Background Image
...
We're Not Competitor Obsessed, We're Customer Obsessed. We Start With The Customer And We Work Backwards.
-Jeff Bezos
...
Please Wait....
Translating....

We're Not Competitor Obsessed,

Jeff Bezos
...
We're Not Competitor Obsessed, We're Customer Obsessed. We Start With The Customer And We Work Backwards.

Understanding the Quote: "we're not competitor obsessed, we're customer obsessed. we start with the customer..."

This quote by Jeff Bezos reflects deeply on the theme of obsessed. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Obsessed, Backwards, Competitors, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Jeff Bezos interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos is celebrated for insightful thoughts on obsessed and backwards. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 90872
Topic
Obsessed
Backwards
Competitors
More From Jeff Bezos
If You're Competitor-focused, You Have To Wait Until There Is A Competitor Doing Something. Being Customer-focused Allows You To Be More Pioneering.
Inspirational
Educational
Waiting
If There’s One Reason We Have Done Better Than Of Our Peers In The Internet Space Over The Last Six Years, It Is Because We Have Focused Like A Laser On Customer Experience.
Years
Space
Peers
Any Business Plan Won't Survive Its First Encounter With Reality. The Reality Will Always Be Different. It Will Never Be The Plan.
Business
Reality
Encounters
My Grandfather Taught Me That It Is Harder To Be Kind Than It Is To Be Clever.
Teamwork
Clever
Grandfather
Your Brand Is Formed Primarily, Not By What Your Company Says About Itself, But What The Company Does.
Doe
Company
Brands
What Characteristics Do I Look For When Hiring Somebody? That's One Of The Questions I Ask When Interviewing. I Want To Know What Kind Of People They Would Hire.
Teamwork
People
Looks
Maintain A Firm Grasp Of The Obvious At All Times.
Obvious
All Time
Firm
Infrastructure Web Services Had To Happen.
Infrastructure
Happens
One Of The Things That Gets Me Up In The Morning Is Knowing That Customer Expectations Are Always Rising, And I Find That Very Exciting.
Morning
Knowing
Expectations
Cleverness Is A Gift, Kindness Is A Choice. Gifts Are Easy-they're Given After All. Choices Can Be Hard.
Kindness
Choices
Easy
Cultures, For Better Or Worse, Are Very Stable.
Culture
Stable
What We Need To Do Is Always Lean Into The Future; When The World Changes Around You And When It Changes Against You - What Used To Be A Tail Wind Is Now A Head Wind - You Have To Lean Into That And Figure Out What To Do Because Complaining Isn't A Strategy.
Wind
World
Complaining
We Like To Pioneer, We Like To Explore, We Like To Go Down Dark Alleys And See What's On The Other Side.
Dark
Pioneers
Sides
I 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.
Real
Smart
Phones
Our Vision Is Every Book Ever Printed In Any Language [fetched And Viewable On Our Ebook Kindle Device] In Under 60 Seconds.
Book
Vision
Language
The Net Is Pretty Cool, But The Physical World Is The Best Medium Ever.
World
Mediums
People Who Were Right A Lot Of The Time Were People Who Often Changed Their Minds.
People
Mind
Changed
It Is Very Difficult To Get People To Focus On The Most Important Things When You're In Boom Times.
People
Focus
Important
Strip Malls Are History.
Shopping
Malls
I Don't Buy Stocks, I Make Stocks.
Our Biggest Cost Is Not Power, Or Servers, Or People. It's Lack Of Utilization. It Dominates All Other Costs.
People
Cost
Server
We're Working To Lower The Cost Of Spaceflight So That Many People Can Afford To Go And So That We Humans Can Better Continue Exploring The Solar System. Accomplishing This Mission Will Take Time, And We're Working On It Methodically.
Land
People
Cost
You Don't Want To Negotiate The Price Of Simple Things You Buy Every Day.
Simple
Want
Simple Things
If You Want To Be Inventive, You Have To Be Willing To Fail.
Want
Failing
Willing
But There's So Much Kludge, So Much Terrible Stuff, We Are At The 1908 Hurley Washing Machine Stage With The Internet. That's Where We Are. We Don't Get Our Hair Caught In It, But That's The Level Of Primitiveness Of Where We Are. We're In 1908.
Hair
Machines
Levels
When [competitors Are] In The Shower In The Morning, They're Thinking About How They're Going To Get Ahead Of One Of Their Top Competitors. Here In The Shower, We're Thinking About How We Are Going To Invent Something On Behalf Of A Customer.
Morning
Thinking
Showers
In The Old World, You Devoted 30% Of Your Time To Building A Great Service And 70% Of Your Time To Shouting About It. In The New World, That Inverts
Motivation
Educational
World
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.
Graduation
Kindness
Differences
Invention Is By Its Very Nature Disruptive. If You Want To Be Understood At All Times, Then Don't Do Anything New.
Want
Invention
All Time
Be Proud Of Your Choices, Not Your Gifts.
Choices
Proud
Be Proud
If You Build A Great Product Or Service, People Will Talk About It. But It Starts With Having Something That's Worth Talking About.
Talking
People
Products
Mediocre Theoretical Physicists Make No Progress. They Spend All Their Time Understanding Other People's Progress.
People
Understanding
Progress
The Smartest People Are Constantly Revising Their Understanding, Reconsidering A Problem They Thought They’d Already Solved. They’re Open To New Points Of View, New Information, New Ideas, Contradictions, And Challenges To Their Own Way Of Thinking.
Thinking
Ideas
Views
What We Want To Be Is Something Completely New. There Is No Physical Analog For What Amazon.com Is Becoming.
Innovation
Amazon
Want
In Seattle You Haven't Had Enough Coffee Until You Can Thread A Sewing Machine While It's Running.
Running
Coffee
Espresso
If You Have A Business Model That Relies On Customers Being Misinformed, You Better Start Working On Changing Your Business Model.
Business
Models
Rely
If You're Long-term Oriented, Customer Interests And Shareholder Interests Are Aligned.
Long
Interest
Term
Real Estate Is The Key Cost Of Physical Retailers. That's Why There's The Old Saw: Location, Location, Location.
Real
Keys
Cost
No, Communication Is Terrible!
Communication
Terrible
No Communication
Amazon Pages And Amazon Upgrade Leverage Amazon's Existing 'search Inside The Book' Technology To Give Customers Unusual Flexibility In How They Buy And Read Books, .. In Collaboration With Our Publishing Partners, We're Working Hard To Make The World's Books Instantly Accessible Anytime And Anywhere.
Book
Technology
Giving
For People Who Are Readers, Reading Is Important To Them.
Reading
People
Important
Not The Outcome Any Of Us Wanted.
Outcomes
Wanted
Teachers, 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.
Teacher
Attitude
Real
Above All Else, Align With Customers. Win When They Win. Win Only When They Win.
Winning
Design
Win Win
It's Not An Experiment If You Know It's Going To Work.
Inspirational
Going To Work
Experiments
You're Not Going To Make Hemingway Better By Adding Animations.
Animation
Our 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.
Business
Winning
People
Part Of Company Culture Is Path-dependent. It’s The Lessons You Learn Along The Way.
Culture
Lessons
Way
I Try To Spend My Time On Areas That I Think Are Important For The Future, And Where I Think I Can Add Value.
Thinking
Important
Trying
Good 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.
Ideas
Problem
Harder
The 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.
Marketing
Balance
Energy
I Told All Of Our Original Investors That They Would Lose Their Money For Sure.
Originals
Investors
Loses
... If It's Not Your Style To Stretch And Go The Extra Mile To Make Sure Our Customer Experience Is Great, You're Going To Have An Allergic Reaction To This Company. You Probably Won't Stay. If You Do Try And Stay, But Can't Adapt To The Culture Then It Will Reject You Like A Virus From A Healthy Immune System.
Rejects You
Healthy
Style
We See Our Customers As Invited Guests To A Party, And We Are The Hosts. It's Our Job Every Day To Make Every Important Aspect Of The Customer Experience A Little Bit Better.
Success
Jobs
Business
If You Can't Feed A Team With Two Pizzas, It's Too Large.
Life
Success
Business
I Went To Princeton Specifically To Study Physics.
Study
Physics
Princeton
We Change Our Tools And Then Our Tools Change Us.
Tools
It's Harder To Be Kind Than Clever
Clever
Be Kind
Kind
Entrepreneurs Must Be Willing To Be Misunderstood For Long Periods Of Time.
Long
Entrepreneur
Misunderstood
You Know, We Love Stories And We Love Narrative; We Love To Get Lost In An Author's World.
World
Narrative
Stories
The Best Customer Service Is If The Customer Doesn't Need To Call You, Doesn't Need To Talk To You. It Just Works.
Educational
Persistence
Needs
You Can Work Long, Hard, Or Smart, But At Amazon.com You Can’t Choose Two Out Of Three.
Smart
Two
Long
I'm Skeptical That The Novel Will Be "re­invented." If You Start Thinking About A Medical Textbook Or Something, Then, Yes, I Think That's Ripe For Reinvention. You Can Imagine Animations Of A Beating Heart. But I Think The Novel Will Thrive In Its Current Form. That Doesn't Mean That There Won't Be New Narrative Inventions As Well. But I Don't Think They'll Displace The Novel.
Mean
Heart
Thinking
The Killer App That Got The World Ready For Appliances Was The Light Bulb. So The Light Bulb Is What Wired The World. And They Weren't Thinking About Appliances When They Wired The World. They Were Really Thinking About - They Weren't Putting Electricity Into The Home. They Were Putting Lighting Into The Home.
Home
Thinking
Light
We Are Our Choices. Build Yourself A Great Story.
Choices
Stories
Our Choices
What Consumerism Really Is, At Its Worst Is Getting People To Buy Things That Don't Actually Improve Their Lives.
People
Consumerism
Worst
To Get Something New Done You Have To Be Stubborn And Focused, To The Point That Others Might Find Unreasonable.
Done
Stubborn
Might
If You Do Build A Great Experience, Customers Tell Each Other About That. Word Of Mouth Is Very Powerful.
Inspirational
Motivational
Inspiring
My View Is There's No Bad Time To Innovate.
Views
Bad Times
We Are Stubborn On Vision. We Are Flexible On Details.
Inspirational
Vision
Details
If You're Not Doing Something That People Will Remark On, Then It's Going To Be Hard To Generate Word Of Mouth.
People
Mouths
Word Of Mouth
If You Don't Understand The Details Of Your Business You Are Going To Fail.
Entrepreneur
Details
Failing
If You're Going To Invest In An Internet Stock, You Must Be A Long-term Investor.
Long
Internet
Term
A 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.
Believe
Thinking
People
If You're Not Stubborn, You'll Give Up On Experiments Too Soon. And If You're Not Flexible, You'll Pound Your Head Against The Wall And You Won't See A Different Solution To A Problem You're Trying To Solve.
Inspirational
Inspiring
Wisdom
Our Point Of View Is We Will Sell More If We Help People Make Purchasing Decisions.
Views
People
Decision
Advertising Is The Price You Pay For Unremakable Thinking.
Thinking
Pay
Social Media
In The End, We Are Our Choices.
Choices
Ends
Our Choices
If You Are Going To Do Large-scale Invention, You Have To Be Willing To Do Three Things: You Must Be Willing To Fail; You Have To Be Willing To Think Long Term; And You Have To Be Willing To Be Misunderstood For Long Periods Of Time.
Perseverance
Thinking
Long
Lowering Prices Is Easy. Being Able To Afford To Lower Prices Is Hard.
Able
Easy
Hard
I Love My Life. I Love Being An Inventor.
Love Is
Love Of My Life
I Love My Life
I’m A Big Fan Of All-you-can-eat Plans, Because They’re Simpler For Customers.
Fans
Bigs
Plans
We've Done Price Elasticity Studies, And The Answer Is Always That We Should Raise Prices. We Don't Do That, Because We Believe -- And We Have To Take This As An Article Of Faith -- That By Keeping Our Prices Very, Very Low, We Earn Trust With Customers Over Time, And That That Actually Does Maximize Free Cash Flow Over The Long Term.
Believe
Cash Flow
Long
The Common Question That Gets Asked In Business Is, Why? That’s A Good Question, But An Equally Valid Question Is, Why Not?
Success
Business
Entrepreneur
I'm Going To Go Do This Crazy Thing. I'm Going To Start This Company Selling Books Online.
Crazy
Book
Selling
Read The Declaration Of Independence To Your Children As A Tradition Every Fourth Of July. Make Sure They Understand Why The Word "pursuit" Precedes The Word "happiness."
Children
July
Independence
We've Had Three Big Ideas At Amazon That We've Stuck With For 18 Years, And Thy're The Reason We're Successful: Put The Customer First. Invent. And Be Patient.
Educational
Successful
Years
I Think Technology Advanced Faster Than Anticipated. In That Whirlwind, A Lot Of Companies Didn't Survive. The Reason We Have Done Well Is Because, Even In That Whirlwind, We Kept Heads-down Focused On The Customers. All The Metrics That We Can Track About Customers Have Improved Every Year.
Thinking
Technology
Years
One Of The Things That I Hope Will Distinguish Amazon.com Is That We Continue To Be A Company That Defies Easy Analogy. This Requires A Lot Of Innovation, And Innovation Requires A Lot Of Random Walk.
Innovation
Amazon
Analogies
We Also Have No Incentive Compensation Of Any Kind. And The Reason We Don’t Is Because It Is Detrimental To Teamwork.
Teamwork
Incentives
Kind
If You Decide That You're Going To Do Only The Things You Know Are Going To Work, You're Going To Leave A Lot Of Opportunity On The Table.
Crazy
Opportunity
Tables
We're Not Competitor Obsessed, We're Customer Obsessed. We Start With The Customer And We Work Backwards.
Obsessed
Backwards
Competitors
The Book Is Not Really The Container For The Book. The Book Itself Is The Narrative. It's The Thing That People Create.
Book
People
Narrative
The Three Most Important Things In Retail Are Location, Location, Location. The Three Most Important Things For Our Consumer Business Are Technology, Technology, Technology.
Technology
Important
Retail
There 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.
Business
Second Chance
Two
I Like To Be Counted On.
I Feel Like In One Year It's Very Easy To Go From Internet Poster Boy To Internet Piсata.
Boys
Years
Internet
Effective Process Is Not Bureaucracy. Bureaucracy Is Senseless Process.
Process
Bureaucracy
When 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.
Meaningful
Reflection
Quiet Moments
Cleverness Is A Gift, Kindness Is A Choice.
Kindness
Choices
Cleverness
I Have A Strongly Held Belief That One Of The Reasons That Amazon Has Been Successful Is Because We Do Not Obsess Over Competitors. Instead We Obsess Over Customers.
Customers
Web 1.0 Was Making The Internet For People, Web 2.0 Is Making The Internet Better For Companies.
People
Internet
Company
Focusing On The Customer Makes A Company More Resilient.
Resilient
Company
Customers
And I Still Buy Books At B&n, Borders And Elliot Bay ... I Probably Shouldn't Admit This. But I Don't Care. I Love Great Bookstores.
Book
Borders
Care
All Businesses Need To Be Young Forever. If Your Customer Base Ages With You, You're Woolworth's.
Motivation
Forever
Growth
Will You Be Clever At The Expense Of Others, Or Will You Be Kind?
Clever
Be Kind
Kind
A Company Shouldn't Get Addicted To Being Shiny, Because Shiny Doesn't Last.
Entrepreneur
Lasts
Shiny Things
Do Something You're Very Passionate About, And Don't Try To Chase What Is Kind Of The "hot Passion" Of The Day.
Passion
Trying
Hot
You 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.
Important
Unhappy
Needs
If Your Customer Base Is Aging With You, Then Eventually You Are Going To Become Obsolete Or Irrelevant. You Need To Be Constantly Figuring Out Who Are Your New Customers And What Are You Doing To Stay Forever Young.
Forever
Needs
Aging
I’d Rather Interview 50 People And Not Hire Anyone Than Hire The Wrong Person.
People
Interviews
Wrong Person
You Want To Look At What Other Companies Are Doing. It's Very Important Not To Be Hermetically Sealed. But You Don't Want To Look At It As If, 'ok, We're Going To Copy That.' You Want To Look At It And Say, 'that's Very Interesting. What Can We Be Inspired To Do As A Result Of That?' And Then Put Your Own Unique Twist On It.
Unique
Interesting
Important
We Were Hoping To Build A Small Profitable Company; And Of Course, What We've Done Is Build A Large, Unprofitable Company.
Done
Funny Business
Company
The Most Important Single Thing Is To Focus Obsessively On The Customer. Our Goal Is To Be Earth's Most Customer-centric Company.
Goal
Focus
Important
If You Look At Academic Studies, You Can See That Stock Prices Are Most Closely Correlated With Cash Flow. It's Such A Straightforward Number. Cash Flow Is What Will Drive Shareholder Returns.
Cash Flow
Numbers
Looks
I'm Not Prepared To Make Any Multi-decade Commitments.
Commitment
Prepared
Decades
My Own View Is That Every Company Requires A Long-term View.
Views
Long
Term
The Framework I Found Which Made The Decision Incredibly Easy Was What I Called — Which Only A Nerd Would Call — A “regret Minimization Framework.” So, I Wanted To Project Myself Forward To Age 80 And Say, “okay, Now I’m Looking Back On My Life. I Want To Have Minimized The Number Of Regrets I Have.”
Regret
Numbers
Decision
Many 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.
Self
Amazon
Culture
It's Perfectly Healthy-encouraged, Even- To Have An Idea Tomorrow That Contradicted Your Idea Today
Ideas
Healthy
Today
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.
Meaningful
Believe
Entrepreneur
If We Think Long Term, We Can Accomplish Things That We Couldn't Otherwise Accomplish.
Thinking
Long
Accomplish
The 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.
Motivation
Common
Easy
I Don't Think That You Can Invent On Behalf Of Customers Unless You're Willing To Think Long-term, Because A Lot Of Invention Doesn't Work. If You're Going To Invent, It Means You're Going To Experiment, And If You're Going To Experiment, You're Going To Fail, And If You're Going To Fail, You Have To Think Long Term.
Mean
Thinking
Long
If Everything You Do Needs To Work On A Three-year Time Horizon, Then You’re Competing Against A Lot Of People, But If You’re Willing To Invest On A Seven-year Time Horizon, You’re Now Competing Against A Fraction Of Those People, Because Very Few Companies Are Willing To Do That. Just By Lengthening The Time Horizon, You Can Engage In Endeavours That You Could Never Otherwise Pursue. At Amazon We Like Things To Work In Five To Seven Years. We’re Willing To Plant Seeds, Let Them Grow—and We’re Very Stubborn. We Say We’re Stubborn On Vision And Flexible On Details.
Years
People
Vision
Percentage 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.
What Matters
Dollars
Percentages
I Think There Are Going To Be A Bunch Of Tablet-like Devices. It's Really A Different Product Category.
Thinking
Different
Tablets
Feel Free To Cover Amazon Any Way You Want. Feel Free To Cover Jeff Bezos Any Way You Want.
Amazon
Want
Way
If We Can Keep Our Competitors Focused On Us While We Stay Focused On The Customer, Ultimately We'll Turn Out All Right.
Educational
Stay Focused
Customer Satisfaction
Work Hard, Have Fun And Make History.
Fun
Hard Work
Productivity
A Brand For A Company Is Like A Reputation For A Person. You Earn Reputation By Trying To Do Hard Things Well.
Inspirational
Success
Business
I'm Not Saying That Advertising Is Going Away. But The Balance Is Shifting. If Today The Successful Recipe Is To Put 70 Percent Of Your Energy Into Shouting About Your Service And 30 Percent Into Making It Great, Over The Next 20 Years I Think That's Going To Invert.
Business
Successful
Thinking
Seek Instant Gratification - Or The Elusive Promise Of It - And Chances Are You'll Find A Crowd There Ahead Of You.
Promise
Crowds
Chance
Are You Lazy Or Just Incompetent?
Technology
Lazy
Incompetent
If You Invent Frequently And Are Willing To Fail, Then You Never Get To That Point Where You Really Need To Bet The Whole Company.
Innovation
Needs
Failing
Obsess About Customers, Not Competitors.
Competitors
Customers
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.
Positive
Impact
Important
I'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.
Communication
Reality
Leader
The People Who Are Right A Lot Often Change Their Minds.
People
Mind
One 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.
Mistake
Passion
Young Entrepreneurs
On The Internet, Companies Are Scale Businesses, Characterized By High Fixed Costs And Relatively Low Variable Costs. You Can Be Two Sizes: You Can Be Big, Or You Can Be Small. It's Very Hard To Be Medium. A Lot Of Medium-sized Companies Had The Financing Rug Pulled Out From Under Them Before They Could Get Big.
Two
Variables
Size
Our Alliance With Toysrus.com Has Proven To Be A Great Win For Customers, And We've Looked Forward To Taking The Next Step By Introducing The New Babiesrus.com Teamed With Amazon.com Store Since We Forged The Alliance Last August.
Winning
August
New Baby
For Every Leader In The Company, Not Just For Me, There Are Decisions That Can Be Made By Analysis. These Are The Best Kinds Of Decisions!
Decision
Leader
Analysis
You Cannot Make A Business Case That You Should Be Who You Are Not
Be Who You Are
Should
Cases
You Don't Choose Your Passions; Your Passions Choose You.
Passion
Young Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurship
People Don't Want Gadgets, They Want Services.
People
Gadgets
Want
The Great Thing About Fact-based Decisions Is That They Overrule The Hierarchy.
Decision
Hierarchy
Facts
If You're Truly Obsessed Over Customers, It'll Cover A Lot Of Errors.
Errors
Servant Leadership
Obsessed
People Forget Already How Much Utility They Get Out Of The Internet - How Much Utility They Get Out Of E-mail, How Much Utility They Get Out Of Even Simple Things Like Brochureware Online.
Simple
People
Mail
I Think One Of The Things People Don't Understand Is We Can Build More Shareholder Value By Lowering Product Prices Than We Can By Trying To Raise Margins. It's A More Patient Approach, But We Think It Leads To A Stronger, Healthier Company. It Also Serves Customers Much, Much Better.
Business
Thinking
People
I'm Skeptical That The Novel Will Be 're-invented.'
Novel
Skeptical
I Never Worked On The School Newspaper.
School
Newspapers
I Think That, Ah, I'm A Very Goofy Sort Of Person In Many Ways.
Thinking
Way
Goofy
I Don't Want To Use My Creative Energy On Somebody Else's User Interface.
Creative
Energy
Use
Our Garage Was Basically Science Fair Central.
Garage
Science Fair
Fairs
Life's Too Short To Hang Out With People Who Aren't Resourceful.
Inspirational
Motivation
People
The Thing About Inventing Is You Have To Be Both Stubborn And Flexible. The Hard Part Is Figuring Out When To Be Which.
Stubborn
Flexible
Inventing
Determine What Your Customers Need, And Work Backwards.
Needs
Inventory
Backwards
We Are Pioneers And The History Of Pioneers Is Not That Good.
Risk
Pioneers
Management
Go To Bed Early And Wake Up Early. The Morning Hours Are Good.
Morning
Up Early
Bed
What's Dangerous Is Not To Evolve.
Dangerous
Evolve
Though We Are Optimistic, We Must Remain Vigilant And Maintain A Sense Of Urgency.
Optimistic
Vigilant
Sense Of Urgency
We Innovate By Starting With The Customer And Working Backwards. That Becomes The Touchstone For How We Invent.
Starting
Backwards
Touchstones
I'm Skeptical Of Any Mission That Has Advertisers At Its Centerpiece.
Missions
Skeptical
Centerpieces
There Is No Map, And Charting A Path Ahead Will Not Be Easy. We Will Need To Invent, Which Means We Will Need To Experiment.
Mean
Needs
Maps
I Wanted To Project Myself Forward To Age 80 And Say, ‘ok, I’m Looking Back On My Life. I Want To Minimise The Number Of Regrets I Have.’ And I Knew That When I Was 80, I Was Not Going To Regret Having Tried This. I Was Not Going To Regret Trying To Participate In This Thing Called The Internet That I Thought Was Going To Be A Really Big Deal. I Knew That If I Failed, I Wouldn’t Regret That. But I Knew The One Thing I Might Regret Is Not Ever Having Tried. I Knew That That Would Haunt Me Every Day.
Regret
Numbers
Age
The Death Knell For Any Enterprise Is To Glorify The Past -- No Matter How Good It Was.
Past
Matter
Enterprise
Am I Going To Regret Leaving Wall Street? No. Will I Regret Missing The Beginning Of The Internet? Yes.
Wall
Regret
Missing
There Are Two Ways To Extend A Business. Take Inventory Of What You're Good At And Extend Out From Your Skills. Or Determine What Your Customers Need And Work Backward, Even If It Requires Learning New Skills. Kindle Is An Example Of Working Backward.
Skills
Two
Needs
Where You Are Going To Spend Your Time And Your Energy Is One Of The Most Important Decisions You Get To Make In Life.
Decision
Important
Energy
If You Double The Number Of Experiments You Do Per Year You're Going To Double Your Inventiveness.
Technology
Years
Numbers
Failure Comes Part And Parcel With Invention. It’s Not Optional.
Invention
Optional
Parcel
Your Brand Is What People Say About You When You're Not In The Room
Business
People
Marketing
I Don't Know About You, But Most Of My Exchanges With Cashiers Are Not That Meaningful.
Meaningful
Cashiers
Knows
People Loved Their Horses, Too. But You Don't Keep Riding Your Horse To Work Just Because You Love It.
Horse
People
Riding
But There's Still So Much You Can Do With Technology To Improve The Customer Experience. And That's The Sense In Which I Believe It's Still Day One, And That It's Early In The Day. If Anything, The Rate Of Change Is Accelerating.
Believe
Technology
Rate Of Change
When 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.
Keys
Long
People
I Think If People Read More, That Is A Better World.
Thinking
People
World
The 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.
Business
Home
Vacation
Every New Thing Creates Two New Questions And Two New Opportunities.
Opportunity
Two
Innovation
There's So Much Stuff That Has Yet To Be Invented. There's So Much New That's Going To Happen. People Don't Have Any Idea Yet How Impactful The Internet Is Going To Be And That This Is Still Day 1 In Such A Big Way.
Ideas
People
Stuff
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.
Inspirational
Business
Media
Market Leadership Can Translate Directly To Higher Revenue, Higher Profitability, Greater Capital Velocity And Correspondingly Stronger Returns On Invested Capital.
Stronger
Velocity
Return
You Don't Chose Your Passion, Your Passion Choses You
Passion
I Believe You Have To Be Willing To Be Misunderstood If You're Going To Innovate.
Inspirational
Believe
Misunderstood
There Are Multiple Ways To Be Externally Focused That Are Very Successful. You Can Be Customer-focused Or Competitor-focused. Some People Are Internally Focused, And If They Reach Critical Mass, They Can Tip The Whole Company.
Successful
People
Way
The Human Brain Is An Incredible Pattern-matching Machine.
Brain
Machines
Patterns
The Internet Is Disrupting Every Media Industry...people Can Complain About That, But Complaining Is Not A Strategy. And Amazon Is Not Happening To Book Selling, The Future Is Happening To Book Selling.
Leadership
Book
Technology
E-mail Has Some Magical Ability To Turn Off The Politeness Gene In A Human Being.
Mail
Genes
Ability
We Watch Our Competitors, Learn From Them, See The Things That They Were Doing For Customers And Copy Those Things As Much As We Can.
Business
Watches
Copies
Everything You Are Comes From Your Choices.
Life
Choices
If You Only Do Things Where You Know The Answer In Advance, Your Company Goes Away.
Answers
Company
Knows
For Many People, Extended Reading Sessions On An Lcd Display Cause Eyestrain.
Reading
People
Causes
I Definitely Believe People Should Pay For Copyrighted Works. And The Laws Are Sufficient: They Already Require You To Pay For Copyright Work. There's No Confusion. The Problem Is...it's A Heck Of A Lot Easier To Steal Mp3s Than To Buy Them.
Believe
Law
Mp3
Your Margin Is My Opportunity.
Opportunity
Margins
There Are A Whole Bunch Of People Who Don't Like To Shop. But There Are Also People, Maybe, Who Even Do Like To Shop But Are Very Time Pressured. And So Shopping Online Can Save People Time.
Shopping
People
Online
We Can't Be In Survival Mode. We Have To Be In Growth Mode.
Inspirational
Success
Business
If You Think About The Long Term Then You Can Really Make Good Life Decisions That You Won’t Regret Later.
Regret
Good Life
Thinking
Because, You Know, Resilience - If You Think Of It In Terms Of The Gold Rush, Then You'd Be Pretty Depressed Right Now Because The Last Nugget Of Gold Would Be Gone. But The Good Thing Is, With Innovation, There Isn't A Last Nugget. Every New Thing Creates Two New Questions And Two New Opportunities.
Business
Opportunity
Thinking
I Knew That If I Failed I Wouldn't Regret That, But I Knew The One Thing I Might Regret Is Not Trying.
Inspiring
Motivation
Regret
Trending Author
Benjamin E. Mays
Ibrahim Babangida
Colin Firth
Peter Falk
David Simon
George Armstrong Custer
Category
Information