Jeff Bezos Quotes
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Percentage margins don't matter. What matters always is dollar margins: the actual dollar amount. Companies are valued not on their percentage margins, but on how many dollars they actually make, and a multiple of that.
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If you look at academic studies, you can see that stock prices are most closely correlated with cash flow. It's such a straightforward number. Cash flow is what will drive shareholder returns.
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You're not going to make Hemingway better by adding animations.
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Percentage margins are not one of the things we are seeking to optimize. It’s the absolute dollar free cash flow per share that you want to maximize, and if you can do that by lowering margins, we would do that. So if you could take the free cash flow, that’s something that investors can spend. Investors can’t spend percentage margins.
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If you can't feed a team with two pizzas, it's too large.
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I try to spend my time on areas that I think are important for the future, and where I think I can add value.
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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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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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The killer app that got the world ready for appliances was the light bulb. So the light bulb is what wired the world. And they weren't thinking about appliances when they wired the world. They were really thinking about - they weren't putting electricity into the home. They were putting lighting into the home.
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Your margin is my opportunity.
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If you're long-term oriented, customer interests and shareholder interests are aligned.
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We're working to lower the cost of spaceflight so that many people can afford to go and so that we humans can better continue exploring the solar system. Accomplishing this mission will take time, and we're working on it methodically.
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Am I going to regret leaving Wall Street? No. Will I regret missing the beginning of the Internet? Yes.
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The Internet is disrupting every media industry...people can complain about that, but complaining is not a strategy. And Amazon is not happening to book selling, the future is happening to book selling.
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Do something you're very passionate about, and don't try to chase what is kind of the "hot passion" of the 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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It's hard to find things that won't sell online.
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You know, if you make a customer unhappy they won't tell five friends, they'll tell 5,000 friends. So, we are at a point now where we have all of the things we need to build an important and lasting company, and if we don't, it will be shame on us.
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We are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine stage with the Internet.
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One of the things that gets me up in the morning is knowing that customer expectations are always rising, and I find that very exciting.
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I don't know about you, but most of my exchanges with cashiers are not that meaningful.
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People loved their horses, too. But you don't keep riding your horse to work just because you love it.
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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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Focusing on the customer makes a company more resilient.