Investing
Jeff Bezos's 2001 letter to Amazon shareholders, one of the letters in Day 1: The Amazon Shareholder Letters, 1997–2020.
“Focus on cost improvement makes it possible for us to afford to lower prices, which drives growth. Growth spreads fixed costs across more sales, reducing cost per unit, which makes possible more price reductions.”
“Eliminating the root causes of errors saves us money and saves customers time.”
“In that 1997 letter, we wrote, ‘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.’”
“If you could know for certain just two things--a company’s future cash flows and its future number of shares outstanding--you would have an excellent idea of the fair value of a share of that company’s stock today.”
“To [long-term shareholder value], we are committed to extending our leadership in e-commerce in a way that benefits customers and therefore, inherently, investors--you can’t do one without the other.”