How I accelerated my entrepreneurial journey at AWS

In any successful business, regardless of its size or scale, you really need good principles. You have to make sure that everyone speaks the same language in terms of communicating transparently and with the same terminology. Principles are the belief system and foundation to which everything you do can be traced. They guide your decision-making, inform your values, and if they're built and used successfully, they inspire your employees.

I felt inspired when I first read Amazon’s Leadership Principles, for which we now have 16 in total. But what I found more impressive was how we use them day-to-day. They really are the core foundation — the primitives, if you will — of everything we do, say, and execute.

This is especially important in a global environment. For example, I traveled to our AWS offices in England, Denmark, Italy, France, Germany, and Australia recently, and I was struck by how seamlessly we could communicate and align despite being dispersed around the world. Our shared Leadership Principles create a common language that transcends geographic boundaries. It really is amazing for a company of this size.

At Amazon and AWS, everyone is expected to be a leader, regardless of whether you lead a team or manage others. In fact, the word “leader” appears in the definition of almost all of our Leadership Principles. This expectation to act as a leader guides all of us daily, from those in early-career roles to the highest levels of the company.

Coming from the entrepreneur and startup world, I was relieved to discover how involved our senior leaders are at AWS in everything we do. It's exhilarating to see how the key to our success lies in everyone being aligned and rallying behind specific initiatives.

Our approach is bottom-up, where the knowledge and insights we provide inform our leadership's strategic direction. Conversely, the feedback we receive from the top helps us fine-tune and align our efforts toward delivering truly exceptional products. From their vantage point, our senior leaders have visibility into all the investments and projects we're working on. This allows them to harmonize and ensure that every investment we make has a clear purpose and roadmap for driving continued progress. It's this symbiotic loop of bottom-up innovation and top-down guidance that catalyzes our ability to move forward as a unified force.

If you're the type of person who gets excited about building things and putting them to work for customers, this is the best place to do it. Working at AWS is incredibly fulfilling because of the remarkable speed at which we innovate and bring new ideas to life.

I get to collaborate with immensely talented people across all areas of the business, which is truly inspiring. We learn from each other and the diverse companies we serve every single day. I love diving deep to understand our customers' challenges not just at a high level, but in granular detail so we can develop solutions for their needs.

Some of my most rewarding experiences are meeting directly with customers, exchanging ideas, and then turning those insights into new services and offerings. AWS gives me the opportunity to have a positive impact in areas that really matter. The chance to learn, create, and make a difference on such a massive scale is what makes working here so extraordinary.

The entrepreneurial spirit that drove me as a founder is what fuels innovation at AWS every single day. We relentlessly invent and reinvent, empowered by the breadth of AWS services that allow us to move at startup speeds while operating at an unmatched scale.

Our customer obsession pushes us to constantly learn, question the status quo, and dive deep to develop solutions that transform industries. Just as importantly, our Leadership Principles unite us with a common purpose and mindset.

It's an incredibly rewarding environment for those who want to roll up their sleeves, aren't afraid to take calculated risks, and are passionate about using technology to solve real-world challenges. AWS gives you the opportunity to build something radically new that improves the way companies operate and individuals experience the world around them. For entrepreneurial builders who dream big, there is no better place to make that ambition a reality.

Diego Pantoja-Navajas is Vice President of AWS Supply Chain, overseeing the vision and execution of this new organization. His team is reimagining how supply chains can operate, scale with the AWS cloud, and leverage AI/ML technologies to build intelligent solutions. An honor graduate of Georgia Tech, Diego has continued his training with executive education in AI/ML from MIT, as well as leadership courses from IESE Business School and University of Michigan's Ross Business School. His passion lies in delivering innovative products that drive customer success.