Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson
Curiosity is more important than knowledge.
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New Shepard, named after the first American in space, Alan Shepard,
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Blue Origin’s company shield has a Latin motto, Gradatim Ferociter: “Step by Step, Ferociously.”
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“You can work long, hard, or smart, but at Amazon.com you can’t choose two out of three.”
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We believe that a fundamental measure of our success will be the shareholder value we create over the long term.
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We intend to build the world’s most customer-centric company.
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We must be committed to constant improvement, experimentation, and innovation in every initiative.
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We love to be pioneers, it’s in the DNA of the company, and it’s a good thing, too, because we’ll need that pioneering spirit to succeed.
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It would be impossible to produce results in an environment as dynamic as the Internet without extraordinary people.
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In closing, consider this most important point: the current online shopping experience is the worst it will ever be. It’s good enough today to attract seventeen million customers, but it will get so much better.
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Increased bandwidth will result in faster page views and richer content.
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Math-based decisions command wide agreement, whereas judgment-based decisions are rightly debated and often controversial, at least until put into practice and demonstrated
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Kindle is a good example of our fundamental approach. More than four years ago, we began with a long-term vision: every book, ever printed, in any language, all available in less than sixty seconds
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Start with customers and work backward
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Listen to customers, but don’t just listen to customers—also invent on their behalf
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A DREAMY BUSINESS OFFERING has at least four characteristics. Customers love it, it can grow to very large size, it has strong returns on capital, and it’s durable in time—with the potential to endure for decades. When you find one of these, don’t just swipe right, get married.
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You can write down your corporate culture, but when you do so, you’re discovering it, uncovering it—not creating it. It is created slowly over time by the people and by events—by the stories of past success and failure that become a deep part of the company lore
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A remarkable customer experience starts with heart, intuition, curiosity, play, guts, taste. You won’t find any of it in a survey.
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One thing I love about customers is that they are divinely discontent
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What do you need to achieve high standards in a particular domain area? First, you have to be able to recognize what good looks like in that domain. Second, you must have realistic expectations for how hard it should be (how much work it will take) to achieve that result—the scope.
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Unrealistic beliefs on scope—often hidden and undiscussed—kill high standards
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Amazon Aurora, a fully managed MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible service with the same or better durability and availability as the commercial engines, but at one-tenth of the cost
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It’s not just key-value stores like DynamoDB, but also in-memory databases like Amazon ElastiCache, time series databases like Amazon Timestream, and ledger solutions like Amazon Quantum Ledger Database—the right tool for the right job saves money and gets your product to market faster.
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My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, “Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.”
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You have to use heart and intuition. There has to be risk-taking. You have to have instinct. All the good decisions have to be made that way. You do it with a group. You do it with great humility because, by the way, getting it wrong isn’t that bad
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If I make, like, three good decisions a day, that’s enough, and they should just be as high quality as I can make them.
I recommend reading the book to gain more context on the lines.
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