Quotes About Business

Defenders of belief in the institutions of religion, government, and business are the enemies of liveliness.

Most companies are not those things. They are focused on the competitor, rather than the customer.

It is far better to cannibalize yourself than have someone else do it,

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

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.

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.

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.

Jeff always said that when you focus on the business inputs, then the outputs such as revenue and income will take care of themselves.

That either-or mentality, that if you are doing something good for customers it must be bad for shareholders, is very amateurish," he said in our interview that summer.

Lower prices led to more customer visits. More customers increased the volume of sales and attracted more commission-paying third-party sellers to the site. That allowed Amazon to get more out of fixed costs like the fulfillment centers and the servers needed to run the website. This greater efficiency then enabled it to lower prices further. Feed any part of this flywheel, they reasoned, and it should accelerate the loop.

The first week after the official launch, they took $12,000 in orders and shipped $846 worth of books, according to Eric Dillon, one of Amazon's original investors. The next week they took $14,000 in orders and shipped $7,000 worth of books. So they were behind from the get-go and scrambling to catch up.

Conscious Capitalism,

Type Relentless.com into the Web today and it takes you to Amazon.

You've built this lovely castle, and now all the barbarians are going to come riding on horses to attack the castle," Bezos said, according to a former AWS exec who reports hearing the comment. "You need a moat; what is the moat around the castle?" (Amazon denied that Bezos said this.)

later published a trove of these documents, which revealed Amazon execs strategizing back in 2009 to run the company's diapers business at a loss to combat the company that operated Diapers.com, and to buy the internet doorbell company Ring in 2018—not for its technology, but to gain a dominant position in the market.

Não ganhamos dinheiro quando vendemos coisas. Ganhamos dinheiro quando ajudamos os clientes a decidir o que comprar.

There are two kinds of retailers: there are those folks who work to figure how to charge more, and there are companies that work to figure how to charge less, and we are going to be the second, full-stop," he

The idea was always that someone would be allowed to make a profit as an intermediary. The key question is: Who will get to be that middleman?"7

When I read that letter, I thought, we don't make money when we sell things. We make money when we help customers make purchase decisions."5

One of the paradoxes of growth is that growth creates complexity and complexity is the silent killer of growth," said Bain director James Allen in the video.

The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America,

Capital goes where it is welcome and stays where it is well treated.

from his company. After the stock market crash in 2000, Amazon went through two rounds of layoffs. But Bezos didn't want to stop recruiting altogether; he just wanted to be more efficient. So he framed the kind

The confluence of those three initiatives—in the fulfillment centers, and with AWS and the Kindle—vaulted Amazon back into the graces of Wall Street. In 2008, Amazon surpassed eBay in market capitalization and was beginning to be mentioned in the same breath as Google, Apple, and a new Silicon Valley upstart, Facebook.