Jeff Bezos

"You need a culture that high-fives small and innovative ideas. —Jeff Bezos"

"Jeff Bezos’s similar put-it-all-in-one-place strategy was driving breakneck expansion for Amazon.com—and gaining notice."

"Jeff Bezos’s similar put-it-all-in-one-place strategy was driving breakneck expansion for Amazon.com—and gaining notice."

"“When a company comes up with an idea, it’s a messy process,” Bezos said. “There’s no aha moment.”"

"Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, said, “A few big successes compensate for dozens and dozens of things that did not work.”"

"“At Forbes, we speak with many billionaires about how they earn, spend, and give away their money. There is a particular kind of billionaire who uses part of their fortune on adventures and explorations. For example, I’m thinking of Richard Branson’s record-breaking hot air balloon journey from Morocco to Hawaii and Jeff Bezos’ deep-sea expedition to find the engine from the Apollo 11 space rocket,” writes Upbin in one of the few longer interviews conducted with Frederik Paulsen. Upbin argues that none of the world’s super-rich can match Frederik Paulsen’s level when it comes to exploration. Paulsen was in New York at the time to receive an honorary award from the prestigious and eccentric adventure club The Explorers Club, where he is a member. The culinary dinner at the Waldorf Astoria consisted of goat eye martini, pickled bull penis, and roasted cockroaches from Madagascar."

"Personal vehicles of players Player Personal vehicles created Bain Bain & Company; the unique Bain consulting formula; recommendations from client CEOs to other CEOs; Bain Capital Bezos Amazon; the Bezos business formula for Amazon Bismarck The Prussian state and army; North German Confederation; German state and military; successful wars against Denmark, Austria and France Churchill His opposition to Hitler; British state and Empire; their armies and people Curie Radium Disney Disney Studio; cartoons, movies and television; Mickey Mouse and later Disney characters; Disney’s personal WED corporation; Disneyland Dylan The folk movement; Columbia Records; songs and albums; fans Einstein Theory of Relativity; Zurich, Prague, Berlin, Caltech, Berkeley and Princeton universities; media Frankl Man’s Search for Meaning; lectures; awards; school of followers Henderson Boston Consulting Group (BCG); the Experience Curve and Boston Box concepts; Perspectives (short thought-pieces mailed to senior managers); BCG conferences Jobs Apple, NeXT and Pixar; Macintosh computers; Apple digital devices; Apple store; Apple apps Keynes The Economic Consequences of the Peace; King’s College Cambridge; The General Theory Lenin Iskra (Russian revolutionary newspaper); What Is To Be Done?; Bolshevik party; Russian state; military and secret police Leonardo His studio in Florence; his paintings, sculptures Madonna Record labels; albums, videos, movies; media; personal business ventures Mandela ANC; Robben Island prison; South African state Rowling Harry Potter Rubinstein Eponymous cosmetics empire; advertising and media; personality marketing and personal networking Paul of Tarsus City churches he founded; his letters (epistles) to them, Acts of the Apostles; Marcion and his pioneering New Testament canon Thatcher Conservative Party; British state and military; Falklands war; ‘Thatcherism’ programme in favour of free enterprise, against state business monopolies and abuses of trade union power"

"High standards are contagious. Bring a new person onto a high standards team, and they’ll quickly adapt. The opposite is also true. —JEFF BEZOS"

"Like Bruce Henderson when he had discovered the Experience Curve, like Jeff Bezos when he and David Shaw worked out the blueprint for Amazon (and before Bezos left Shaw to start the new venture), like Bill Bain before he deserted Bruce Henderson to found Bain & Company, Einstein had been transformed. Like them all, he knew that he was privy to insights nobody else had, and that he would change the world. Similar transforming certainty affected three other people we have already met in these pages – Steve Jobs, Paul of Tarsus, and Viktor Frankl."

"Transformations that occur in an unusual firm, before you start a new venture There was Jeff Bezos, working out the plan for Amazon while still working in that most remarkable of firms, D. E. Shaw & Co, one of the very few that knew how much the internet was going to change the world. Before Amazon was even born, Bezos was transformed, equipped, almost Messianic. There was Bill Bain, still within BCG, already transformed, already happily piloting the approach he would perfect in his own domain. This first model is the best – you can acquire ideas and authority, and start to experiment, while still employed by someone else. You become transformed on their dime. The firm you found is not really a start-up, more a continuation and personalisation – your personalisation – of a validated prototype. The new venture can be relatively low-risk, yet still high-return, both financially and, more important, psychically. Work for a strange, singular, surprising – and surprisingly successful – company. Look for one that is growing fast; that does things differently from its larger rivals; that focuses on a special subset of customers and that knows something the rivals do not know. Attain rare knowledge and confidence from what the firm knows. Next, work out how to use that special knowledge in a different way, just as Bezos did."

"DESCO’s business bore no resemblance to that of the future Amazon, and yet DESCO gave Bezos the model for Amazon in four vital ways: •  The template for a firm with incredibly high standards and brilliant people. •  More specifically, the early discovery of the internet and its amazing growth potential. •  Even more specifically, the vision for Amazon originated at DESCO. •  Yet more precisely, the ideal first product for Amazon was identified at DESCO."

"Jeff Bezos illustrates this. His breakthrough obsession and achievement was his peculiar vision for Amazon – the internet’s ‘everything store’ marked by unbeatable prices and customer service. Bezos made his vision a reality in a special, very unusual way. Do you realise how different Amazon is from almost all other companies? Can you imagine the fights there must have been in the boardroom when investors and managers wanted to raise prices so that the share price could be underpinned by real profits? Bezos alone clung to the creed that if you provide extraordinarily low prices and high customer service, your ultimate reward will be massive. Part of Bezos’ achievement comes from being pig-headed and dictatorial – he preaches; he insists that business should be done his way. There is a cult of Jeff at Amazon, just as there was – some would say, there still is – a cult of Steve at Apple. We can understand the Bezos cult from this – in March 2000 Amazon was worth $30 billion. Not bad. But today it hovers around $800 billion – twenty-seven times as much."

"We can see this easily in the case of Jeff Bezos. It’s hard to describe Bezos except in terms of his own philosophy and vision for Amazon – the internet’s everything store with unbeatable prices and customer service. A business philosophy is not unusual – but what is rare is dedication to a philosophy, even when it appears to conflict with commercial common sense."

"By early 1998, Bezos wanted to go beyond books and enter new product categories. Music and DVDs proved successful, but electronics less so, and toys were a disaster. Meanwhile, Bezos resisted every attempt by the board and his financial people to say when his seven expensive distribution centres would pay for themselves or when the company would break even – ‘If you’re planning more than twenty minutes ahead in this game, you’re wasting your time.’"

"Jeff Bezos needs the leverage of his Amazon army to an even greater extent than Bill Bain did. Bezos too places enormous importance on the quality and ambition of those he recruits. To get big fast required him to build an enormous organisation. Collaboration was similarly vital. Because Bezos knew nothing about functions such as warehousing and logistics, when Amazon had to start investing very heavily in these Jeff hired the very best people he could find, backed them totally unless they failed, and fired them if they did. Credibility was also vital. It came by becoming the largest online retailer by far – later the largest retailer period – of books, and then of other products. And as we saw earlier, Jeff’s relentless focus on exceptional customer service and unbeatable prices underpinned Amazon’s rapid expansion. Again, the business formula was also the vehicle."

"Here are examples of pool vehicles the players used. For Bill Bain, it was the theories of business strategy that had been originated by the Boston Consulting Group. BCG put its ideas such as the Boston Box out into the public domain to build reputation and sell business. When Bill Bain started Bain & Company, he was able to use all BCG’s concepts. They were high-octane stuff, fuelling a whole new industry. Jeff Bezos also used the BCG ideas to develop his philosophy for Amazon, especially dominant market share, and lowest costs and prices. Bezos also benefitted from two other pool vehicles – internet retailing and ‘Californian Venture Capital Syndrome’, which values growth above short-term profits, supporting Amazon’s losses for long years, allowing a focus on customer experience and low prices. Otto von Bismarck rode the rise of nationalism in the nineteenth century. This was his pool vehicle to turn Germany from a fragmented cluster of dozens of independent states into a unified superpower dominating central Europe. The popularity he gained by his unification of Germany pleased the liberal politicians and William, the Prussian King, and kept Bismarck in power for a generation. Winston Churchill’s pool vehicle was the rise of German National Socialism, Hitler’s murderous anti-Semitism, and his own opposition to them. An environmental factor does not have to be appeased or promoted; it can also be a pool vehicle when it is opposed first or most vigorously. Marie Curie’s pool vehicle was the new field of x-rays and radiation. The two pool vehicles which Walt Disney exploited so well were the rise of animated cartoons and, later, the rise of amusement parks. Disneyland was in many ways the opposite of traditional amusement parks, which Walt disdained as ‘nasty, dirty places run by hard-faced men’. Without their existence he would probably not have had the idea for a pristine and uplifting park idealising the best of American small-town values. Leonardo da Vinci would not have been Leonardo if he had not been born where and when he was. Renaissance Florence was his pool vehicle. Bob Dylan’s pool vehicle was the early 1960s folk movement in New York City, with its liberal-protest values, and self-importance, epitomised by his relationship with Joan Baez. He rode them until he became famous, then dumped them sharpish. Albert Einstein benefited from the…"

"Those like Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, who changed the world of cars towards electric, or Jeff Bezos, who brought logistics into the Twenty-first century, revolutionizing global distribution."