In the News: Bezos vs. Branson, Reaching for the Stars

Branson's VSS Unity. (Publicity still)

Has anyone been paying attention to the new Space Race? It used to be the U.S. and Soviet Union striving for leadership. Today it appears to be a battle of the egos. Sir Richard Branson, who turns 71 this month, may not have the big bucks his rival has, but 5.7 billion dollars is nothing to scoff at. 

Branson is set to be first to take flight into the earth's outer canopy, though it's unlikely he will ever be first as far as wealth goes. Jeffrey B currently makes nearly $150,000 per minute based on data from August 2020. Or $3,715 per second if you prefer. Total net worth is over 200 billion. 

Then there's Elon Musk with his SpaceX program. With a 162 billion dollar net worth, he's certainly got enough ka-ching to get into this game as well. And of the three programs, Musk was actually first to send people into outer space, having sent four astronauts to the Space Shuttle in April. What Bezos and Branson are doing is sending tourists, not astronauts. They themselves happen to be going along for the ride.

All three appear to be possibility thinkers. They dream big and have the resources to create things that seem larger than life.

Regarding Branson's flight tomorrow, it will be a very different kind of deployment. Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity will be carried aloft by a large jet called the White Night Two from which the space craft will be fired up and take off near the jet's highest altitude. It's unusual looking, something akin to a shuttlecock that you might use in badminton. It certainly conveys a sense of futurism when you see it.

It not only torques Bezos that Branson is going to be first into outer space, but that Branson is calling it "outer space" when to Bezos -- and some others -- it doesn't really seem like outer space. If I understand the debate, Branson is calling the altitude of 80 km as outer space, whereas Bezos -- who will soon take passengers via his New Shepard -- says scientists have named 100 km as the Karman Line.  I doubt that there will be any signs up there saying exactly where the border is, or people waiting up there to check their passports.

Inside the New Shepard's capsule. 

There was room for one more passenger on Bezos' flight so they auctioned off that seat and are being paid a cool 28 million for this privilege. The money will be donated to their non-profit Club for the Future which trains kids for STEM careers.

Bezos' rocket, the New Shepard, is named after Alan Shepard, America' first astronaut. I find it quite astonishing that Mr. Bezos' rocket is a reusable craft. The same rocket has made made more than a dozen flights already. This will be the first with passengers. The New Shepard was designed to hold six passengers and has plenty of windows so they can enjoy the view. The zero gravity experience will last only about three minutes, it seems, a little over nine million dollars a minute for that last passenger.

Bezos & his company Blue Origin selected July 20 as their official debut. That day marks the 52nd anniversary of man's first walk on the moon. There's a lot of symbolism in all these names and events surrounding the renewed space exploration mania.

Not everyone can afford a million dollar ticket to the rim of the atmosphere, so I personally hope they've set up video cameras that can turn it into an affordable Virtual Reality experience for the rest of us. What do you think?

Related Links

Lessons from the Virgin Billionaire

My Hero Jeff Bezos

Kylie Jenner: World's Youngest Self-Made Billionaire? Only In America.

 Creative Commons
 Attribution 3.0 Unported

When I was doing the karaoke scene in the 90s* one of my openers would frequently be the 1964 hit Come A Little Bit Closer, by Jay & the Americans. It fit my range and I'd enjoyed the song in my youth.

For 50 years I'd always assumed that Jay & the Americans were a Latino group from South o' the Border, based on that song and another in the playlist, Only In America, which opens like this:

Only in America
Can a guy from anywhere
Go to sleep a pauper and wake up a millionaire

Only in America
Can a kid without a cent
Get a break and maybe grow up to be President

I had no idea that Jay Black (real name, David Blatt) and his buddies were from Long Island. The sentiments in this song were similar to what many have believed who migrate here from abroad.

Only in America
Can a kid who's washin' cars
Take a giant step and reach right up and touch the stars

The song, of course, is about a poor boy ending up with his dream girl who also happens to be from a higher class. But it's also cherishing this "land of opportunity."

I remember reading a book by a young man from Indonesia who seemed shocked to discover upon his arrival that the streets were not actually paved with gold. (Currently a lot of our local streets are pockmarked with potholes, but that's another story.)

This song came to mind for me when I read this week that Kylie Jenner, age 21, has become the world's youngest "self-made billionaire"? It seemed like an "only in America" kind of story.

(How the other half lives.) Photo by Vita Vilcina on Unsplash 

The story I read appeared in Inc. Magazine, referencing the annual Forbes listing of the world's richest which they publish each spring. The article begins, "If you hope to become a billionaire, the United States may be the best place to live. That's one obvious conclusion from Forbes' list of billionaires for 2018."

The article by Minda Zetlin is titled Here's Why the U.S. Created More Billionaires Than Any Other Nation in 2018. Zetlin points out that the rich did not all get richer in 2018, that 46% declined in net worth for various reasons. (I remember Ted Turner noting that when he went from 10 billion to two billion, he still ate pretty well.)

The U.S. leads the league in billionaires, adding 21 new ones to their roster for a total of 607. That is 50% more than were on the Forbes list in 2010.

How they obtained their riches is what the meat of the article is about. Though some billionaires inherited their fortunes, entrepreneurs make up the bulk of the new billionaires. And though Kylie Jenner is the youngest ever, other notables have climbed that ladder in their 20s, including Mark Zuckerberg at 23.

There's a sense in which she gained a lot of help by flowing in the tailwinds of the Kardasians, but building a following of 104 million on Snapchat didn't hurt anything either. Oh, and did we forget to mention she created a cosmetic business? She didn't inherit her wealth. She essentially leveraged her fame, with her name an established brand.

I know that a lot of people have issues with capitalism right now, but you can be sure Kylie is not one of them.

At the pinnacle is Jeff Bezos, followed by the familiar names of Gates (the college dropout) and Buffet (Warren, not that guy from Margaritaville.)

Only in America.

* * * *
Related Links
To see the Forbes article visit www.forbes.com/billionaires/#24597813251c
Wikipedia entry on Kylie detailing her entrepreneurial acumen. She skipped college and has no college debt.
A REAL rags to riches story about a freed slave and black woman who made a fortune in the cosmetics game, Sarah Breedlove Walker.

EdNote: No doubt Kylie's privileged background contributed to her achievements. She didn't start her career as a shoeshine boy or bellhop, so would probably be disqualified as a Horatio Alger story role model.

* I actually sang karaoke in 14 states. 

Tech Tuesday: What Rich Guys Think About In Their Spare Time

Photo by Justin Dickey on Unsplash

So Bill and Jeff are sitting around the fireplace at Bill's place one evening, sipping wine and chatting about this and that. Jeff is impressed that Bill has a 50-car garage, and a house full of windows. Bill is impressed by the valuation of Jeff's company stock.

The conversation bounces from theme to theme until finally Bill asks, "What are you doing to save the world?"

Jeff reflects on his childhood and recalls a game he used to play with a balloon in which he would keep tapping it upward toward the ceiling so as to keep it from touching the ground. If it hit the ground the world would blow up. In other words, it was a game with high stakes.

Of course high stakes is what made the game exhilarating.  Bill listens quietly as Jeff relates this childhood experience.

"Everything will end at one time or another," Bill says. "I just don't want to be there when it happens."

"Me neither," Jeff said. "That's why I called you tonight. I've had a really hot idea.. It's going to take some capital, but you know how it is. Nothing ventured, nothing gained."

Jeff shared his idea, and Bill liked it.

"Nuclear fusion," Bill said, pondering the sound of the words as he repeated the phrase. "I like it."

Will nuclear fusion be the energy of the future?

EdNote: Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates have thrown a few million tokens into the pot with a handful of others to invest in a startup called General Fusion. The goal is to provide energy for the one billion people in the world who do not yet have energy.

"Can you imagine? If we pull this off, your original dream for Microsoft can actually happen. Every home in the world will be able to have a personal computer."

"Yes," Bill added, "And Amazon will have one billion more potential customers."

"I'll drink to that," Jeff said, lifting his glass.

"Wait. I should fetch a bottle of Chateau Petrus 2015 red," Bill interrupted.

"Just a sec," Jeff said, setting his glass on an oak end table. "What about Heaven's Door? You wouldn't--"

"I do," said Bill. "Do you prefer the Tennessee Bourbon or the Double Barrel Whiskey?"

Jeff laughs. "I like the Straight Rye."

"Rye not," Bill says, chuckling at his wry humor.

There's no record of how the rest of the evening went.... for what it's worth, here's the rest of the story.

* * * *
Follow the link below to see what it's really all about.
Will Nuclear Fusion Be the Energy of the Future?
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/06/bezos-microsoft-bet-on-a-10-trillion-energy-fix-for-the-planet.html

EdNote: Other than the links, this blog post is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to what really happened is purely coincidence.
* * * *
Related Links
Bob Dylan's Foray into the Whiskey Business
Heaven's Door Whiskey

Five Minutes with Richard L. Brandt, Author of One Click

I've always been a book lover, so it was easy to fall in love with Amazon.com when I first discovered it in the 1990's. I never really paid much attention to the man behind the company until only recently. But the world loves its heroes, and never seems to tire of learning more about the pioneers of new technologies. We want to know these people. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreesen... these are real people. Their stories are often instructive and inspire others to follow through on their own latent dreams.

In recent months I was seduced by the Kindle, and finally began to notice that there was also a man behind the development of this easy-to-use reading device. I'd never dug very deep into the Amazon.com story, but had always noticed it unwavering ease-of-use. With the Kindle I understood that it was no accident, and I finally discovered the man at the helm, Jeff Bezos.

After writing some laudatory comments about Bezos nine days ago, Richard Brandt (right) sent me a review copy of his book One Click so I could get a deeper look inside the Amazon.com story. I've not abandoned the enjoyment I receive from sitting in my easy chair holding a good book in my hand, so I happily plowed into it, following up with a request for an interview. Mr. Brandt graciously accepted.

Ennyman: Where are you from originally and how did you first take an interest in writing?
Richard L. Brandt: I was born in Southern California and studied math, engineering and biology in college, with a BA in biology. But I always wanted to write. By the time I graduated in the late 1970s I decided I wanted to write about science and technology. I got a fellowship from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which got me a paid internship at Business Week magazine for the summer (1980). I got a full-time position for that and stayed with BW for 14 years. I used to write science fiction in high school and turned that interest into writing about science and technology as a journalist. I found it much more fun than working in laboratories, and got to meet some of the greatest entrepreneurs in the world in the process.

EN: Are there any authors who you’ve found especially inspirational and why?
RLB: Several scientists with a talent for writing, explaining scientific principals in fascinating and educational ways: Steven Jay Gould, E.O Wilson (both of whom I met and took classes from as part of a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship in 1990,) Richard Feynman, Oliver Sachs, James Watson and Francis Crick for their book "The Double Helix." Also author John McPhee and journalists Steven Levy and John Markoff, both of whom became friends of mine. Levy and Markoff know how to get at the core of the issue and explain the story with insight, not just the facts.

EN: Who are the most interesting people you’ve interviewed as a business writer?
RLB: Linus Pauling, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin

EN: In layman's terms what is "the cloud" and how is it going to change the future of the Internet? How is Jeff Bezos taking advantage of this transition?
RLB: The cloud, in a sense, is the internet. More specifically, cloud computing means that the work you do by computer is no longer reliant just on the processors and memory chips residing in your personal computer. Instead, you tap into the software and processing power of networks of computers through the internet, which do the heavy lifting. It's essentially like having a giant, amorphous computer, really a network of computers, attached to the machine you're using.

It started in business computing with companies like Salesforce.com. Companies don't have to buy their own computers and software to do certain tasks. They can just connect to computers and software owned by Salesforce.com, which leases computer time to them. The systems are set up to be dynamic, automatically routing work to more computers as your workload increases, and companies can pay just for the processing power they need as they need it.

Jeff Bezos started moving Amazon into this area around 2002. He had all this computing power running business software, much of which he had created, and realized he could make it all available to companies to help them run their businesses. So a lot of the work they do is actually run on Amazon computers. When you order an Instant movie from Netflix, for example, you actually tap into Amazon computers, where the movies are stored. Amazon's computers stream the films to you. The personal device you're using to watch the movie doesn't have to do very much work. The Kindle Fire represents the next step for Amazon in that direction. It was designed to be the device to which movies, TV shows, books, music and other media are streamed. That allows the Fire to have minimal memory and processing power -- and a lower price (although Bezos also sells it at a loss because the real money is in streaming the media to you.) He's been doing this since the Kindle was first introduced. That's how he can synch up the book you're reading for different devices. I can start reading a book on a Kindle, put it down and continue reading on a PC, and later read more on my cell phone. When I open the Kindle app on any of these devices it always starts at the last page I read. That's because Amazon's computers remember where I left off and make sure each device starts up again on the right page. With the Fire, Bezos plans to bring this kind of computing to a lot of different media and applications. The way he sees it, the internet is the next generation of computing, while our personal devices are merely peripherals.

EN: It’s amusing that the title of your first iteration of The Google Guys failed to connect with buyers because they (the wider public) didn’t know who these guys were. How did this mistake happen and how much difference has the new title made on sales?
RLB: The first version of the book was called "Inside Larry and Sergey's Brain." It was part of a series that started several years ago with "Inside Steve's Brain," about Steve Jobs. Each book in the series was written by a different author. But not very many people know the Google founders by their first names alone, even with their picture on the cover (and I suspect this was the case with other titles in the series.) So the publisher decided to give up on using this first-name-only approach. The paperback was released under a new title: "The Google Guys: Inside the Brilliant Minds of Google Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin." The book on Jeff Bezos was going to be the next in the series, "Inside Jeff's Brain," but was titled "One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com." It's too early to tell whether the new title for the Google book will make a difference in sales. It got great reviews but not a lot of traction the first time around.

EN: Thanks, Richard. I enjoyed your book on Amazon.com and will look for The Google Guys.

EdNote: You can follow Richard Brandt via the following social media channels:
http://richardbrandt.blogs.com
@rlbrandt
Facebook: Richard L Brandt
LinkedIn: Richard L Brandt

My Hero Jeff Bezos

Internet start-ups and garages go together like soup and sandwiches, at least in regions where the climate is temperate most of the year. I only recently learned that Jeff Bezos followed the same pattern, setting up his fledgling firm in his garage. In fifteen years the founder of Amazon.com became one of the richest men in America and became Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

So what is it that I like about this guy? Well, besides the fact that he lives in Albuquerque, this business he founded is all about books. I’m a reader, and we have book shelves in every room of the house. In fact, Cicero once said, “A room without books is like a body without a soul.” Books are great. What would life be without books?

Jorge Luis Borges said that he imagined that Paradise would be like a library. Well, with the advent of the Internet, and Amazon.com, as long as we have a modem and power, we can tap into a little stream of that Paradise any time we want.

Even before the Kindle I have been a strong advocate of Amazon.com. When I hear someone tout a new book, I go to Amazon.com to see what other readers have been saying about it.

The site has so many brilliant features. They are a variety of ways it helps you find more books that you will like. One is, "People who bought this (the book you are looking at) also bought these." You don't get that at a conventional book store. And then based on your buying history the site makes recommendations to you as you approach the checkout.

In fact, everything about the site is easy. They remember your shipping address and the addresses of friends or family you've shipped things to. They remember your card info if you want them to. And they make it so very easy to find what you are looking for. Easy is the operative word here.

And as I've said before, that's just what the Kindle was when I got mine earlier this year. Easy.

A Henry Ward Beecher observation comes to mind here. He said, “Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?” You got that right. And Amazon.com plays on that weakness in another way. You don't like the price of a book? There are five, ten or forty used copies available at very low prices, sometimes for as little as a nickel. Many times over the years I have recommended certain out of print books to people that were still available by means of this "swap meet" style of selling used merchandise.

What I like most of all, and why Jeff Bezos is my hero this year, is that through ePublishing I have been able to publish and share the short fiction I've been writing the past twenty-five years. The literary agents I tried to work with all said that the New York publishing houses were not going to talk to a short story writer. You have to write a novel. Until now, the power was in their hands. Today publishing is in the hands of the people. We can all be digital Gutenbergs now.

This fall many of the stories which had been lying dormant in my hard drive were released to a wider audience by means of Kindle and Nook. I actually did publish my novel, The Red Scorpion, but consider the short story volumes to be my jewels. At this point there are three: Unremembered Histories, Newmanesque, and The Breaking Point and Other Stories. And if you get a chance, write a review.* Keep our book-reading community rolling.

Thank you, Mr. Bezos. And thank you to all the world's readers as well. Because of you we write on.

*I am currently offering artwork to readers who write reviews for any of my books. Details here.