JEFF BEZOS lives by a simple precept: limit the number of things you would wish you had done differently when you are 80. He calls it, with habitual nerdiness, the “regret-minimisation framework”. In 1994 it led him to forsake cushy work at a hedge fund to start Amazon. It is behind the big bets, from the Prime subscription service to AWS cloud computing, that have made the company into a technology titan valued at $2.3trn—and himself into one of the world’s richest people. It also explains why six years ago Mr Bezos left his first wife of 25 years for a former TV presenter, Lauren Sánchez. And why he blew, on some estimates, $50m to rent out Venice for three days for their opulent nuptials starting on June 26th—the predictable antiplutocrat pushback be damned.