Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson
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Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson
Look at Earth. It is incredible. Jim Lovell, one of my real heroes, while he was circling around the moon on the Apollo 8 mission, did something amazing. He put out his thumb and realized that, with it at arm’s length, he could cover the whole Earth. Everything he’d ever known, he could cover with his thumb, and he said something amazing. You know ... See more
Jeff Bezos • Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson
(As a side note, by tradition at Amazon, authors’ names never appear on the memos—the memo is from the whole team.)
Jeff Bezos • Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson
“The initial start-up capital came primarily from my parents, and they invested a large fraction of their life savings in what became Amazon.com,” Bezos says. “That was a very bold and trusting thing for them to do.”
Jeff Bezos • Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson
Embrace External Trends The outside world can push you into Day 2 if you won’t or can’t embrace powerful trends quickly. If you fight them, you’re probably fighting the future. Embrace them and you have a tailwind. These big trends are not that hard to spot (they get talked and written about a lot), but they can be strangely hard for large organiza
... See moreJeff Bezos • Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson
Avoid PowerPoint and slide presentations. This is a maxim that Steve Jobs also followed. Bezos’s belief in the power of storytelling means that he thinks that his colleagues should be able to create a readable narrative when they pitch an idea. “We don’t do PowerPoint (or any other slide-oriented) presentations at Amazon,” he wrote in a recent shar... See more
Jeff Bezos • Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson
Will this person raise the average level of effectiveness of the group they’re entering? We want to fight entropy. The bar has to continuously go up. I ask people to visualize the company five years from now. At that point, each of us should look around and say, “The standards are so high now—boy, I’m glad I got in when I did!”
Jeff Bezos • Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson
“I’m always trying to figure out one thing first and foremost: Is that person a missionary or a mercenary?” Bezos says. “The mercenaries are trying to flip their stock. The missionaries love their product or their service and love their customers and are trying to build a great service.
Jeff Bezos • Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson
I constantly remind our employees to be afraid, to wake up every morning terrified. Not of our competition, but of our customers. Our customers have made our business what it is, they are the ones with whom we have a relationship, and they are the ones to whom we owe a great obligation. And we consider them to be loyal to us—right up until the seco... See more
Jeff Bezos • Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson
Bezos says. “In fact, we were packing on our hands and knees on a hard concrete floor.” One of the other iconic origin tales of Amazon, told often by Bezos with his raucous laugh, involved how they figured out a way to make the packing easier.