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It is hard to imagine life

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without Amazon.com.

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[Laughs]

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Even for someone of my advanced age.

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After all,

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where else can a few clicks of a mouse take you

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from the latest novel by Toni Morrison

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to an 18th century edition of the works

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of John Locke,

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having stopped in powered tools and women shoes along the way?

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Yet the founder and Chief Executive Officer

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of the world's largest e-tailer,

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whose net sales surpassed 24.5 billion dollars in 2009,

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is only 46 year old,

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and Amazon.com has only existed

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since 1995, making it even younger

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than the class of 2010.

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The moral of this story

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is that the right idea

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in the right hands, at the right time,

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can change the way we lead our lives.

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The idea, in this case,

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was harnessing the power of the nascent Internet

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to create a virtual bookstore of limitless proportions.

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The hands were those of our speaker, Jeff Bezos,

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a self-described nerdy

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computer science and electrical engineering major

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who graduated from Princeton with highest honors

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in 1986.

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And the time was 1994,

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when he and his wife Mackenzie Tuttle Bezos,

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of the class of 1992,

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exchanged the security of Wall Street,

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where they worked at D.E. Shaw & Co.,

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for the uncertain prospects of a dot com start-up.

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But then, as Jeff points out,

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"failure is an essential component"

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"of innovation and invention."

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"If you know it's going to work,"

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"it's not an experiment."

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And Amazon.com was nothing if not a grand experiment.

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Working on improvised tables in the garage of his Seattle home,

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and using his parents' savings as start-up capital,

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Jeff defied the forces that cause most young companies to fail.

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Partly, he admits, through sheer good fortune,

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but also because of his unwavering determination

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to create the world's most customers-centric company.

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And as he notes in his company's latest annual report,

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of the 452 goals that Amazon.com has set for itself this year,

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360 of them will directly affect the customer experience,

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while the word "revenue" is used on only 8 occasions.

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I do not advise you

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to start off with 452 goals this year,

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by the way.

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But this is just one of the keys to Jeff's success.

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Another lies in his exceptional ability

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to marry commerce and technology in creative ways,

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in his sheer inventiveness and willingness

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to take the risks inherent in this process.

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Indeed, the history of Amazon.com

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is one of daring leaps.

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One such leap involved creating the capacity

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to search inside the books sold by his company,

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not by designing a modest pilot project,

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but by committing the resources to make it possible

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to scour the text of more 120,000 volumes,

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when this feature debuted in 2003.

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Other innovations have included

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one-click shopping, online product reviews by customers,

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and of course, the Kindle reading device,

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which we test-drove in 3 courses this fall.

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Mirroring the rapid growth of Amazon itself,

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the number of books available through the US Kindle store

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topped 460,000 in 2009,

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just 2 years after its launch.

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And there is no turning back.

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"Our vision is every book,"

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"every print ed, in any language,"

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"all available in less than 60 seconds,"

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Jeff has stated. An audacious proposition

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to be sure, but as Albert Einstein once observed,

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"If at first the idea is not absurd,"

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"then there is no hope for it."

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Perhaps the American Academy of Achievements

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summarized our speaker's impact best

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when it noted: "Having already"

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"revolutionized the way the world buys books,"

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"Jeff Bezos is now transforming the way"

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"we read them as well."

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I like to think that Princeton helped

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to lay the groundwork for this revolution.

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Dreamer and doer.

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Entrepreneur and engineer.

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Refreshingly unassuming,

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even in the face of unimaginable success,

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Jeff has done his alma mater proud.

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It is a true honour and pleasure

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to welcoming him back to Old Nassau today.

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[Applause]

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As a kid,

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I spent my summers with my grandparents

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on their ranch in Texas.

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I helped fix windmills,

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vaccinate cattle,

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and do other chores.

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We also watched soap operas every afternoon,

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especially Days of Our Lives.

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My grandparents belonged to a caravan club,

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a group of Airstream trailer owners

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who travelled together around the US and Canada.

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And every few summers,

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we'd join the caravan.

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We'd hitch up the Airstream

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to my grandfather's car

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and off we'd go.

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In line with 300 other

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Airstream adventurers.

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I loved and worshipped my grandparents.

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And I really looked forward to these trips.

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On one particular trip -

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I was about 10 years old -,

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I was rolling around

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in the big bench-seat

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in the back of the car,

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my grandfather was driving

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and my grandmother had the passenger's seat.

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She smoked throughout these trips.

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And I hated the smell.

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At that age, I'd take any excuse

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to make estimates and do minor arithmetic,

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I'd calculate our gas mileage,

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figure out useless statistics on things like groceries spending.

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I'd been hearing an ad campaign about smoking.

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I can't remember the details

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but basically, the ads said:

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"Every puff of a cigarette"

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"takes some number of minutes off of your life."

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I think it might have been 2 minutes per puff.

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At any rate, I decided

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to do the math for my grandmother.

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I estimated the number of cigarettes per day,

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estimated the number of puffs per cigarette and so on.

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When I was satisfied that I had come up

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with the reasonable number,

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I poked my head into the front of the car,

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tapped my grandmother on the shoulder,

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and proudly proclaimed:

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"At 2 minutes per puff,"

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"you've taken 9 years off of your life!"

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I have a very vivid memory of what happened next.

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And it was not what I had expected.

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I expected to be applauded for my cleverness

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and my arithmetic skills.

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"Jeff, you're so smart!"

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"You had to have made some tricky estimates,"

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"figure out the number of minutes in a year,"

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"and do some division..."

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That's not what happened.

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Instead,

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my grandmother burst into tears.

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I sat in the back seat,

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and didn't know what to do while my grandmother was crying.

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My grandfather, who'd been driving in silence,

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pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway.

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He got out of the car

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and came around and opened my door,

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and waited for me to follow him.

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My grandfather was a highly intelligent,

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quiet man.

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He had never said a harsh word to me,

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and maybe this was to be the first time.

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Or maybe he would ask that I get back in the car

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and apologize to my grandmother.

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I had no experience in this realm

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with my grandparents,

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and no way to gauge what the consequences might be.

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We stopped beside the trailer.

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My grandfather looked at me,

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and after a bit of silence,

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he gently and calmly said:

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"Jeff, one day,"

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"you'll understand"

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"that it's harder to be kind"

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"than clever."

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What I want to talk to you about today

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is the difference between

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gifts and choices.

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Cleverness is a gift.

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Kindness is a choice.

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Gifts are easy - they're given, after all.

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Choices can be hard.

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You can seduce yourself with your gifts

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if you're not careful.

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And if you do, it will be

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to the detriment of your choices.

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This is a group with many gifts.

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I am sure one of your gifts

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is the gift of a smart and capable brain.

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I am confident that's the case, because

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admission is competitive, and if there weren't

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some signs that you're clever,

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the Dean of admissions wouldn't have let you in.

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Your smarts will come in handy

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because you will travel in a land of marvels.

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We humans, plodding as we are,

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will astonish ourselves,

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will invent ways to generate clean energy -

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and a lot of it -, atom by atom,

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we'll assemble small machines that can enter solar walls

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an make repairs...

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This month comes the extraordinary but inevitable news

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that we've synthesized life.

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And the coming years will not only synthesize it,

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but engineer it to specifications.

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I believe you'll even see us

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I believe you'll even see us understand the human brain.

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Jules Verne, Mark Twain,

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Galileo, Newton,

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all the curious from the ages

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would have wanted to be alive

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most of all right now.

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As a civilization, we will have so many gifts.

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Just as you, as individuals,

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have so many individual gifts as you sit before me.

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How will you use these gifts?

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And will you take pride in your gifts

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or pride in your choices?

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I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago.

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I came across the fact that Web usage

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was growing at 2,300 percent per year.

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I had never seen or heard

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of anything that grew that fast.

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The idea of building an online bookstore

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with millions of titles,

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something that simply couldn't exist in the physical world,

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was very exciting to me.

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I'd just turned 30 years old

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and I had been married for a year.

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I told my wife Mackenzie

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that I wanted to quit my job

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and go do this crazy thing

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that probably wouldn't work,

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since most start-ups don't,

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and I wasn't sure what would happen after that.

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Mackenzie, also a Princeton grad and sitting

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here in the second row,

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told me I should go for it.

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As a young boy, I had been

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a garage inventor;

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I had invented an automatic gate-closer

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out of cement-filled tires,

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a solar cooker that didn't work very well

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out of an umbrella and aluminum foil,

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baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings.

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I'd always wanted to be an inventor

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and she wanted me to follow my passion.

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I was working at a financial firm in NYC

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with a bunch of very smart people

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and I had a brilliant boss i much admired.

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I went to my boss

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and told him I was going to start a company

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selling books on the Internet.

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He took me on a long walk in Central Park,

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listened carefully to me,

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and finally said:

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"That sounds like a really good idea."

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"But it would be an even better idea"

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"for someone who didn't already have a good job."

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[Laughs]

275
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That logic made some sense to me

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and it convinced me to think about it for 48 hours

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before making a final decision.

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Seen in that light, it really was a difficult choice.

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But ultimately, I decided

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I had to give it a shot.

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I didn't think I'd regret

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trying and failing.

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And I suspected I would always be haunted

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by a decision to not try at all.

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After much consideration,

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I took the last safe path

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to follow my passion.

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And I'm proud of that choice.

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Tomorrow,

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in a very real sense, your life,

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the life you author from scratch,

292
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on your own, begins.

293
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How will you use your gifts?

294
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What choice will you make?

295
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Will inertia be your guide

296
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or will you follow your passions?

297
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Will you follow dogma

298
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or will you be original?

299
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Will you choose a life of ease

300
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or a life of service and adventure?

301
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Will you wilt under criticism

302
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or will you follow your convictions?

303
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Will you bluff it out when you're wrong

304
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or will you apologize?

305
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Will you guard your heart

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against rejection

307
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or will you act when you fall in love?

308
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Will you play it safe

309
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or will you be a little swashbuckling?

310
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When it's tough, will you give up

311
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or will you be relentless?

312
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Will you be a cynic

313
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or will you be a builder?

314
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Will you be clever

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at the expense of others

316
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or will you be kind?

317
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I will hazard a prediction.

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When you are 80 years old

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and, in a quiet moment of reflection,

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narrating for only yourself

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the most personal version

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of your life's story,

323
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the telling that will be most compact

324
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and meaningful

325
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will be the series of choices you have made.

326
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In the end,

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we are our choices.

328
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Build yourself a great story.

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Thank you and good luck.

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[Applause]