Attention is a scarce commodity. Bezos told Higgins that attention was “the scarce commodity of the late 20th century.” It’s still the scarce commodity today, so his advice stands: “One of the ways that you can do that [capture attention] and it’s the way that we did it is by doing something new and innovative for the first time that actually has... See more

When you find a nascent but fast-growing space, dive in. Bezos had a high-paying job at quantitative hedge fund DE Shaw, but when he saw how fast internet usage was growing, he gave it up to start from scratch. It was a good bet.

Optimism for the future. “What’s really incredible about this is that this is Day One. This is the Kitty Hawk stage of electronic commerce. The late 20th Century is just a great time to be alive.” Realizing that he was at the very beginning and taking a long-term view let Bezos make smart strategic decisions, like selling books despite the smaller... See more

Crypto Bezos would certainly appreciate that web3 makes digital objects ownable. If Amazon changed the cost structure by shifting from expensive retail to cheaper warehouses, NFTs would give Bezos the opportunity to lower costs even more dramatically by selling ownable, provably unique and scarce digital items.

So what can we pick up? How would he look at what to build today?

There are a lot of crypto projects that are built as crypto projects, for crypto people. Crypto Bezos, on the other hand, would build products, from Day One, that are better for the regular customer than anything they have access to today.

Crypto Bezos might not be afraid to retain centralized control over the business while giving customers upside via social tokens instead of going full DAO.

Don’t be a purist. Most consumers don’t care whether your product is on the internet, web3, or offline. Those are tools, not value propositions.

Build something that literally can’t be built within the previous paradigm. “If you can do things using a more traditional method, you probably should do things using a more traditional method.” Bezos wouldn’t build a crypto project just to build a crypto project; he’d only build on the blockchain if it let him do something for customers that he... See more