Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos
Jeffrey Preston "Jeff" Bezosis an American technology entrepreneur and investor. He has played a role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, an online merchant of books and later of a wide variety of products and services, most recently video streaming. Amazon.com became the largest retailer on the World Wide Web and a model for Internet sales...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth12 January 1964
CityAlbuquerque, NM
CountryUnited States of America
What we want to be is something completely new. There is no physical analog for what Amazon.com is becoming.
But there's so much kludge, so much terrible stuff, we are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine stage with the Internet. That's where we are. We don't get our hair caught in it, but that's the level of primitiveness of where we are. We're in 1908.
There's so much stuff that has yet to be invented. There's so much new that's going to happen. People don't have any idea yet how impactful the internet is going to be and that this is still Day 1 in such a big way.
If we think long term, we can accomplish things that we couldn't otherwise accomplish.
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.
If there’s one reason we have done better than of our peers in the Internet space over the last six years, it is because we have focused like a laser on customer experience.
The thing about inventing is you have to be both stubborn and flexible. The hard part is figuring out when to be which.
A lot of people – and I’m just not one of them – believe that you should live for the now. I think what you do is think about the great expanse of time ahead of you and try to make sure that you’re planning for that in a way that’s going to leave you ultimately satisfied. This is the way it works for me.
It’s very important for entrepreneurs to be realistic. So if you believe on that first day while you’re writing the business plan that there’s a 70 percent chance that the whole thing will fail, then that kind of relieves the pressure of self-doubt.
Are you lazy or just incompetent?
We've had three big ideas at Amazon that we've stuck with for 18 years, and thy're the reason we're successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.
In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts
The Net is pretty cool, but the physical world is the best medium ever.
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.