City of Westminster College was visited on March 7th by Christopher North, Managing Director of Amazon UK. Mr North attended the College as part of the Speakers for Schools programme to talk to the students about Entrepreneurship and his career within Amazon UK.

Students were invited to ask questions following Mr North’s presentation, with many taking the opportunity to ask about how they would start up their own business. “Being an entrepreneur means taking a lot of risks, about 85% of business start-ups fail,” said Mr North. “Really successful entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have the incredible ability to accept risk and to fail over and over again but to have a vision that they’re so passionate about and that they know is right that they pick themselves up and try for it again and again. You mostly see things that Amazon have succeeded at, but you don’t see the things behind the scenes – all the things we tried that didn’t work.”

He also encouraged students to use Amazon creator Jeff Bozo’s advice which was voiced earlier in the presentation, “You can’t just think about your numbers for next week. You have to obsess over your customers – whoever your customers are, whether they’re consumers, authors, sellers or advertisers. You have to be relentless in innovation and invention. If you’re going to create the next Facebook, Amazon or What’s App you have to be someone who is really comfortable with going someplace nobody has ever been before, and even willing to be misunderstood for a really long time.”