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Smart Things Jeff Bezos Has Said
- 6ren 13y ago7. "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."
- burgerz 13y agoYes I read the article too.
- rmason 13y agoHere's another favorite of mine: 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.
- dredmorbius 13y agoTwo words: diminishing returns.
- anuragramdasan 13y agoI think the best thing he ever said was at a commencement speech. This one I could never forget. Smartness is a gift, kindness is a choice.(paraphrased)
- untilHellbanned 13y agothink both are choices if you consider the context in which people commonly compare each other's "smartness
- Alterlife 13y agoIt depends on how you define 'smartness'. If it means intelligence (which is what I think it means in this context), I do believe it is not yet possible to "choose" to be born free of debilitating mental conditions.
- untilHellbanned 13y agodiagnosable mental illness/impairments is not the common context in which people compare each other's "smartness"
- mseebach 13y agoThat's pedantry. To the extend smartness is a choice, it's not something you can decide to do from day to day. Being nice very much is.
- Timmmmbob 13y agoIs it? I mean obviously you can choose to be nice or nasty, but maybe in the same way that obese people can choose to exercise and eat healthily. Some people are definitely nicer than others by default.
- Malician 13y agoI would say that the context of the sentence ("is a gift") makes it clear that he is talking about biological predisposition to intelligence - for example, working memory size, and not, say, whether you've spent lots of time doing interesting things and learning useful information.
- harigov 13y agoOne quote that really made quite a bit of difference in how I approach problems in life: "Good intentions never work, you need good mechanisms to make anything happen"
- the1 13y agomy favorite: "Developers, developers, developers"
- astine 13y agoI think you're conflating Bezos and Ballmer.
- CrankyPants 13y agoI think he's being ironic.
- Negitivefrags 13y agoIf you are a company selling a platform, those are some wise words to live by.
- rtpg 13y agoThe tenth one is funny in its own little way "We did studies and we didn't listen to them"
- kbutler 13y agoWe did studies, but decided they didn't measure what was most important.
- um304 13y ago"If you double the number of experiments you do per year, you're going to double your inventiveness."
- sergiosgc 13y agoBezos is a contender for the best manager of my generation. That being said, don't take these statements as absolute truths. They reflect the very successful strategy at Amazon, but they are by no means absolute. Examples: - "(...) 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." This is violated by luxury goods. Louis Vuitton purses must be expensive, it's part of their "contract" with their customers. - "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." The alternative is to deliver ever increasing value, at constant prices, which is the very successful strategy at Volkswagen. Don't take this as it being my opinion that Bezos is wrong. He's my ideal CEO: long term oriented, customer focused, innovation driven. There are faults at Amazon, but in the grand scheme of things, Amazon is a great feat in itself.
- smu 13y agoOut of curiosity: who else would be in contention for "best manager of the generation"?
- sergiosgc 13y agoThe one I admire the most is from a previous generation: Amancio Ortega, from Inditex. The innovations in logistics by Inditex are amazing. As for current(ish), and with a heavy skew towards IT, my list would be, in no particular order: - Bill Gates, for MS strategy during the 90s. Evil and Borg-esque but ultra effective. - Steve Jobs, for Pixar and the early 00s turnaround at Apple. - Elon Musk, not so much for co-founding PayPal, but rather because of Tesla Now that I'm at it, let me nominate the worst CEO: Eric Schmidt. Title earned for destroying engineer culture at three great companies: Novell, Sun and Google. Novell and Sun tanked, Google will be the first to survive Schmidt's effects, albeit scarred. There are financially worse CEOs, but Schmidt attacked companies that I particularly liked with the same repeat effects.
- ww520 13y agoI thought Google flourished and grew explosively under Schmidt, and engineering in Google was doing great, no?
- joshstrange 13y agoI read the URL and after hitting #20 I was like "Where are the other 5?". It took me a while to notice the title of the post said "20" so I assume they created a page with 25 then removed 5 and forgot to update the URL.
- maxmzd_ 13y agoLove this one "...you need to have that long-term willingness to be misunderstood. It's a key part of invention."
- seunosewa 13y agoThey missed the most important and generally applicable one: "People who are right a lot of the time are people who often change their minds. "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." http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3289-some-advice-from-jeff-bezos http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3289-some-advice-from-jeff-be...
- chrisgd 13y agoWell said. Basically the theme of Nate Silver's book as well. Don't stick to your forecast in the face of new information that might contradict your forecast.
- rhizome 13y agoAlso: "pivoting."
- mhartl 13y agoIt's a nice quote, but I'd change "smartest" to something like "wisest". Many smart people are quite stuck in their beliefs.
- jacquesm 13y agoIn that sense the 'flip flopper' insult from American politics should actually become a mark of distinction. It is as if changing your opinion due to additional insight/input/thinking is a bad thing instead of a good one.
- arbitrarywords 13y agowith the proviso that the "additional input" is something more substantial that an opinion poll...
- StavrosK 13y agoUgh, I hate it when I get new data and change my opinion and people look at me as if I'm easily swayed or something. I have new data that invalidates the old one, do you expect me to keep the same opinion even though I now think it's wrong? A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, etc.
- sidjoshi 13y agoOne of my favorite (and a recent one): People who are right a lot often change their minds. One of the best ways to end a heated debate is to say "Wait a minute.. I think I am wrong!".
- bizbody 13y agoI found it very interesting, but this quote stood out in a bad way: "If you're long-term oriented, customer interests and shareholder interests are aligned." This statement smelled like bullshit since large successful corporations don't tend to be incredibly ethical. The fast food industry has an interest in making you eat shitty food with a smile: this is not in the customer's interest (i.e. health), but because customer perception is what matters it's a great business decision, even in the long term. I also noticed I was subconsciously confusing his statement with the claim that shareholder interests and society's interests are aligned. And it's a radically different question indeed, because Bezo's statement completely ignores employees. Yes, there is tremendous pressure to deliver consumer and shareholder value, but there is no pressure to deliver value to the kind of disposable workforce that Amazon needs. We all know what kind of workplace Amazon is. Sorry if this is all a bit incoherent, but I'm curious about how CEOs of big companies really feel about ethical questions. It can't possibly be all rainbows and candy.
- willvarfar 13y agoIsn't this what makes his outlook special, though?
- bizbody 13y agoThere's no denying that Amazon have a great product and think long term, but saying you have the customer's best interests at heart sounds a bit like a generic "corporate values" statement.
- Fishkins 13y ago> I also noticed I was subconsciously confusing his statement with the claim that shareholder interests and society's interests are aligned. I noticed this, too. If you don't pay close attention it seems like he's saying there are not ethical concerns if you think long-term, but the statement is actually narrower than that. In addition to employees, there can also be people with no involvement with or even knowledge of the business who are affected by negative externalities.
- bizbody 13y ago
- Florin_Andrei 13y ago> 3. "Your margin is my opportunity." Very scary and very aggressive. Also, smart (if you can pull off that sort of thing). > 7. "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." Making a note to tell this to my kids. > 14. "[don't] get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn't last." This one, too, sounds like a good general-purpose life advice.
- lbarrett 13y ago> 3. "Your margin is my opportunity." Isn't that just Microeconomics 101?
- mfringel 13y agoIf you;re in a commodity business and there are no other comparative advantages, then sure.
- martincmartin 13y agoIt's also central to The Innovator's Dilemma.
- millstone 13y ago> Very scary and very aggressive. I would not want to work for a company whose explicit strategy is locating other successful businesses, copying their model, and leveraging economies of scale to undercut them. Wringing out margins also decreases innovation, lowers wages, and drives out all but the biggest players.
- jacquesm 13y agoThis is because Bezos is going for the endgame from day 1 rather than to get stuck in the middle. It definitely is aggressive but it also is where things will end up eventually anyway so entering the game with that in mind is a definite strategy to avoid having someone else do that to you instead. Capitalism is brutal, just how brutal you can see in that quote.
- pazimzadeh 13y ago"A company shouldn't get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn't last." This may be true of some companies, but we can see that Apple is quite successful at making products which continuously make last year's invention seem outdated. Of course, if making highly polished products takes a huge toll on your resources and impedes your greater strategy, then you may be better off not being "shiny".
- njharman 13y ago"Last" means 25, 50, 100 years. Apple is the poster child, cause they only have "shiny"(well and customer service) and must continually be shinnyer, it's not sustainable. The new iPhones failed to achieve a sufficient shininess delta.
- pazimzadeh 13y agoI don't think that I said anything particularly controversial, though I realize that every company can't be like Apple. Apple has lasted 37 years, and has a cash balance of 150 billion dollars. Jeff Bezos' Amazon is 19 years old and has a low cash balance due to famously razor thin margins. Apple's model is clearly sustainable for them, but not necessarily for others. Do you disagree with that? With regards to the new iPhones not being shiny enough, perhaps you should withhold judgement until the devices go on sale. See also: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/16/rethinking-the-iphone-5c http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/16/rethinking-the-ipho... http://www.marco.org/2013/09/15/iphone-reactions http://www.marco.org/2013/09/15/iphone-reactions
- sirmarksalot 13y agoBut Apple stopped being shiny in the late '80s, and didn't get shiny again until Steve Jobs came back. Even so, it took many years after that to regain its luster. The iMac looked shiny in some circles, but most technically-minded people I knew thought it was stupid. The iPod, in 2001, was the first thing they made that was truly disruptive, and even then it didn't quite sway public opinion to think Apple was an innovation powerhouse. Personally, my perception of Apple switched when the iPhone came out in 2007. Other people became interested in 2003 or so. Either way, Apple's shine is around 10 years old, and is starting to fade already.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- hobolobo 13y agoThey don't mention "We should set up on a reservation. Taxes are for little people." Possibly because he might not have worded it like that.
- taopao 13y agoIs it a smart choice that the store feels like 1998 web applications? Given the size of their workforce and the amount of revenue they make, why can't they invest some time in making the interface any good?
- asdasf 13y agoWhat do you mean? Feels like 1998 as in it is simple, easy and works? Doesn't have enough javascript errors to prevent you from making purchases?
- rhizome 13y agoYou mean you don't like when pages hang with spinners because they're waiting 40sec for a Comscore (et al) tracker to download?
- dageshi 13y agoProbably because there's no extra money to be had from altering the interface.
- nohuck13 13y ago11. "The framework I found, which made the decision [to start Amazon in 1994] incredibly easy, was what I called a regret minimization framework. I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, 'OK, I'm looking back on my life. I want to minimize 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." Amen.
- scanr 13y agoWoah. I independently came up with something similar. I used to wonder what kind of advice I'd give myself if I could go back in time. At some point, I realised that I could change it around and project myself forward in time instead and imagine what future me would say to me right now. What the advice lost in accuracy it made up for in actionability.
- networked 13y agoSounds like a way of hacking near/far thinking (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Near/far_thinking http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Near/far_thinking).
- graeme 13y agoThanks for posting that. I've tried it since I read it, and it made it easier much to make the right decisions all day, with less drain on willpower. We'll see if that keeps up.
- princeb 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regret_(decision_theory) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regret_(decision_theory)
- gbog 13y agoDon't want to be pouring cold water here but there are much more important things that should be fine in order to avoid later regrets: traveling in another culture deep enough to really know what is different and what is similar, having kids and spend time with them, etc. Say you get to be the next dropbox founder, good for you, but will that count that much when you will be 80?
- ivanbrussik 13y agourl structure says "25 smartest things..."
- michalu 13y ago"All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you, you're Woolworth's." This made me think of facebook.
- jacquesm 13y agoAs in young forever or in Woolworths?
- gamegoblin 13y agoAccording to various younger folks I know around here (in the 12 +- 2 years range) most kids just use instagram and whatnot nowadays rather than facebook.
- marincounty 13y ago1. Hay Benzo's--work on your Prime Account page--especially the term and conditions--like 13 month interval for free 30 day prime trial membership. How many people click on that trial by accident; forgetting they once had it? I noticedyou don't send a receipt either? 2. Require your 2 party sellers to tell customers up front about the availability of an item. 3. Require sellers to state more than they just paid for shipping. 4. Bye 5. Oh yea--the company's main phone line needs "to be set up" at least today.