What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy - they’re given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to the detriment of your choices.
Jeff BezosThere are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.
Jeff BezosThere is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment.
Jeff BezosWhat we want to be is something completely new. There is no physical analog for what Amazon.com is becoming.
Jeff BezosWhen you receive criticism from well-meaning people, it pays to ask, ‘Are they right?’ And if they are, you need to adapt what they’re doing. If they’re not right, if you really have conviction that they’re not right, you need to have that long-term willingness to be misunderstood. It’s a key part of invention.
Jeff BezosYou know, if you make a customer unhappy they won't tell five friends, they'll tell 5,000 friends. So, we are at a point now where we have all of the things we need to build an important and lasting company, and if we don't, it will be shame on us.
Jeff BezosReal estate is the key cost of physical retailers. That's why there's the old saw: location, location, location.
Jeff BezosGood ideas will always get funded, so that's not going to be a problem. But you will see that it will be harder and harder for bad ideas to get funded.
Jeff BezosWe watch our competitors, learn from them, see the things that they were doing for customers and copy those things as much as we can.
Jeff BezosOur premise is there are going to be a lot of winners. It's not winner take all. Other people do not have to lose for us to win.
Jeff BezosThe balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it.
Jeff BezosOur vision is every book ever printed in any language [fetched and viewable on our eBook Kindle device] in under 60 seconds.
Jeff BezosIf you build a great product or service, people will talk about it. But it starts with having something that's worth talking about.
Jeff BezosWe've got thousands of investors counting on us. And we're a team of thousands of employees all counting on each other. That's fun.
Jeff BezosI 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.
Jeff BezosA lot of people – and I’m just not one of them – believe that you should live for the now. I think what you do is think about the great expanse of time ahead of you and try to make sure that you’re planning for that in a way that’s going to leave you ultimately satisfied. This is the way it works for me.
Jeff BezosWhen you are eighty years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices.
Jeff BezosThe thing that motivates me is a very common form of motivation. And that is, with other folks counting on me, it's so easy to be motivated.
Jeff BezosMany of the traits that make Amazon unusual are now deeply ingrained in the culture. In fact, if I wanted to change them, I couldn't. The cultures are self-reinforcing, and that's a good thing.
Jeff BezosOne of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves. You don't choose your passions; your passions choose you.
Jeff BezosSeek instant gratification - or the elusive promise of it - and chances are you'll find a crowd there ahead of you.
Jeff BezosTeachers, who are really good create that environment where you can be very satisfied by the process of learning. If you do something and you find it a very satisfying experience then you want to do more of it. The great teachers somehow convey in their very attitude and their words and their actions and everything they do that this is an important thing you're learning. You end up wanting to do more of it and more of it and more of it. That's a real talent some people have to convey the importance of that and to reflect it back to the students.
Jeff BezosThe one thing that offends me the most is when I walk by a bank and see ads trying to convince people to take out second mortgages on their home so they can go on vacation. That's approaching evil.
Jeff BezosI like having the digital camera on my smart phone, but I also like having a dedicated camera for when I want to take real pictures.
Jeff BezosI've not seen an effective manager or leader who can't spend some fraction of time down in the trenches... If they don't do that they get out of touch with reality, and their whole thought and management process becomes abstract and disconnected.
Jeff BezosPercentage margins don't matter. What matters always is dollar margins: the actual dollar amount. Companies are valued not on their percentage margins, but on how many dollars they actually make, and a multiple of that.
Jeff Bezos