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
If you're going to invest in an Internet stock, you must be a long-term investor.
We've done price elasticity studies, and the answer is always that we should raise prices. We don't do that, because we believe -- and we have to take this as an article of faith -- that by keeping our prices very, very low, we earn trust with customers over time, and that that actually does maximize free cash flow over the long term.
If you're long-term oriented, customer interests and shareholder interests are aligned.
You can work long, hard, or smart, but at Amazon.com you can’t choose two out of three.
I don't think that you can invent on behalf of customers unless you're willing to think long-term, because a lot of invention doesn't work. If you're going to invent, it means you're going to experiment, and if you're going to experiment, you're going to fail, and if you're going to fail, you have to think long term.
If we think long term, we can accomplish things that we couldn't otherwise accomplish.
My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.
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.
Invention requires a long-term willingness to be misunderstood.
Entrepreneurs must be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.
If you are going to do large-scale invention, you have to be willing to do three things: You must be willing to fail; you have to be willing to think long term; and you have to be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.
We try to be a pure investment and a long-term decision making company. No company cares more about profitability than Amazon.com. But I also want to make the most of our opportunity and we would hate to be short-sighted about that,
I very much believe the Internet is indeed all it is cracked up to be.
perhaps the most expensive thing we've done since free Super Saver shipping.