Bezos Charms Sun Valley Crowd by Reminiscing About Grandparents

(Bloomberg) -- Jeff Bezos, one of the most feared businessmen on the planet, won over a crowd of billionaire industry titans with a softer message at Sun Valley on Thursday.

The Amazon.com Inc. founder, who has wreaked havoc on industries from retail to media, and is threatening to upend health care and finance, ruminated on life lessons, human nature and work culture.

The one thing that resonated, though, was what he said about the importance of grandparents, according to people with knowledge of the speech.

Bezos talked about spending summers on his grandfather’s ranch, where he said he learned many business and life lessons.

“I was blessed with great grandparents and they definitely taught me a lot,” Bezos, 54, told Bloomberg as he walked into the conference’s afternoon sessions.

Guests are scheduled to hear from another tech giant, Facebook Inc.’s Mark Zuckerberg, on Friday. China, investing in marijuana, border control and immigration are other topics on the agenda for Friday’s panel sessions at Allen & Co.’s annual media and tech conference in Idaho.

To contact the reporters on this story: Nabila Ahmed in New York at nahmed54@bloomberg.net;Alex Barinka in San Francisco at abarinka2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net, Andrew Pollack

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