“We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.”– Jeff Bezos
“If you’re competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.”– Jeff Bezos
“You can have the best technology, you can have the best business model, but if the storytelling isn’t amazing, it won’t matter. Nobody will watch.”– Jeff Bezos
“Your margin is my opportunity.”– Jeff Bezos
“I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it’s not just about the business. There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that’s not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you.”– Jeff Bezos
“All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you, you’re Woolworth’s.”– Jeff Bezos
“In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.”– Jeff Bezos
“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.”– Jeff Bezos
“We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details.”– Jeff Bezos
“If you only do things where you know the answer in advance, your company goes away.”– Jeff Bezos
“We’ve done price elasticity studies, and the answer is always that we should raise prices. We don’t do that, because we believe — and we have to take this as an article of faith — that by 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.”– Jeff Bezos
“If you’re long-term oriented, customer interests and shareholder interests are aligned.”– Jeff Bezos
“A company shouldn’t get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn’t last.”– Jeff Bezos
“All of my best decisions in business and in life have been made with heart, intuition, guts… not analysis.”– Jeff Bezos
“Sometimes we measure things and see that in the short term they actually hurt sales, and we do it anyway.” – Jeff Bezos
“We are comfortable planting seeds and waiting for them to grow into trees.”– Jeff Bezos
“Friends congratulate me after a quarterly-earnings announcement and say, ‘Good job, great quarter.'” “And I’ll say, ‘Thank you, but that quarter was baked three years ago.'”– Jeff Bezos
“We innovate by starting with the customer and working backwards. That becomes the touchstone for how we invent.”– Jeff Bezos
“Failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment.”– Jeff Bezos
“I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.”– Jeff Bezos
“There’ll always be serendipity involved in discovery.”– Jeff Bezos
“You have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.”– Jeff Bezos
“If you double the number of experiments you do per year, you’re going to double your inventiveness.”– Jeff Bezos
“To get something new done you have to be stubborn and focused, to the point that others might find unreasonable.”– Jeff Bezos
“If you decide that you’re going to do only the things you know are going to work, you’re going to leave a lot of opportunity on the table.”– Jeff Bezos
“If you’re watching your competitors, you’re unlikely to invent a bunch of stuff on your own.”– Jeff Bezos
“Me-too companies have not done that well over time.” – Jeff Bezos
“No customer was asking for Echo. This was definitely us wandering. Market research doesn’t help.”– Jeff Bezos
“Staying in Day 1 requires you to experiment patiently, accept failures, plant seeds, protect saplings, and double down when you see customer delight.”– Jeff Bezos
“Most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you’re probably being slow.”– Jeff Bezos
“To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment.” – Jeff Bezos
“Most large organizations embrace the idea of invention, but are not willing to suffer the string of failed experiments necessary to get there.”– Jeff Bezos
“We take risks all the time, we talk about failure.” “We need big failures in order to move the needle. If we don’t, we’re not swinging enough. You really should be swinging hard, and you will fail, but that’s okay.”– Jeff Bezos
“We all know that if you swing for the fences, you’re going to strike out a lot, but you’re also going to hit some home runs.”– Jeff Bezos
“If you’re not stubborn, you’ll give up on experiments too soon.”– Jeff Bezos
“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.”– Jeff Bezos
“If you never want to be criticized, for goodness’ sake don’t do anything new.”– Jeff Bezos
“Companies are rarely criticized for the things that they failed to try. But they are, many times, criticized for things they tried and failed at.”– Jeff Bezos
“You can have a job, or you can have a career, or you can have a calling.”– Jeff Bezos
“If you can somehow figure out how to have a calling, you have hit the jackpot, cause that’s the big deal.”– Jeff Bezos
“If you can make a decision with analysis, you should do so. But it turns out in life that your most important decisions are always made with instinct and intuition, taste, heart.”– Jeff Bezos
“Where you are going to spend your time and your energy is one of the most important decisions you get to make in life.”– Jeff Bezos
“Life’s too short to hang out with people who aren’t resourceful.”– Jeff Bezos
“In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story.”– Jeff Bezos
“Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy — they’re given after all. Choices can be hard.”– Jeff Bezos
“If I have three good decisions a day, that’s enough.” “They should just be as high quality as I can make them.”– Jeff Bezos
“Luck plays an outsized role in every endeavor, and I can assure you we’ve had a bountiful supply.”– Jeff Bezos
“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.”– Jeff Bezos
“The best customer service is if the customer doesn’t need to call you, doesn’t need to talk to you. It just works.”– Jeff Bezos
“We don’t focus on the optics of the next quarter; we focus on what is going to be good for customers.”– Jeff Bezos
“Great innovations, large and small, are happening everyday [at Amazon] on behalf of customers.”– Jeff Bezos
“Good inventors and designers deeply understand their customer. They spend tremendous energy developing that intuition. They study and understand many anecdotes rather than only the averages you’ll find on surveys. They live with the design.”– Jeff Bezos
“I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.” – Jeff Bezos
“What’s dangerous is not to evolve.” – Jeff Bezos
“My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.” – Jeff Bezos
“A company shouldn’t get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn’t last.” – Jeff Bezos
“There’ll always be serendipity involved in discovery.” – Jeff Bezos
“The thing that motivates me is a very common form of motivation. And that is, with other folks counting on me, it’s so easy to be motivated.” – Jeff Bezos
“If you don’t understand the details of your business you are going to fail.” – Jeff Bezos
“The common question that gets asked in business is, ‘why?’ That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, ‘why not?’” – Jeff Bezos
“The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.” – Jeff Bezos
“It’s not an experiment if you know it’s going to work.” – Jeff Bezos
“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.” – Jeff Bezos
“You don’t want to negotiate the price of simple things you buy every day.” – Jeff Bezos
“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.” – Jeff Bezos
“If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.” – Jeff Bezos
“My view is there’s no bad time to innovate.” – Jeff Bezos
“If you’re competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.” – Jeff Bezos
“Part of company culture is path-dependent – it’s the lessons you learn along the way.” – Jeff Bezos
“We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.” – Jeff Bezos
“The best customer service is if the customer doesn’t need to call you, doesn’t need to talk to you. It just works.” – Jeff Bezos
“Life’s too short to hang out with people who aren’t resourceful.” – Jeff Bezos
“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.” – Jeff Bezos
“We expect all our businesses to have a positive impact on our top and bottom lines. Profitability is very important to us or we wouldn’t be in this business.” – Jeff Bezos
“We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details…” – Jeff Bezos
“Your margin is my opportunity.” – Jeff Bezos
“Work Hard, have fun, make history.” – Jeff Bezos
“If you never want to be criticized, for goodness’ sake don’t do anything new.” – Jeff Bezos
“Maintain a firm grasp of the obvious at all times.” – Jeff Bezos
“No business can continue to shrink. That can only go on for so long before irrelevancy sets in.” – Jeff Bezos
“Position yourself with something that captures your curiosity, something that you’re missionary about.” – Jeff Bezos
