Jeff Bezos Quotes
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On the Internet, companies are scale businesses, characterized by high fixed costs and relatively low variable costs. You can be two sizes: You can be big, or you can be small. It's very hard to be medium. A lot of medium-sized companies had the financing rug pulled out from under them before they could get big.
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What we want to be is something completely new. There is no physical analog for what Amazon.com is becoming.
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The Net is pretty cool, but the physical world is the best medium ever.
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That kind of divine discontent comes from observing customers and noticing that things can always be better.
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You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author's world.
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... if it's not your style to stretch and go the extra mile to make sure our customer experience is great, you're going to have an allergic reaction to this company. You probably won't stay. If you do try and stay, but can't adapt to the culture then it will reject you like a virus from a healthy immune system.
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The smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved. They’re open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking.
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But there's still so much you can do with technology to improve the customer experience. And that's the sense in which I believe it's still Day One, and that it's early in the day. If anything, the rate of change is accelerating.
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I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.
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Everything you are comes from your choices.
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If you're competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.
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Above all else, align with customers. Win when they win. Win only when they win.
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There are multiple ways to be externally focused that are very successful. You can be customer-focused or competitor-focused. Some people are internally focused, and if they reach critical mass, they can tip the whole company.
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Your margin is my opportunity.
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When you receive criticism from well-meaning people, it pays to ask, ‘Are they right?’ And if they are, you need to adapt what they’re doing. If they’re not right, if you really have conviction that they’re not right, you need to have that long-term willingness to be misunderstood. It’s a key part of invention.
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You don't want to negotiate the price of simple things you buy every day.
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It is very difficult to get people to focus on the most important things when you're in boom times.
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The one thing that offends me the most is when I walk by a bank and see ads trying to convince people to take out second mortgages on their home so they can go on vacation. That's approaching evil.
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There'll always be serendipity involved in discovery.
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What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you - what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind - you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn't a strategy.
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We are our choices. Build yourself a great story.
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There are two ways to extend a business. Take inventory of what you're good at and extend out from your skills. Or determine what your customers need and work backward, even if it requires learning new skills. Kindle is an example of working backward.
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Our premise is there are going to be a lot of winners. It's not winner take all. Other people do not have to lose for us to win.
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If you invent frequently and are willing to fail, then you never get to that point where you really need to bet the whole company.