- Jeff Bezos’s space exploration company Blue Origin is looking to institute Amazon’s results-driven culture in a bid to better compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Some of Bezos’s hires from Amazon include Blue Origin’s CEO Dave Limp and CFO Allen Parker. So far Blue Origin has launched just one rocket into orbit, compared to over 400 by SpaceX.
After years of delays in space launches and lagging behind its main competitor, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos is returning to the playbook that led Amazon to becoming one of the world’s biggest companies: a culture maniacally focused on results.
To enact his plan, Bezos has brought in a slew of former Amazon executives. Blue Origin hired Amazon’s former head of devices Dave Limp as its CEO in December 2023. Bezos reportedly wanted a manufacturing expert in the top job.
Blue Origins has also recruited several other Amazon vets: head of supply chain Tim Collins, chief financial officer Allen Parker, and chief information officer Josh Koppleman.
“Dave doesn’t have much respect for work-life balance,” one former Blue Origin executive told the Financial Times, which first reported the story.
The management shake-up and culture overhaul come at a time when Blue Origin lags behind Elon Musk’s SpaceX, far and away the leader in private space exploration.
“Jeff wasn’t a cold-blooded competitor with SpaceX and assured the team that they needed to focus on our mission,” a former Blue Origin executive told the FT. “But over at Amazon he was absolutely ruthless…it was only a matter of time.”
Blue Origin did not respond to a request for comment.
Both Blue Origin and SpaceX compete for the private launches of satellites and have longer-term ambitions of commercial space travel. However, SpaceX has had considerably more success thus far. SpaceX has achieved orbit 450 times compared to just once from Blue Origin. Both companies also offer satellite constellations intended for broadband services around the world. Here, too, SpaceX, with its Starlink satellites, has a leg up on Blue Origin’s comparable Kuiper System. Starlink is used in over 100 countries; Kuiper has yet to go to space.
In building Amazon, which is now valued at more than $2 trillion, Bezos established a unique culture meant to foster an unrelenting focus on performance paired with an environment that rewarded critical thinking. Amazon’s culture is codified in a set of leadership principles that are meant to guide the entirety of the company.
They often led to a series of unorthodox rules for employees. For example, presentations were banned at Amazon. Instead, employees would write six-page memos they shared with coworkers, which would then be read together, in silence, during the start of a meeting. While at times quirky, Amazon’s culture gained a reputation for being hard-driving, even cutthroat.
In February Blue Origin announced layoffs of 10% of its 10,000-person staff. At the time executives said they wanted to streamline the company so that it could work more quickly. Those job cuts came about a month after Blue Origin reached a major company milestone by launching its first rocket, dubbed New Glenn.
