Beyond Bezos: Amazon, Cloud, and CEO Transitions

Amazon just announced this week that its founder and CEO Jeff Bezos "will transition to the role of Executive Chair in the third quarter of 2021 and [CEO of Amazon Web Services] Andy Jassy will become Chief Executive Officer at that time". So in this episode of 16 Minutes -- our show where we talk about tech trends in the headlines, what's hype/ what's real, and where we are on the long arc of innovation -- we talk not just about this news, but what it signals regarding cloud computing as well as CEO transitions in general. 

How does/ doesn’t it fit into other patterns of tech succession -- like recent moves at Netflix (where Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos was named co-CEO alongside Reed Hastings); Microsoft (Satya Nadella); Intel (Pat Geisinger); Cisco and more? Is Amazon -- with its ability to straddle both enterprise and consumer so strongly -- an outlier, and perhaps more of a conglomerate? And are there certain inflection points or phases for when companies of all sizes should think about succession planning/ such leadership transitions? Sonal Chokshi and Zoran Basich chat with a16z general partner Martin Casado -- who was previously cofounder and CTO at Nicira (which was acquired by VMware, where he became GM of the Networking and Security Business Unit) -- so Casado knows a thing or two about such transitions... not to mention his own past debates and discussions of whether or not to bring on an external CEO. 

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