Quotes from Brad Stone

by reducing the friction of online buying even marginally, amazon could reap additional millions in revenue while simultaneously digging a protective moat around its business and hobbling its rivals

While he was charming and capable of great humor in public, in private, Bezos could bite an employee's head right off.

Bezos took a series of odd jobs throughout high school. One summer he famously worked as a fryer at a local McDonald's, learning, among other skills, how to crack an egg with one hand.

that either-or mentality, that if you are doing something good for customers it must be bad for shareholders, is very amatuerish

Taleb argued that the limitations of the human brain resulted in our species' tendency to squeeze unrelated facts and events into cause-and-effect equations and then convert them into easily understandable narratives.

word of mouth could deliver customers to amazon. he wanted to funnel the saved marketing dollars into improving the customer experience and accelerating the flywheel

he just never stopped believing. he never blinked once

During one memorable meeting, a female employee pointedly asked Bezos when Amazon was going to establish a better work-life balance. He didn't take that well. "The reason we are here is to get stuff done, that is the top priority," he answered bluntly. "That is the DNA of Amazon. If you can't excel and put everything into it, this might not be the place for you.

the folktale of the steel driver who raced to dig a hole in competition with a steam-powered drilling machine; he won the contest but died immediately afterward

Jeff, one day you'll understand that it's harder to be kind that clever

steady progress toward seemingly impossible goals will win the day

He says Bezos takes a red pen to press releases, product descriptions, speeches, and shareholder letters, crossing out anything that does not speak simply and positively to customers.

The companies that solved the innovator's dilemma, Christensen wrote, succeeded when they "set up autonomous organizations charged with building new and independent businesses around the disruptive technology."9

it was never about the seventy-nine dollars. it was really about changing people's mentality so they wouldn't shop anywhere else

The stronger our market leadership, the more powerful our economic model. Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital.

when friction was removed from online shopping, customers spent more

there's only one way out of this predicament, and that is to invent out way out

customer and revenue growth, the degree to which our customers continue to purchase from us on a repeat basis, and the strength of our brand.

In the spring of 1999, Wall Street's euphoria seemed to diminish. The financial weekly Barron's published a seminal article entitled "Amazon.bomb" that declared, "Investors are beginning to realize that this storybook stock has problems.

there's only one way out of this predicament, and that is to invent our way out

you climb the top of the first tiny hill and from there you see the next hill

as soon as the electric power grid came online, they dumped their electric power generator, and they started buying power off the grid. it just makes more sense. and that's what is starting to happen with infrastructure computing. bezos wanted AWS to be a utility with discount rates, even if that meant losing money in the short term.

Jeff, one day you'll understand that it's harder to be kind than clever

Most importantly, Bezos didn't penalize Ian Freed and other Fire Phone managers, sending a strong message inside Amazon that taking risks was rewarded—especially if the entire debacle was primarily his own fault.