All of my startup experience summed up:
The right person with the precise right focus and completely unshackled is 10x as effective as 10 pretty smart people working hard in a vague general direction
And, as Jeff's annual letter to shareholders has emphasized from the very first instance, Amazon's mission is to be the world's most customer-centric company. One way to continue to find vectors for growth is to stay attached at the hip to the fickle nature of customer unhappiness, which they're always quite happy to share under the right... See more
as Jeff always noted, you can make micro-adjustments in the long run to tweak the profit leaks. For some really large, heavy items, you can tack on shipping surcharges or just remove them from qualifying for Prime. These days, some items in Amazon are marked as "Add-on items" and you can only order them in conjunction with enough other items such... See more
I believe that it’s easier to do a hard startup than an easy startup. People want to be part of something exciting and feel that their work matters.
If you are making progress on an important problem, you will have a constant tailwind of people wanting to help you. Let yourself grow more ambitious, and don’t be afraid to work on what you... See more
Making few bets forces you to make hard decisions. It’s extremely hard to measure the value of something against some abstract and absolute notion of value.
Proponents of diversification argue that it takes the edge off of making a mistake. That would be a good argument if people acted the same way independent of... See more