Quotes from Brad Stone

We have to level the playing field in terms of purchasing power with the established booksellers.

When you have fit yourself snugly into Jeff Bezos's worldview and then evaluated both the successes and failures of Amazon over the past two decades, the future of the company becomes easy to predict. The answer to almost every conceivable question is yes.

When you are in the thick of things, you can get confused by small stuff,

While other dot-coms merged or perished, Amazon survived through a combination of conviction, improvisation, and luck.

Think Big Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers.

Bezos had absorbed the lessons of the business bible Good to Great, whose author, Jim Collins, counseled companies to acquire other firms only when they had fully mastered their virtuous circles, and then "as an accelerator of flywheel momentum, not a creator of it.

The biggest needle movers will be things that customers don't know to ask for," he would write years later in a letter to shareholders. "We must invent on their behalf. We have to tap into our own inner imagination about what's possible.

Bezos nevertheless made an impression. Minor remembers that Bezos had closely studied several wealthy businessmen and that he particularly admired a man named Frank Meeks, a Virginia entrepreneur who had made a fortune owning Domino's Pizza franchises.

Bezos said. "When I read that letter, I thought, we don't make money when we sell things. We make money when we help customers make

Bezos felt that hiring only the best and brightest was key to Amazon's success.

regret minimization framework

Amazon customers who joined Prime doubled, on average, their spending on the site, according to a person familiar with the company's internal finances at the time. A Prime member was like a shopper who walked into a Costco warehouse for a case of beer and walked out with the beer plus an armful of DVDs, a nine-pound smoked ham, and a flat-screen television.

Quando uma empresa formula uma ideia, o processo é caótico. Não há um momento do tipo 'ahá'", disse Bezos.

He had seen firsthand how technology, patience, and long-term thinking could pay off.

relentless.com takes you to amazon

Jeff didn't believe in work-life balance," says Kim Rachmeler. "He believed in work-life harmony. I guess the idea is you might be able to do everything all at once.

anecdotal evidence.

this is not only the largest river in the world, it's many times larger than the next biggest river. it blows all other rivers away.

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.

jeff was always an expansive thinker, but access to capital was an enabler

But don't be worried about our competitors because they`re never going to send us any money anyway. Let's be worried about our customers and stay heads-down focused.

new motto: get big fast

Amazon was a family affair in another way. MacKenzie, an aspiring novelist,

Steady progress toward seemingly impossible goals will win the day. Setbacks are temporary. Naysayers are best ignored.