Sublime

Schultz told the pair that Amazon had a big problem and that Starbucks could solve it. “You have no physical presence,” the lanky Starbucks founder said as he brewed coffee for his guests. “That is going to hold you back.” Bezos disagreed. He looked right at Schultz and told him, “We are going to take this thing to the moon.”

His influence stemmed not from his 16 percent ownership stake but from twenty-five years of prophetic invention, strategic foresight, and disciplined management.

Thus, we made an early and important decision: We did not want to be a “hire and fire”—a company that would seek large, short-term contracts, employ a great many people for the duration of the contract, and at its completion let those people go. This type of operation is often the quickest and most efficient way to get a big job accomplished. But B

My cash policy was this: we would always have cash at least equal to two weeks’ sales. (I think this is called an “heuristic” decision in business school.) Any month we didn’t meet the test, I would borrow from Bank of America on a five-year term loan ostensibly secured by store fixtures. But I wasn’t borrowing for fixtures and inventory, as I took

“When you get started as a college student you limit your scope,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Vanity Fair