Quotes from Brad Stone

We pay attention to what our competitors do but it's not where we put our energy.

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."15

Amazon isn't happening to the book business," he likes to say to authors and journalists. "The future is happening to the book business.")

Friends suggested that it sounded a bit sinister. But something about it must have captivated Bezos: he registered the URL in September 1994, and he kept it. Type Relentless.com into the Web today and it takes you to Amazon.

Wow, you guys are like cockroaches," Graham finally said. "You just won't die."16

If you want to get to the truth about what makes us different, it's this," Bezos says, veering into a familiar Jeffism: "We are genuinely customer-centric, we are genuinely long-term oriented and we genuinely like to invent.

It's easier to invent the future than to predict it." —Alan Kay

The production philosophy pioneered by Toyota calls for a focus on those activities that create value for the customer and the systematic eradication of everything else.

When someone resigns, he is asked to hand in all that equipment—including the backpack.

Bezos ultimately concluded that if Amazon was to continue to thrive as a bookseller in a new digital age, it must own the e-book business in the same way that Apple controlled the music business. "It is far better to cannibalize yourself than have someone else do it," said Diego Piacentini

If I have to choose between agreement and conflict, I'll take conflict every time," Bezos often said. "It always yields a better result.

Amazon may be the most beguiling company that ever existed, and it is just getting started. It is both missionary and mercenary, and throughout the history of business and other human affairs, that has always been a potent combination.

McAdoo and Graham were discussing that most essential characteristic of great entrepreneurs: mental toughness, the ability to overcome the hurdles and negativity that typically accompany something new. McAdoo and his partners had identified this kind of true grit as the most important attribute in the founders of their successful portfolio companies, like Google and PayPal.

Bezos dismissed those objections and insisted that to succeed in books as Apple had in music, Amazon needed to control the entire customer experience,

I see companies these days where thoughts of "exits" are foremost in the minds of top management and board, and it is so clear that this value will infect the decision making down to the smallest choice by the most junior employee. Do we create something that is good, or just that seems good and might get us acquired or funded?

Bezos is like a chess master playing countless games simultaneously, with the boards organized in such a way that he can efficiently tend to each match.

Averages are bad measures. I want to see actuals, highs, lows and why—not an average. An average is just lazy.

It's the tale of how one gifted child grew into an extraordinarily driven and versatile CEO and how he, his family, and his colleagues bet heavily on a revolutionary network called the Internet, and on the grandiose vision of a single store that sells everything.

Steve Jobs was known for the clarity of his insights about what customers wanted, but he was also known for his volatility with coworkers. Apple's founder reportedly fired employees in the elevator and screamed at underperforming executives. Perhaps there is something endemic in the fast-paced technology business that causes this behavior, because such intensity is not exactly rare among its CEOs.

Andy Grove, the longtime CEO of Intel, was known to be so harsh and intimidating that a subordinate once fainted during a performance review.

It's about a crucial era during which old regimes fell, new leaders emerged, new social contracts were forged between strangers, the topography of cities changed, and the upstarts roamed the earth.

Slow steady progress can erode any challenge over time.

In Silicon Valley, entrepreneurs and their backers got drunk on the overflowing optimism and abundant venture capital and threw a two-year-long party. Capital was cheap, opportunities seemed limitless, and pineapple-infused-vodka martinis were everywhere.

Do you trust storytellers, or do you trust data; the ingenuity of artists or the wisdom of the crowd?