Personalization will speed up discovery
“Today, online commerce saves customers money and precious time. Tomorrow, through personalization, online commerce will accelerate the very process of discovery.”
Investing
Jeff Bezos's 1997 letter to Amazon shareholders, one of the letters in Day 1: The Amazon Shareholder Letters, 1997–2020.
Market leadership strengthens the economic model
“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.”
Leadership considerations over short-term profit
“We will continue to make investment decisions in light of long-term market leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability considerations or short-term Wall Street reactions.”
Bold investments teach lessons either way
“Some of [our bold investments] will pay off, others will not, and we will have learned another valuable lesson in either case.”
Future cash flows over GAAP appearances
“When forced to choose between optimizing the appearance of our GAAP accounting and maximizing the present value of future cash flows, we'll take the cash flows.”
Reinforcing thrift while losing money
“We understand the importance of continually reinforcing a cost-conscious culture, particularly in a business incurring net losses.”
Growth first because scale matters
“At this stage, we choose to prioritize growth because we believe that scale is central to achieving the potential of our business model.”
Employees who think like owners
“We know our success will be largely affected by our ability to attract and retain a motivated employee base, each of whom must think like, and therefore must actually be, an owner.”
Word of mouth wins customers best
“Word of mouth remains the most powerful customer acquisition tool we have, and we are grateful for the trust our customers have placed in us.”
A high hiring bar drives success
“Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been, and will continue to be, the single most important element of Amazon.com's success.”
The challenge lies in prioritizing investments
“To be certain, a big part of the challenge for us will lie not in finding new ways to expand our business, but in prioritizing our investments.”