They missed the most important and generally applicable one:
"People who are right a lot of the time are people who often change their minds.<p>"The smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved. They’re open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking."<p><a href="http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3289-some-advice-from-jeff-bezos" rel="nofollow">http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3289-some-advice-from-jeff-be...</a>
11. "The framework I found, which made the decision [to start Amazon in 1994] incredibly easy, was what I called a regret minimization framework. I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, 'OK, I'm looking back on my life. I want to minimize the number of regrets I have.' And I knew that when I was 80, I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed, I wouldn't regret that. But I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day."<p>Amen.
Bezos is a contender for the best manager of my generation. That being said, don't take these statements as absolute truths. They reflect the very successful strategy at Amazon, but they are by no means absolute.<p>Examples:<p>- "(...) keeping our prices very, very low, we earn trust with customers over time, and that that actually does maximize free cash flow over the long term." This is violated by luxury goods. Louis Vuitton purses must be expensive, it's part of their "contract" with their customers.<p>- "There are two kinds of companies: Those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second." The alternative is to deliver ever increasing value, at constant prices, which is the very successful strategy at Volkswagen.<p>Don't take this as it being my opinion that Bezos is wrong. He's my ideal CEO: long term oriented, customer focused, innovation driven. There are faults at Amazon, but in the grand scheme of things, Amazon is a great feat in itself.
> <i>3. "Your margin is my opportunity."</i><p>Very scary and very aggressive. Also, smart (if you can pull off that sort of thing).<p>> <i>7. "If you're not stubborn, you'll give up on experiments too soon. And if you're not flexible, you'll pound your head against the wall and you won't see a different solution to a problem you're trying to solve."</i><p>Making a note to tell this to my kids.<p>> <i>14. "[don't] get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn't last."</i><p>This one, too, sounds like a good general-purpose life advice.
Here's another favorite of mine:<p>Because, you know, resilience - if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you'd be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn't a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.
I think the best thing he ever said was at a commencement speech. This one I could never forget.<p><i>Smartness is a gift, kindness is a choice.</i>(paraphrased)
"All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you, you're Woolworth's."<p>This made me think of facebook.
One of my favorite (and a recent one):
People who are right a lot often change their minds. One of the best ways to end a heated debate is to say "Wait a minute.. I think I am wrong!".
I read the URL and after hitting #20 I was like "Where are the other 5?". It took me a while to notice the title of the post said "20" so I assume they created a page with 25 then removed 5 and forgot to update the URL.
One quote that really made quite a bit of difference in how I approach problems in life:<p>"Good intentions never work, you need good mechanisms to make anything happen"
<p><pre><code> 7. "If you're not stubborn, you'll give up on experiments too soon. And if you're
not flexible, you'll pound your head against the wall and you won't see a different
solution to a problem you're trying to solve."</code></pre>
<i>"A company shouldn't get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn't last."</i><p>This may be true of some companies, but we can see that Apple is quite successful at making products which continuously make last year's invention seem outdated. Of course, if making highly polished products takes a huge toll on your resources and impedes your greater strategy, then you may be better off not being "shiny".
I found it very interesting, but this quote stood out in a bad way:<p><i>"If you're long-term oriented, customer interests and shareholder interests are aligned."</i><p>This statement smelled like bullshit since large successful corporations don't tend to be incredibly ethical. The fast food industry has an interest in making you eat shitty food with a smile: this is not in the customer's <i>interest</i> (i.e. health), but because customer <i>perception</i> is what matters it's a great business decision, even in the long term.<p>I also noticed I was subconsciously confusing his statement with the claim that shareholder interests and <i>society's</i> interests are aligned. And it's a radically different question indeed, because Bezo's statement completely ignores employees. Yes, there is tremendous pressure to deliver consumer and shareholder value, but there is no pressure to deliver value to the kind of disposable workforce that Amazon needs. We all know what kind of workplace Amazon is.<p>Sorry if this is all a bit incoherent, but I'm curious about how CEOs of big companies really feel about ethical questions. It can't possibly be all rainbows and candy.
They don't mention<p>"We should set up on a reservation. Taxes are for little people."<p>Possibly because he might not have worded it like that.
Is it a smart choice that the store feels like 1998 web applications? Given the size of their workforce and the amount of revenue they make, why can't they invest some time in making the interface any good?
1. Hay Benzo's--work on your Prime Account page--especially the term and conditions--like 13 month interval for free 30 day prime trial membership. How many people click on that trial by accident; forgetting they once had it? I noticedyou don't send a receipt either?<p>2. Require your 2 party sellers to tell customers up front
about the availability of an item.<p>3. Require sellers to state more than they just paid for shipping.<p>4. Bye<p>5. Oh yea--the company's main phone line needs "to be set up" at least today.