Jeff Bezos

• jeff bezos (founders #388) ~47m
  • ~2005
    • it’s all about the long term
    • bezos (and jobs) studied akio morita (盛田昭夫) of sony—listen to founders #386
    • the failure has to scale as the company gets bigger (10m)
    • Amazon is basically a market of its ownrevisit
    • sam walton: “there’s only one boss, and that is the customer—they can fire us anytime they want by spending their money elsewhere”
    • three questions to ask in hiring meetings before making a decision:
      • will you admire this person?
      • will this person raise the average level of effectiveness of the group?
      • along what dimensions might this person be a superstar?
    • the platform allows us to launch new e-commerce businesses faster (24m)
      • Amazon is a company that builds other companiesrevisit
        • relate with it gets easier notes
    • find your life’s work
    • emphasis on introductions for new customers
      • estee lauder in early days (founders #361)
      • relate with CTA notes
    • bezos connects everything to amazonrevisit
    • doubly blessed: market size unconstrained opportunity + the underlying foundational tech is improving day by day
      • relate with build in anticipation of cost going down notes
    • concern yourself only with the controllables (32m)
      • internet bubble popped—relate with buffett and jensen huang
    • landrush metaphor and electricity metaphorrevisit
    • internet destroys the middle—get big fast
    • amazon uses the tech not only to reduce costs but also to drive adoption and revenue, unlike physical retailers (36m)
    • cost improvement → lower prices → growth → spreads fixed costs across more sales → reducing cost per unit → more price reductions… (37m)revisit
    • selection, convenience, then lowering prices
      • relate with focus on few variables memos and notes
      • jim sinegal (bezos met him when he was in late 30s)
        • the birth of amazon prime
          • bezos took jim sinegal (i.e., indirectly Sol Price and Sam Walton) seriously—that is, he took discounting seriously but with internet
            • who would take this further, and with what?revisit
    • what is good for customers is good for shareholdersrevisit
      • think about implication for activists
    • ford: maximum service with minimum cost
    • if you want to do anything special, you have to be willing to be misunderstood
      • negative reviews are for the long-runrevisit
    • on the need for good judgement and why data may lead you to make the wrong decision (relate with the notes)
      • the structure of unstructured decision processes
    • excessive attention by mgmt scientists to operating decisions may well cause org to pursue inappropriate courses of action more efficiently—you are going in the wrong direction faster
      • relate with you get what you measure notes
      • relate with velocity notes (if any)
    • you cannot numerically estimate the effect that consistently lower prices will have on our business over 5 or 10 years or more—the virtuous circle leads over the long term to a much larger dollar amount of free cash flow
      • relate with money is in the long-run
    • math-based decisions command wide agreement <> judgement-based decisions are rightly debated and often controversialrevisit
      • the former is 判断; the latter is 決断revisit
      • relate with judgement notes
  • 2006
    • on physical stores and differentiation
    • on fba: the importance of building self-service platforms so more ideas get tried
  • 2007
    • missionaries > mercenaries
    • on kindle: long-form reading > shorter attention spans (info snacking tools)
  • 2008~
    • if you chase instant gratification, you will find a crowd there (55m)revisit
      • when you think in the long-run, you have massive advantage because you are going against human naturerevisit
    • working backwards from customer needs approach <> skills forward approach where existing skills and competencies are used to drive business opportunities
      • relate with keep reacting > masterplan notes
      • relate with don’t let the tech dictate your vision notes
    • we will keep inventing for customers
    • four characteristics of a business you should never sell:
      • customers love it
      • it can grow to a very large size
      • it has strong returns on capital
      • it is durable in time with the potential to endure for decades
    • what connects amazon retail, fba, aws, and kindle
      • customer obsession, eagerness to invent and pioneer, willingness to fail, the patience to think long term, and the taking of professional pride in operational excellence
    • outsize returns often come from betting against conventional wisdom, and conventional wisdom is usually right—but you should take 10% success rate 100x payoff type of bet every time, in business you can only score 4 runs max but in business you can score 10,000+ runs (long-tail distribution)
      • relate with payoff notes
  • 2016~
    • day 2 is stasis, followed by irrelevance, followed by excruciating, painful decline, followed by death—that is why it’s always day 1
      • a starter pack of essentials for day 1 defense
        • customer obsession
        • skeptical view of proxies
          • the process can become the proxy for the result you want—the process is not the thing
            • relate with association notes
        • the eager adoption of external trends
          • fight them, then you’re probably fighting the future
          • embrace them, and you’ll have a tailwind
          • e.g., machine learning and artificial intelligence (2016)
        • high velocity decision making
          • great builders want to build—slow high quality decisions will leave unless you become comfortable making decisions faster with less informationrevisit
            • you need both great mission and high velocity decision making environments
              • relate with rockefeller memos on decision speed over quality memos and notes
    • good inventors and designers deeply understand their customer
      • anecdotes >>> the averages you’ll find on surveys
    • a remarkable customer experience starts with heart, intuition, curiosity, play, guts, taste—you will not find any of it in a survey
    • dee hock (visa): “making good judgements and acting wisely when one has complete date, facts, and information is not leadership. It’s not even management. It’s bookkeeping.”
    • on one-way doors and two-way doors
    • if you wait for 90%, you’re being too slow
    • if you can course correct, being wrong won’t be that costly—but being slow is going to be expensive for surerevisit
    • disagree and commit—so stuff gets built
    • high standards are contagious—the opposite is also truerevisit
    • on wrong expectation on scope—the importance of teaching scope (1h11m)
      • people mistakenly believe a high standard 6 page memo can be written in one or two days or even a few hours, when in reality it might take a week or more
    • wandering is an essential counterbalance to efficiency—you need to employ both
      • e.g., aws
        • relate with steve jobs on build what people will want notes
    • failures need to scale—otherwise you’re not going to be inventing at a size that can actually move the needle
      • ask: can what you’re doing impact you in any meaningful way?revisit
        • otherwise, you’re essentially stuck in stasis (day 2)
      • e.g., fire phone, echo, alexa
  • 2020
    • differentiation is survival and the universe wants you to be typical—do no let itrevisit
      • relate with be the only notes
    • from richard dawkins’ the blind watchmaker—equilibrium is deathrevisit
    • “Being yourself is worth it, but don’t expect it to be easy or free. You’ll have to put energy into it continuously.”
      • relate with recalibration notes
    • “To all of you: be kind, be original, create more than you consume, and never, never, never let the universe smooth you into your surroundings. It remains Day 1.”