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THIRTY PERCENT OF U.S. households have a gun, and 64 percent have Amazon Prime.
Bezos realized reviews could do the hard work of retailing for him. Customers do the marketing, for free.
This kind of experimentation and aggression is what the military calls the OODA loop: “observe, orient, decide, and act.”
As Bezos wrote in Amazon’s first annual letter, in 1997, “Given a 10 percent chance of a hundred times payout, you should take that bet every time.”
In 2015, Amazon spent $7 billion on shipping fees, a net shipping loss of $5 billion, and overall profits of $2.4 billion.
Of the thirteen firms that have outperformed the S&P five years in a row (yes, there are just thirteen), only one of them is a consumer brand—Under Armour—and it was off the list in 2017.
With voice, consumers don’t know the price or see the packaging and are less likely to include the brand in their request. Fewer and fewer searches contain a brand name.
Death, for brands, has a name … Alexa.
Amazon isn’t unique among the Four in this regard: all do more with less, and all put people out of work.
I’ve been advising luxury brands for twenty-five years and believe these firms, from Porsche to Prada, share five key attributes: an iconic founder, artisanship, vertical integration, global reach, and a premium price.
As an old iMac ad put it, Apple technology is “Simply amazing, and amazingly simple.”
Facebook gestates intent better than any promotion or advertising channel. Once in pursuit, we go to Google or Amazon to see where to get it. Thus Facebook is higher up the funnel than Google. It suggests the “what,” while Google supplies the “how” and Amazon the “when” you will have it.
In sum, old media isn’t going away; it will just be a shitty place to work or invest.
Bill Maher compared social media to tobacco.52 A more apt analogy is nicotine—addictive … but not that bad for you. It’s the tobacco that gives you cancer, and the tobacco here is advertising.
One in six Google queries have never been asked before.
On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So, you have these two fighting against each other.
The processes put in place to scale begin slowing the firm down, as managers begin believing that adhering to the guidelines is more important than making good decisions.
the company has reshaped the retail landscape in China, turning an obscure tradition known as “Singles’ Day” (November 11, or “11/11”) into the world’s largest shopping day.5 The company did $17.4 billion in GMV on Singles’ Day alone in 2016, of which 82 percent originated from mobile.
blue-flame thinker
On average, smart people who work hard and treat people well do better than people whose thinking is muddled, who are lazy, or who are unpleasant to colleagues.
it took Microsoft Office 22 years to reach a billion users, but Gmail only 12, and Facebook 9.
Nobody becomes superwealthy through paychecks—it takes equity in growing assets to create real wealth.
The definition of rich is when your passive income exceeds your nut (what you need to live). My dad, collecting $45,000 in social security and cash flow from investments, is rich, as he spends $40,000/year.
The path to rich(es) is a path of living below your means and investing in income-producing assets. Rich is more a function of discipline than how much you make.
Be loyal to people. People transcend corporations, and people, unlike corporations, value loyalty.
Don’t follow your passion, follow your talent. Determine what you are good at (early), and commit to becoming great at it. You don’t have to love it, just don’t hate it.
If you are seeking justice, you won’t find it in the corporate world.
If you leave, keep in mind people remember more about how you leave than what you did while there.
Look at the resumes of the senior executives—if they mostly came from sales, then the company values sales.
Big tech has dumped an enormous amount of wealth into the laps of a small cohort of investors and incredibly talented workers—leaving much of the workforce behind, perhaps believing the opiate of the masses will be streaming video content and a crazy-powerful phone.
What is the endgame for this, the greatest concentration of human and financial capital ever assembled? What is their mission? Cure cancer? Eliminate poverty? Explore the universe? No, their goal: to sell another fucking Nissan.
