{"id":17556,"date":"2021-05-11T18:48:48","date_gmt":"2021-05-11T10:48:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/spacexs-gwynne-shotwell-as-blue-origins-ceo-new-book-about-jeff-bezos-says-she-was-asked\/"},"modified":"2021-05-11T18:48:48","modified_gmt":"2021-05-11T10:48:48","slug":"spacexs-gwynne-shotwell-as-blue-origins-ceo-new-book-about-jeff-bezos-says-she-was-asked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/spacexs-gwynne-shotwell-as-blue-origins-ceo-new-book-about-jeff-bezos-says-she-was-asked\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX\u2019s Gwynne Shotwell as Blue Origin\u2019s CEO? New book about Jeff Bezos says she was asked"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Jeff Bezos\u2019 search for a CEO for his Blue Origin space venture included an entreaty to SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, according to an account in \u201cAmazon Unbound\u201d by Brad Stone. (Bezos picture at left: Geekwire Photo by Kevin Lisota. Shotwell photo at right: CNBC via YouTube)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When it comes to his Blue Origin space venture, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos likes to say \u201cslow is smooth, and smooth is fast.\u201d But a new book claims Bezos was so concerned about the slow pace of progress five years ago that Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX\u2019s president and chief operating officer, was asked about becoming Blue Origin\u2019s CEO.<\/p>\n

Shotwell \u2014 who is second only to billionaire CEO Elon Musk at SpaceX \u2014 quickly rebuffed the entreaty, saying that \u201cit wouldn\u2019t look right,\u201d according to tech journalist Brad Stone\u2019s account in \u201cAmazon Unbound.\u201d That\u2019s just one of the eye-openers from just one of the book\u2019s chapters \u2014 the one that\u2019s devoted to Blue Origin, which was founded by Bezos as a privately held company in 2000.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmazon Unbound\u201d follows up on Stone\u2019s 2013 book about Bezos and Amazon, \u201cThe Everything Store.\u201d The earlier book touched upon Blue Origin\u2019s genesis in Bezos\u2019 childhood space dreams \u2014 and quoted a high-school girlfriend of his as saying Bezos founded Amazon solely to earn the money needed for his space venture.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can neither confirm nor deny that,\u201d Bezos told me jokingly in the spring of 2016.<\/p>\n

Stone\u2019s new book suggests that just six months after that interview, Bezos was in no joking mood. Citing interviews with people who were familiar with Blue Origin\u2019s workings, Stone writes that Bezos called in a succession of executives during several weeks in the fall of 2016 to discuss the space venture\u2019s progress, or lack thereof.<\/p>\n

\"AmazonPodcast:<\/strong> \u2018Amazon Unbound\u2019 is a portrait of a company \u2018getting perilously close to invincible\u2019<\/h4>\n

The book depicts Bezos as frustrated with expenses that were bigger than he expected \u2014 and results that were coming more slowly than expected. In Stone\u2019s telling, Blue Origin\u2019s longtime president, Rob Meyerson, was caught in the middle: charged with following through on Bezos\u2019 emailed instructions, but resented by demoralized members of his team.<\/p>\n

Bezos\u2019 dissatisfaction was fueled in part by the success of SpaceX and its billionaire CEO, Elon Musk. While most of Blue Origin\u2019s funding came directly from Bezos, SpaceX hustled to raise outside capital \u2014 including $1 billion from Google and Fidelity \u2014 and successfully snagged multibillion-dollar contracts from NASA. SpaceX was hopping ahead like the hare in Aesop\u2019s Fables, while Blue Origin seemed to be plodding along like the tortoise. (And in fact, tortoises are part of Blue Origin\u2019s coat of arms.)<\/p>\n

There was a personal element to the rivalry. \u201cMusk and Bezos were a lot alike \u2014 relentless<\/span>, competitive, and absorbed with their self-images<\/span>. But Musk eagerly sought the spotlight and cultivated a kind of cultlike adoration at his companies and among his fans. \u2026 Bezos, on the other hand, was more guarded,\u201d Stone writes.<\/p>\n

The months-long CEO search \u2014 which Stone says was led by Susan Harker, Amazon\u2019s vice president of recruiting \u2014 was Bezos\u2019 attempt to address the dysfunction and accelerate Blue Origin\u2019s progress. Bezos finally settled on Honeywell Aerospace executive Bob Smith, who quietly took the CEO reins in August 2017.<\/p>\n

Blue Origin \u201chad really hit a severe inflection point,\u201d Smith said in a later interview.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s happened since then? Bezos gave a big boost to Blue Origin\u2019s budget and began a steady ramp-up of its workforce. Back in 2016, Blue Origin had 600 employees. Now the headcount exceeds 3,500. Stone writes that Bezos bitterly complained about a proposed budget of $500 million in 2016. But in 2017, Bezos acknowledged to reporters that he intended to sell off at least a billion dollars\u2019 worth of Amazon shares every year to fund the space venture.<\/p>\n

\u201cEmployees were stunned \u2014<\/span> that was the first they had heard of it,\u201d Stone says in the book. (Some of the proceeds from the $2.4 billion stock sale that Bezos reported last week will almost surely go to Blue Origin.)<\/p>\n

Meyerson has moved on, and now it\u2019s up to Smith to manage expectations. A year after he became CEO, Smith said he expected people to start taking suborbital space trips on Blue Origin\u2019s New Shepard spaceship in 2019, and he predicted that the orbital-class New Glenn rocket would begin flying in 2021. That schedule has since shifted to the right, in part due to COVID-19\u2019s effects: The first crewed New Shepard flight is now set for July, while New Glenn\u2019s debut has been put off until late 2022.<\/p>\n

There have been other setbacks: Last year, Blue Origin lost out in the Pentagon\u2019s multibillion-dollar competition for national security launches \u2014<\/span> and last month, an industry team led by Blue Origin lost out on NASA funding for the development of a crew-capable lunar lander. In both cases, SpaceX prevailed instead.<\/p>\n

Would the situation have been different if Shotwell had become Blue Origin\u2019s CEO? You might as well speculate about unicorns dancing around a launch pad: Shotwell has been brutally frank in her assessment of Blue Origin\u2019s prospects. \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s a motivation or a drive there,\u201d she said last year at an investment conference. \u201cThey\u2019ve got a ton of money, and they\u2019re not doing a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other space snippets from \u201cAmazon Unbound\u201d:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  • Stone quotes extensively from an 800-word Bezos memo, informally called \u201cThe Welcome Letter,\u201d which has been given to new Blue Origin employees since 2004. \u201cWe are a small team committed to seeding an enduring human presence in space,\u201d the memo says. \u201cBlue will pursue this long-term objective patiently, step by step.\u201d Bezos\u2019 memo reportedly sets a course for a crewed orbital vehicle program, with moon missions in the longer term.<\/li>\n
  • The book also mentions Blue Origin\u2019s BE-4 rocket engine, which has been the focus of a seven-year-long partnership with United Launch Alliance. ULA is planning to use the BE-4 on its next-generation Vulcan rocket \u2014<\/span> but George Sowers, ULA\u2019s former chief scientist and vice president for advanced programs, told Stone that \u201cULA executives felt like they were betrayed and lied to\u201d when they found out Blue Origin would also use the BE-4 on its own New Glenn rocket, a potential rival to Vulcan.<\/li>\n
  • Stone passes along a few details about the places where Blue Origin\u2019s employees unwind, including a \u201csecret garden\u201d with a koi pond at the company\u2019s headquarters in Kent, Wash.; and an outdoor saloon near Blue Origin\u2019s West Texas launch pad dubbed \u201cParpie\u2019s Bar\u201d \u2014 after<\/span> the nickname that was given to Bezos\u2019 father, Mike Bezos, by his grandchildren.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Jeff Bezos\u2019 search for a CEO for his Blue Origin space venture included an entreaty to SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, according to an account in \u201cAmazon Unbound\u201d by Brad Stone. (Bezos picture at left: Geekwire Photo by Kevin Lisota. Shotwell photo at right: CNBC via YouTube) When it comes to his Blue Origin space venture, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4747,509,4748,1046],"class_list":["post-17556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-amazon-unbound","tag-blue-origin","tag-brad-stone","tag-jeff-bezos"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17556"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}