Matt, we're going to talk on stage at the 2025 reinvent." what do you think we'll be talking about? What would your honest answer have been? >> yeah, it probably wasn't going to be AI and agents necessarily. you know but but I will say it it may have been AI because I think we were at the time even in 2022 like if you go back another 10 years maybe not but in 2022 we were very excited about the potential of AI and saw where it was going to go.
3:01 Do I think it was going to be as it is right now? Of course not. and I don't think anyone would have projected exactly that but but it wouldn't have surprised me that it was a main focus of what we were doing. We already had SageMaker. We already had a bunch of the things that we were building. So, I wouldn't have been surprised that if it, in fact, I probably would have guessed it was bigger than it would have been in 2022, that it was a bigger focus for people today because we saw some of the early machine learning benefits, if you will, of of the technology, but nothing like it. You know, I think there's there's some other areas that I would have expected that have actually grown faster that haven't. and they'll get there, but I would have thought robotics would have grown faster than they have today. Actually, it's gone a little bit slower than I would have thought. in fact, I think I can't remember what we we actually launched a service that was early. It was just ahead of its time called RoboMaker at the time that didn't take off because it was just the robotics weren't ready for it. But but yeah, I think that's that's some of it. But I will say it's it's you know, it's it's that and I some of the the challenges that our customers are facing today are remarkably consistent. you know, it's you know, we we often say today less than 15 to 20% of workloads have actually moved to the cloud from onrem and still still and it look if you if you looked at you know I don't if you saw on Monday we blew up a bunch of servers if you saw that video. but that's all about like getting rid of tech debt and helping people migrate off of mainframes and migrate off of like that is all the same. Like people back in 2022 definitely wanted to get off Windows and VMware and mainframes and and and they have a lot of them have and there's still a bunch there.
4:33 >> It's funny, you know, one of the principles every time Ben and I make an episode we try and you know, we're only studying the greatest companies in the world. We try and take you know something from every company we study and just, you know, bring it to our little operation here. And one of the many that we brought from Amazon and Jeff is what's not going to change >> and like you know we're going to spend a lot of time talking about AI and agents and all that but like >> even if that hadn't happened >> people are still going to be moving to the cloud.
5:00 >> They are and years from now people still actually I was it's funny some people were saying like hey you know what I have a bunch of these like enterprises and I think there's some analysts were saying this and they're like you know do you think next year when you come here like everybody will have moved AI? I was like, "No, no." Like, look, >> only 20% of people have cloud >> 20 years and everyone hasn't moved to the cloud yet. And for those people whose data is still locked in a mainframe, like they're definitely not jumping in and getting value out of AI yet.
5:26 >> When is the last year you will be moving people to the cloud? >> I don't It's not going to be 2026. I'll tell you that. Like it's there is a long runway ahead of us for sure. H give us a sense I don't know how if you want to frame it in terms of like revenue or workloads or compute how much of AWS right now are AI things AI applications versus >> yeah it's I I actually think that that question in some ways is getting harder and harder to answer over time right I can tell you that AI and bedrock is a multi-billion dollar business I can tell you like we sell GPUs but like I I do think that that is a in some ways kind of unersells the impact of it right let's say you have an application like workday that has like AI assistants in it and agent tech workflows behind the scenes and and etc. Like is that an AI application? Does all of workday count?
6:18 Do you just want the GPUs that they're running? Like what counts as AI? And so we see a massive, you know, if everybody's storing stuff in S3, right? And some of it's vector embeddings, but some of it is referencing their objects and it's driving them to get more of their objects into S3. Is that an AI workload or not? Like I do I think and actually I introduced this in my keynote last year and I think it's more true than it's ever been that it really is this concept of inference is a building block there there were there are AI applications right arvin talked about perplexity that is an AI application like pretty much but I think increasingly every application will just have AI in it there's not like a database application there's not like a storage I mean there are fright but there but but >> everything's just a database with a crowd wrapper on top >> but but you know like there's these are just components that you go to build interesting customer experiences or value or whatever. And when you think about Chase Payments, like is that a database application? No. It's like an interesting payments application that does really cool things. Is it going to have AI in it? Yeah. And is it making an AI application? I don't know. And so I I think that like today it's definitely a multi-billions business for us. It's a huge tailwind to our business, but it's not just for the quote unquote like model running, right? It's all of those pieces. It's people are driving to the cloud faster to get value from the that AI. their applications are getting more usage and so it needs more CPUs. We're using more graviton. All of those kind of pieces.
7:40 And so >> there's a question we want to ask you. I think this is the right time to ask it. I apologize in advance. It's not very well baked. So maybe you can help us. >> We're happy to like we can workshop it here. >> Yeah, we'll workshop it live. That's right. AI is the first cloudnative paradigm shift I think. Like you can't have AI be an AI company and not be in the cloud. There's just no option. Like yeah, sure you could install a model on your, you know, Mac Pro or something, but like you're not going to you're not going to build a company like that. It must be in the cloud.
8:11 >> >> how does AWS's like job change in that? like when you're working with AI companies, like are you a different or a a bigger part of that company than you are with like a SAS company that's like, hey, I'm we're on AWS as our infrastructure. >> I don't know. I haven't thought about that. I would say in my mind there are companies that are all in on AWS. There are companies who have their like or or the cloud generally, but AWS, they have their kind of towin and then there's ones that are kind of moving the majority of their workloads there. And there's probably like a a continuum of those, but you know like I don't know that a AI native company is and their relationship with us is materially different than than Gregs and Netflix. I mean they're they're 100% in on AWS.
8:56 They have been for many and and like when they need features like they talk to us like when they need functionality, when they need capability. they're great partners. We learn a ton from them. And that's true for AI companies and and and Netflix. And you know could Netflix go and build data centers and run all of that stuff? Like I guess so probably. But, you know, but but we we have a great partnership and they haven't needed to.
9:15 >> But it's just like even, you know, when you look at the foundational model companies like they need cloud like they're not building their own, you know, like they need it. >> Yeah. It's Yeah. I mean, they they I do think that there's a I don't know if they need it, by the way. Like I I think some of these large companies OpenAI has talked about going and building Stargate or whatever it is. They can build data centers. now, you know, are they going to run them as efficiency? Is it a good use of their capital? Like all of those things are all good questions that I think lots of people ask and and and and those are open questions but it's possible right there's nothing that's impossible for them to do but I don't know why they would right and they get a lot of benefits from the cloud they get a lot of benefits from the customers also being in the cloud right and that that is really powerful I think particularly when you move away from consumer applications for consumer applications like you get a lot of benefits of scale you get a lot of benefits of the technology pieces when you get to enterprise applications you also also get benefits because your customers are in that same cloud and you can deploy those models into your VPC.
10:11 You can be in a secure environment and there is a lot of really great flywheel things that happen there where those enterprises trust AWS. We trust they trust us with their data security. They trust us with a bunch of those things that we've built up over the last 20 years where then a new startup that you know has a new model that's exciting can put it on bedrock and just get some of that trust level which is which is cool for because it takes a while to build that >> and access the enterprise.
10:34 >> That's right. Yeah, totally. >> So, David asked a question earlier that I want to reframe for you. So, I used to be a web developer. I I haven't written code. I actually me and Claude wrote some code earlier this week, but I haven't like sat down in a text editor and myself written >> you actually built >> the good news is not many people are going to do that going forward. >> That's true. Acquired has never had a like piece of software really and you we now have like a software >> you know a cloud generated software >> pile of scripts that I wrote to >> >> I'm not going to ask you where you deployed them but I hope it was >> they're not deployed.
11:09 >> Okay. >> We'll talk afterwards and we'll get you we'll get you to account manager. Okay. the it used to be five years ago extremely obvious if you said how do you build a web app? Like it was a pretty settled frontier. There's very off-the-shelf components. Everybody's sort of using the same paradigms. There's languages, there's frameworks, there's S3 and there's EC2. And David came up to me earlier today. He's like, do you know how to build an AI app or like an AI company? I was like, I don't actually know what the core building blocks are.
11:41 I mean, I know there's a these models. >> Yeah. Do you feel like all the cards just got thrown up in the air or is it actually >> It's I mean yes and no. Like I I would say that there's a couple of pieces that I would say to that. I think on the first part like I would challenge you to build like an interesting AI app without using like some sort of comput and storage and databases like you're probably not >> right. It turns out that all of those things still need that because it turns out that like you know when you have like the front end of a chatbot like CPUs are the most effective way of rendering that web page. Like it is that is true. You're going to need a bunch of storage. So so all of those components are the same and and and similar. And I remember actually and I'll just like as an aside I remember when mobile first started getting big and people were like we need to build mobile building blocks and then I was like are there different servers that you need for a mobile app?
12:32 But it turned out no actually it was like you know there's there's some like front-end development tools and things that were different but like not really like you still needed compute and storage and databases and now now in AI is different in that I do think and this goes back to what I was just saying earlier I think inference is one of those new building blocks that was never a developer building block before. So it's like the world invented a new Lego.
12:52 You had all your Legos and you could build whatever and they've now invented some new Lego that was never possible before and you're like woo that is a cool new Lego. I can build incredible things with that. I still need all the other Legos I had before, but now I can take this one and build some super interesting things with it. and agents are kind of an extension of that where now you're going to be able to build completely new experiences. You're you're still going to like it turns out like Lambda is actually a great execution engine for a lot of of agents workflows where you can call the model and do stuff, but you actually need a compute environment to go do that.
13:23 and so that I think is how you would think about that. I think by the way though, there's a lot of things that do change, right? how you go to market might change. How you think about how you deliver a a user experience is going to change. I actually think by the way like and and this is one of the things that a lot of as I talk to a bunch of customers out there org structures are going to change like if you're starting a company I don't know that it's the exact org structure that we've used for the last 20 years to organize a development team like a lot of those things may actually change.
13:51 >> What what's different? >> I think you can you can deliver with much smaller teams. So you know a a huge effort that used to take dozens if not hundreds of people may take 10 people or five people or something like that and you can deliver just as much and maybe faster. >> We we were in an event with the CF cursor a couple months ago and it's like >> it's a tiny team. They may have 100 people now. Maybe, maybe, maybe not even.
14:16 >> I heard they did pass 100. So, I think they passed 100. But yeah, like you just need tiny teams and even there like and you know, as we're finding it, you know, the the roles may change like you may not have like a traditional dev manager. You may have actually a dev lead because the dev lead can actually dive in and actually help design some of the things you the whole org structure may just just change. I don't actually don't know the answers to that, but but with those capabilities and how you think about that software development life cycle, I think a lot of those things will change. I mean, I got to imagine >> there is no more exciting thing for Amazon and AWS than the invention of a new Lego, like a new Lego block. Yeah.
14:51 Like that's like a I mean, this happens every 20 or 30 years and like this is the the the biggest needle mover that could happen for your business. >> Yeah. Well, it's it's both exciting for a business perspective, but I will tell you like it's exciting because it means you get to go build new things. Like it's not just like polishing the old thing. Like part of why everybody like why I think reinvent is so popular with a bunch of people is that when we first launched it, we didn't build we didn't launch this as a marketing conference as like a traditional kind of like and and those are popular and lots of people have those marketing conferences, but if you go and you you look in the hallways out there, right, it's like people on their laptops, they're out there doing work sessions.
15:29 They actually are doing hackathons. like we're doing like this is meant to be a learning conference where people can learn how to new use new technologies and most of the sessions here are not given by Amazon people they're given by customers who want to share what they've learned and when there's a new building block like developers eyes light up they're like woo what can I build with that and and so it's it's for me it's exciting for that like it is a great business opportunity don't don't get me wrong but like that ability to go build some really cool new things like perplexity that was just that wasn't a possible thing that you would have built in 2022 and now it is it's pretty cool Yeah. so you're one of the most important platforms in the world. The job to be done of a platform is to build a set of capabilities that other people can build things on top of.
16:11 >> Yeah. >> Sometimes that means building your own either demonstrations of those capabilities or just extending the layer a little bit and doing some of the applications yourself. >> And some of the agents you announced earlier this week are an example of that where you sort of have a first or best-in-class version of it. philosophically, how do you decide when should we do this and when should we leave it to customers? >> Yeah, it's a it's a good question. And by the way, there is no magic answer.
16:35 It's not like there's like a very clear cut and dry answer for what that is. we always think that our ecosystem of partners is an incredibly important and impactful thing for growing our business and for helping our customers. There's a cool stat I saw earlier this week that partners usually drive about $7 of revenue for every dollar of revenue they drive for AWS. which is like that's pretty awesome for them and it's like a huge opportunity for everyone. and we think about how we deliver value up and down that entire level of the stack. And if you think about it's it is a funnel of the like number of opportunities, right? Because if you think about that top layer that's driving $7 for every like every dollar that is just a massive massive business opportunity. And so there are thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of applications at that level. we think we'll have a couple of successful ones up there and and we do today, right? And we will continue to have a handful of those and and you mentioned we launched things like our frontier agents in the software development space at that top layer, you know, and then and we think about where can we add differentiated value, but it is a funnel like you go down to the bottom there's cloud, right? like and then you go up to this next layer and you we'll take whether it's models or databases or other kind of pieces or or analytics engines and things like that where we do you know compete with some of our customers but but in a very like positive way for both of us where if you land on MongoDB or you land on Snowflake or you land on data bricks or or any of the the other partners at that level great as long as it's running on AWS like we love And by the way, I win I win. Well, and we have and we but we have a lot of products in that space too, right? We have tons of customers who love using open search. We have tons of customers who love using Aurora and and and all of our stuff at that level and we compete at that space, right? And but but there's a real kind of partnership there where everybody is growing huge really successful businesses at that level and there's dozens maybe hundreds of companies at that level. And then you go to this top level and that's where there's there's millions. And so that's where at that top level in particular, you know, I think we're going to build stuff at these first two levels like for most of those things and we'll compete with people, but there's not that many things at that level that just doesn't make sense for us to not have a native solution for. And customers re always tell us this, right?
18:54 >> Customers are going to demand. >> They largely say like, I want you to deliver something of that. >> It's a good thing you have red shift. Yeah. you know, I think if you go to this top layer, there's lots of things that I mean, there's no way that we could possibly build all of them. And so we build some where we think we have a particular either a competitive advantage or there's something at Amazon or AWS where we have an expertise andor a different way of approaching the problem that we think delivers differentiated results. I think actually one of the things that Amazon is particularly bad at is being a fast follower. Like we just when we try to copy someone, we're just bad at it. Like and so we just don't. But if we can innovate and we can go build something different or the >> different a couple famous infamous Amazon products from history, but I'll I'll >> just Yeah, we're we're not great at it because we we actually when we should fast follow, we still have this inherent thing like we should do something different and then we usually mess it up. so we just don't we're just bad at that thing. But when we think first principles about solving a customer problem and we can do it differently, take these kind of frontier agents where like we we know developers like we really know what they want. We understand AI. We see some of the struggles that they're having with the first generation of AI development tools where kind of vibe coding is is good but gets you to a place where it doesn't it's not structured. It doesn't help you develop in an enterprise environment. It it doesn't allow you to really have agents go and be autonomous and drive fast and and you know we saw some of these observations. We was like we think that we have some ways to differentiate and deliver that. And we had same thing about cloud operations, right?
20:23 We're thinking about a DevOps agent and that could go and autonomously go and and help you find problems in your infrastructure. We have a lot of data there. We have a lot of knowledge about what best practices are, how we can help you do that. Same with security. We we we think we do some of the best security work in the world. We see more problems than anybody does. We have solutions across them. We think we can deliver a differentiated product in those spaces.
20:46 and and so that's when we go after it and and we're not always right. We don't have 100% batting average, but that's kind of how we think about it. >> I I like your three stages of the funnel. what stage do you think agents are? I mean, they're not they're not the bottom. They're not the cloud. Are they the millions or they >> agents? so if you if you think about that, they're definitely at the bottom. I think, agent core is that middle layer, right? And so the agent core is these building blocks where it's like you have a secure compute environment that you can run your agent in that gives you like an isolated compute environment. you can do gateways where it's like okay we have permissions and so your agents can go talk to other agents that can talk to tools that have fine grain permissions etc. So all these kind of building blocks to go build the agents on we kind of think as somewhere in that that middle layer. still builds on our core building blocks, but it it really makes it much easier and more secure to build like a wide range of of agents in a in a real enterprise world where you can have an audit log, you can have controls, you can do a bunch of the things you want to do. and then the actual agents that people build are probably more at that application layer.
21:49 >> But I don't know, it's new. Who knows? It might answer may change in a month. You know, >> that was that was our next question. we're back here a year from now. >> Yeah. What is the conversation about agents in 12 months? >> you know, look, I think, just like any technology, I think that there's still going to be a bunch of people trying to figure out how to how to work them into their environment. And I think, almost for sure over the next year, you're going to see a ton of people getting a huge amount of value from agents. I do think that it is when you kind of look at that value creation where you think about content summarization, you think about content creation as opposed to like actually going and accomplishing tasks like the the value to an enterprise is so much bigger for that second thing because it's it really explodes out to like not just like summarize what happened but actually go you know process my insurance claims like that is a totally different unlock from for and I think we'll start to see some really, really, really compelling use cases that frankly I'm going to be really bad about predicting right now.
22:52 But that's part of what I love about AWS. It's actually one of the things we've always loved is we build these building blocks, we give this technology, and then we let the world have the creativity to go find some really cool things for them. And I think next year we'll have some really awesome use cases and to highlight. Oh, that's >> it's interesting think about the agents as a paradigm because you flash back 30 years ago, the web happens, we have websites, then mobile happens, we have apps, >> AI happens and in 2022 we get this like these bare models with like a chat interface slapped on top.
23:27 >> Couple more years go by and now we have this notion of agents. What do you think the dominant paradigm is in the AI era? Is is it agents? Is that going to be the sort of app of AI? >> That's not really how I think about it, but that's an interesting question. I think that's slightly different. Like I'm not sure that those are equivalent paradigms necessarily. They're like somewhat orthogonal because you have like like part of what was interesting about the web was it was like a different platform to actually go interact with and build stuff on top of and and there was the user interface was different and like you could and so that was like you had to build a website, right? when you had your phone like you had to like how do you shrink it down? How do you actually have an app that's like that's native and has capabilities but like the the application and and and a lot of the things you could do were mobile and things. So I think with agents it's more like a capability by the way someone may invent a new way of consuming those things which would be interesting and and I think would be some of those shifts today. I think there in some ways it's a complimentary technology like the chatbot that you example turns out that's a website. It's not like it's not like it's not a website, right? The website was actually something different. It wasn't an application that was on your computer. It was a website.
24:44 The mobile app was a different thing. It was actually on your phone. These are things that are some ways complimentary and supercharging the things that you already have. Doesn't mean someone won't come up with it yet, but and it may or may not, but in some ways it's like I assume that my mobile apps will have agents that are working for me behind the scenes. I assume that my websites will have AI and agents built into them, like all of those kind of things. So, I don't know, someone may build something different, but they haven't yet. A >> agent management still feels really messy to me.
25:10 >> That's true. I believe there will be some interesting applications around agent management for sure. and that is a very unsolved problem. I think it's an interesting one that someone out there should go build or think about >> to put more structure around it. I mean if I pull up a website, it's very obvious what the website is. If I pull up my phone, I I've got a UI that's my mobile app. And if I have agents acting on my behalf all throughout the world with this new compute paradigm, I don't know how to track or manage them. Yeah, I I think that that is an interesting but but at the same time you know you have when you click the button on a website there's like a database query that's going and doing work for you behind the scenes. You don't know how to do that either. So like maybe you don't have to I don't know like maybe that's the job of everybody else to kind of figure not everyone like the individual like whoever has the website it's their job to make sure that like your database query actually works. Sometimes you get a crashed website and it didn't but but yes otherwise that's So, so maybe right, but I do think that there's an interesting if there really are a bunch of these autonomous agents, which I do believe they're going to be, there is going to need to be some way of coordinating across them cuz in a world of billions of agents, like no one can like keep billions of things in their heads. And so, but in the same way that there's billions of compute processes, like we have to come up with a good kind of router and and orchestration engine to to manage all of those. No person's going to manage those, of course.
26:30 For our next set of questions, we want to keep going with AI and it'll be related, but >> we really want to ask about you know you too like you're in a very very interesting position and and start with with AI and transition here. You spend a lot of time with a lot of CEOs. >> I'm sure they are asking your thought. What are CEOs asking you and asking AWS about AI when they're coming to you with problems?
26:58 >> Yeah, I think there's a couple. I do get fortunate that that you know I think it's it's it's fortunate for us that cloud and AI has elevated to it is actually like a CEO level thing right technology used to be something that CEOs >> rejecting this question CEOs and CTOs and like CTO sure yeah but I bet CEOs are the ones >> CEOs it's it is a CEO level question now right what is your cloud strategy what's your AI strategy like those are CEO level questions which by the way is great and cool for us and what they're thinking about it's it's not too dissimilar than some of the things that we're talking about. I think one they're thinking about my they they see like they see kind of the trend and I think particularly if you go with established it's there's a little bit different right if you're the CEO of a AI startup company it's a little bit different right so but if you take that if you're saying like enterprise side of like someone who established business they are trying to balance the fact that they they realize there is a real risk that they could get disrupted with this technology like there is a very real risk that 100-year-old enterprises like Chase could get disrupted if they don't lean forward and and figure out how to stay ahead of this technology. Now, like they still have the pole position, don't get me wrong. Like they're like they like if if you're a bank if you're a bank, you would definitely rather be JP Morgan than like a brand new startup, but the risk is there, right?
28:20 And so that risk is very real. And so I think a lot of people are thinking about how do they but a lot of businesses out there, frankly, are not used to moving fast, right? they are they're they actually got to where they are by being conservative, by making sure they didn't make big mistakes, right? And that was like and and so I get that if you're an insurance company that's a 100-y old insurance company, you got to where you are by making sure you didn't like make dumb bets or or do something that >> we we just covered Coca-Cola as our most recent episode and you know, I mean Coca-Cola did amazing innovative things and then like you know the worst thing they ever did >> which turned into the best thing was New Coke. you know, you don't do new coke.
29:00 >> That's right. You just don't want to do you don't want to be the one that did new coke. But they're also recognizing that like if they stick on that that path and they're still slow and conservative, like this may be the thing that kills them. So, I think a lot of people are thinking about how do they make sure that their team has the right skills to be competitive in the in the world today with AI? How do they make sure that their data and that their infrastructure is set up in the right way? I think they're thinking about do they need to hire or train for new skill sets. they're thinking about do they need to organize differently so that they can have that they can move fast and you know you you mentioned earlier kind of thinking about like Jeff said like what are the things that don't change I actually think that in today's world one of the things you want to be thinking about which won't matter what the next technology is is how do you make sure you can move fast and be agile like those are skills that are not going to go out of style right there's never you're not going to get to a world where it's like man I wish we were less agile right and particularly in today's world like that is >> man I wish stuff were more expensive >> on exactly It was not that. Exactly.
29:56 Never going to happen. >> And so, you know, I do think that that's where a lot of the leaders are thinking about right now because they're thinking about you, look, as a as a CEO, there's not that many things you can impact. You can impact who your leadership team is. You can act, you know, where the direction you're going is, what the structure of it is, kind of what some of the goals are. And so that's what a lot of people are thinking about.
30:14 >> Can I ask the opposite question? So when you go and you talk with your mentors and other CEOs and board members who who give you advice, what are the questions that you're asking them? >> Yeah. that's a good question too. I do a lot of that because I'm only like and you know I think it's like you're two or something of me being a CEO. So I'm I'm still learning. part of that is and I think everybody actually any any good CEO is hopefully or any good leader is hopefully spending a lot of their time learning. but you know there there's a lot that I don't know about. I I love just picking up tips on how do you think about leading at scale?
30:47 How do you think about rapid decision-m? How do you think about pushing decision-m down to your teams and and I think that's one of the ways that you do real rapid decision-m is don't make decisions and get your team enabled to make decisions. and then but but picking up like how to do that and and what are the subtle things that you do, what are the areas that you don't do. And by the way, sometimes you get advice and you're like interesting.
31:09 I'm not going to do that. they're like I like I I I sat down with Jensen and he gave me some good advice and he told me what he did. I'm like I'm not gonna have 70 directs like not going to do that. Like okay I appreciate that that works for you. I'm not going to do that. you know but you know I think that is but but assimilating all that and then trying to figure out what works for you and your culture and your business and but it's incredibly valuable and and I appreciate every time a CEO or leader is willing to take some time and share what works for them and and have that conversation is just so valuable because kind of taking assimilating all of those different data points is is incredibly helpful because these jobs are hard and they're fast moving and and we all want to do well for our company and our customers.
31:51 customers and our shareholders and but you know trying to pick up tips is helpful for sure. there. you know, I don't know how many folks in the audience know this. we know this. >> you started as a dev manager >> intern >> intern for EC2, right? Yeah. >> I was actually AWS I was I interned out of business school in 2005 for Andy Jasse >> and when AWS was an internal project, >> we were building it internally and I came and and I worked on it. I was like, "Holy crap, this seems awesome." And and I came back basically effectively as the first product manager for AWS.
32:26 >> Wow. >> And EC2 was the first product you worked on. >> that was actually a year later. So the first year I was at AWS, I was a product manager for all of AWS >> cuz it was the product. So I was the AWS product. I was actually Actually, it's not true. There was one product. >> I guess you're still the AWS product manager. >> There was there was a product manager for S3 and then I was the rest of AWS.
32:45 >> Okay. This this nullifies my premise then. But >> Okay. Okay. Okay, our audience where we were going with this is Dave and I met Matt a few years ago when you were leading sales go to market for AWS. >> That was a different story. Like it was crazy how I ended up there too cuz I' been it 13 years that I had been leading EC2 at the time and then one day Andy came to me and said hey do you want to lead sales and marketing? I literally looked at him and I said I don't know anything about sales and marketing.
33:06 >> Well that was that was the question. Yeah. Yeah. like you very clearly came out of a product and technology path and I was like this is the strangest person to be leading sales and then it kind of occurred to me this is deliciously Amazonian like of course you're the person >> he was he literally and I I you know I was it was interesting and I said >> I don't know about sales and marketing he's like it's okay he's like you know a lot about AWS I was like yeah I do that's true he's like and you you can operate at scale and I was like well I've hope I've hopefully learned to be able to operate at scale he's like you'll pick up the rest of it'll be fine and and the teams were awesome. I will say like it wouldn't I don't know that it would have worked at every company, but the teams were awesome. And I I'd sat down with some of my sales leaders and be like, "Can you please explain how commissions work to me?" And they could have instantly flipped a bit and been like, "Nope, like this guy's an >> >> idiot." but no, they're like they're like, "Thank you for asking." Like great. We'd love like first of all, they did they did have like a a bit of a double take when I asked those questions, but then they walk it through it and then I go like do a bunch of research and make sure I understand exactly how it works or whatever. and and you know, I'd find out that I feel like half of the time I would ask dumb questions and they'd be like, "That's just a dumb question." But the other half the time they'd be like, "Actually, no one's ever asked that question before, but it's a really good question. I don't know why it works that way." Like, "It doesn't have to work that way." And and we would go find something interesting because I didn't actually know how it worked. and just listen to to what people said. So, >> and then you sort of get to build it from first principles, too, rather than just it's the way it's done.
34:31 >> That's right. How how did the sales or start within AWS? I mean Amazon Amazon is not a salesdriven company. yeah, it was we >> or a different kind of sales, let's put it >> no we we had call it when I started I think we when I started back full-time we had hired I can't remember if it was two I think two business development people and our goal was to like our stated goal at the time we had a lot of hubris back in the day of like what was possible or not but we assumed that AWS would always just be self-service and that we would probably never need more than like 10 20 30 salespeople.
35:08 and then it turned out that like enterprises want to talk to a human. they they didn't want to just swipe their credit card in and just use compute. And and and as we got into it and like we learned about what the business could be and and as we got into it we saw you know we built a different type of a sales team by the way. We wanted one that was incredibly customer focused. We wanted we we hired people and said look you've got to be customer focused. We want you to go to our customers and tell them we want you we want you to proactively lower our customers bills, right? We want you to go find ways that they're using AWS wastefully and cut their bills down. And >> this is not part of the enterprise software >> and exactly and people were like our sales people were like well that's kind of refreshing like okay awesome like I don't have to like hide that under the covers and customers were like just floored that we would possibly think like as a as a technology company come and help them lower their bill. And we've been doing it for 20 years now.
36:03 And and we continue to do it. And we're not always perfect at it. We find other ways to to do it. But but we're launching products, we're launching features, we're launching capabilities to try to help people because every time we saw where we'd lower their bill, they would use more. >> It'd be like they free up budget to go launch a new product which would drive their revenue, but then they would drive more. And so it was it was a real positive flywheel effect for us. But it's a very different type of a of a a sales support organization than had existed in the past.
36:30 >> All right. So now going back to this trajectory you've been on this all these different roles you've you've had >> you get in a time machine you go back 20 years you get to give yourself some advice >> about the future save yourself some missteps or some frustration or what are you imparting on yourself? >> that's a good question. well there's a ton of things that I would do differently but but I'm also quite happy with where I am so like I wouldn't want to mess those things up.
36:58 >> There's a whole path dependency question. >> Yeah exactly. I I wouldn't like like a sliding door situation where I somehow mess it up and but but cuz I do like it's like and and I think all of like even when we have like the worst times actually and and and I'll use this like like yes like what I love if you go to the early days of AWS we had some like major outages where we like took down the internet for like 4 days.
37:20 Wasn't really that bad but but it like felt that way internally that that that's what we were doing. like we we take it so personally cuz customers trust us with their their operations and their data and and would I have loved to like avoided that entirely like yeah except we learned a ton of really valuable things for that and our services today are way better because we learned some of those lessons I wish we would have found cheaper less painful ways to learn those lessons for sure but from a a business perspective you know there's there's so you know I I kind of I it's a fun question to ask and like it's really hard Because a lot of the bad things and bad choices you made or even bad hires that you made are are such good learning opportunities that if you learn from them, you have to learn from them by the way. So like you got to make sure you don't like make that mistake again. But I don't know that you could be in the same place or the products could be in the same place or the people could be in the same place if you didn't get to have those crappy.
38:11 >> I mean that's always the honest answer. It's like we get asked that question sometimes and like we made some really dumb things. We changed the name of the show at one point in time like we >> Yeah, >> we interrupted the compounding unnecessarily. Yeah, we did some really dumb things, but like >> yeah, would I take >> Yeah, but maybe you don't end up with like a pretty fantastic show. Like, who knows? Like, you take the wrong path and >> so it's hard to say, right?
38:33 Particularly when you end up in a pretty good spot. If you end up in a spot that like you're not happy with and there's lots of things that I would like to be better, by the way. So, I think you're you know, one of the the things that's another Amazon kind of mentality is is thinking about like our c one of the things we love is our c customers are are perpetually displeased. Like they always want more.
38:52 They always want you to do things differently, which is great. It means there's huge opportunity to always get better. And we take that really seriously. Like we are never pleased with our performance. We never think that we're doing we're never growing fast enough. Our operational performance, anything below 100% is not good enough. we always want to drive cost down and performance up and you know, and all that being said, I think, you know, we've we've built a a good business and and a pretty exciting, customer community here.
39:18 >> All right. My favorite closing question recently, >> what's something you've changed your mind on that you used to be really sure of and you're now very sure of the opposite? >> I have two. Number one, back in 2013, I was really sure that the Seahawks were going to be a dynasty. >> I thought you might be this was going to be part of the >> That did not work out. but we're back. You know, we have a we have a good team again. So, I know we both live in Seattle.
39:50 >> Well, thanks to the San Francisco 49ers quarterback rehabilitation program. So, you're welcome. >> Thank you. but but in a more serious answer I will say like I remember I'll get the timing right but it was wrong but it was probably six or seven years ago. We had a leadership meeting across Amazon and I will tell you one of the things we I was I was absolutely most worried about for the future of AWS and for Amazon was we were charting a path on where we thought the business could be and the growth and the number of SDEs that we thought it was going to take to get there. And we thought the world would not have enough SDEs for us.
40:25 We were literally like, I'm going to have to hire a million SDS to deliver the code at the rate that we're doing and where we want to get to and whatever. And we're like, the the world is not producing SDS at that rate. And I thought that was going to be our single biggest constraint to growth. And I do not think that today. We still have we still have the need, by the way, for great SDS, but I actually think the growth in the AI world is going to be ideas. Before it was like we had way more ideas than we could possibly get to. And and I think because you can deliver things so fast, you're constrained. It's going to be great ideas and great things that you want to go after. And I would never have guessed that 10 years ago.
41:01 >> Fascinating. >> Well, that's where we're going to leave it. >> Awesome. >> Cool. All right. Thank you guys. Really appreciate you doing this for us. So, thank you. >> Oh, our pleasure. Thank you. Great to see you. Thanks a lot.