Jeff Bezos’s two pieces of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs

The advice that I would give entrepreneurs is don't chase the hot new thing, whatever it is. It's so hard to catch something that everybody already knows is hot. Instead, position yourself and wait for the wave to come to you. Position yourself in something that captures your curiosity. Capture something that, that you're missionary about. When we acquire companies, I'm always trying to figure out, is this person who leads this company a missionary or a mercenary? And I don't like mercenaries, and I don't like mercenary cultures. The missionary is building the product, building the service, because they love the customer, because they love the product, because they love the service. The mercenary is building the product or the service so that they can flip the company and make money. And one of the great paradoxes is that the missionaries usually end up making more money than the mercenaries anyway. And so pick something you're passionate about. That's my number one piece of advice. And the second thing is, once you've done that, just start with the customer and work backwards. Those two things will take you an awfully long way.