We expect all our businesses to have a positive impact on our top and bottom lines. Profitability is very important to us or we wouldn’t be in this business.
If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.
If you’re long-term oriented, customer interests and shareholder interests are aligned.
Keep our competitors focused on us, while we stay focused on the customer.
To get something new done you have to be stubborn and focused, to the point that others might find unreasonable.
We all know that if you swing for the fences, you’re going to strike out a lot, but you’re also going to hit some home runs.
If you’re watching your competitors, you’re unlikely to invent a bunch of stuff on your own.
If you never want to be criticized, for goodness’ sake don’t do anything new.
Amazon is not too big to fail… If we start to focus on ourselves, instead of focusing on our customers, that will be the beginning of the end… We have to try and delay that day for as long as possible.
You can have the best technology, you can have the best business model, but if the storytelling isn’t amazing, it won’t matter. Nobody will watch.
Sometimes we measure things and see that in the short term they actually hurt sales, and we do it anyway.
What we want to be is something completely new. There is no physical analog for what Amazon.com is becoming.
I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it’s not just about the business.
There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that’s not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you.
A company shouldn’t get addicted to being shiny because shiny doesn’t last.
The common question that gets asked in business is, ‘why?’ That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is ‘why not?’.
In business, what’s dangerous is not to evolve.
I’d rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person.