During those misadventures, Bezos seemed unperturbed. If anything, the setbacks made him push the company even harder into new territory. He said to Rick Dalzell, the former Army Ranger who’d joined Amazon from Walmart, “Physically, I’m a chicken. Mentally, I’m bold.” Susan Benson remembers riding up the Columbia Building elevator one morning with Amazon’s founder. She had Rufus in tow, and Bezos quietly studied the corgi. “You are a very sweet dog, Rufus,” he said. Then he looked up at Benson. “But you know, he is not bold.” Bezos used that word a lot: bold. In the company’s first letter to
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