Advice from Bezos to Insider CEO Blodget

Insider CEO Henry Blodget said on CNBC Wednesday that Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos gave him good advice about running the media company, reports Kevin Stankiewicz of CNBC.

Stankiewicz writes, “Bezos, who will step down as Amazon CEO later this year, led a $5 million investment round in Blodget’s company back in 2013. It was about six years old at the time and known as Business Insider. In an interview on ‘Squawk Box,’ Blodget recalled a discussion he had with Bezos about how he should allocate his time between management and editorial.

“‘I had been writing all the time. I was being an editor, and one of the things I asked him right after he invested was, ’Listen, should I keep writing and doing TV and that kind of thing or should I stay CEO because the company’s gotten big enough that I really have to do one or the other?’ said Blodget, who co-founded what has become Insider Inc. in 2007.

“Bezos responded by saying he really only had one request as an investor, Blodget recounted. ‘He said, ‘I am going to beg you to say CEO.’’ On Wednesday, Blodget, a former Wall Street analyst-turned media entrepreneur, also described pressing Bezos on the reason. ‘[Bezos] said, ‘Because you don’t even realize it, but every day you are making dozens of little course corrections. You all are inventing a new model for journalism. You have an instinct as to where that’s going.’’

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