The Bezos Letters Quotes

“What makes a good coach? Someone who’s gone further than you, seen more than you’ve seen, failed in more interesting ways than you have, and prevailed in the face of challenges more daunting than you’ve faced.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Bezos was extremely savvy when it came to growing Amazon: he knew there was an exquisite tension between risk and growth.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“takes risks with intentionality,”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Jeff Bezos figured out very early on that unless you take risks, invest in risks, and intentionally create opportunities for “failure,” you’re not growing or thinking big enough.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“The bottom line: There will always be tension between data and gut instincts… but you always have to have both.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“The next big task for Alexa may be making dinner… and that may not be as far-fetched as it sounds.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“as I was studying the Shareholder Letters, I realized they split into repeatable Growth Cycles that Bezos applies to pretty much every endeavor: test, build, accelerate, and scale with the principles falling into each area.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“You don’t grow if you’re not willing to take risks.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Have you ever been frustrated by a company representative who couldn’t help you with an issue because of “company policy,” “procedures don’t allow for that,” or they were “only following orders”? If so, you have experienced an employee not resisting proxies. At Amazon, “company policy” or any other proxy is no excuse for doing the wrong thing for the customer.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Resist Proxies A key part of Amazon’s “It’s always Day 1” philosophy is what Bezos calls “resisting proxies.” In simple terms, proxies (in this context) are any form of excuse people use to blame others for less-than-ideal actions or decisions. They give people an excuse to distance themselves from their actions. Common examples of proxies include policies, procedures, processes, and sometimes even orders from another person.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“You can be competitor focused, you can be product focused, you can be technology focused, you can be business model focused, and there are more. But in my view, obsessive customer focus is by far the most protective of Day 1 vitality.” —Bezos (2016 Letter)”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“First, Day 1 is representative of all the leadership principles that have helped make Amazon what it is today. It is the anchor for acknowledging and remembering their beginning values and their dogged focus on serving the needs of customers and even “delighting” customers. Second, Day 1 is a mindset, not a list of steps or strategies. It is the mentality through which all decisions are made. It is designed to keep everyone in the company focused on doing what is right in each situation, not just what is possible given Amazon’s size and influence. Because, like a child’s tower of building blocks, if the foundation isn’t stable, the tower will come tumbling down. And then it’s Day 2. It bears repeating: “Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.” —Bezos (2016 Letter) On Day 1, there are few—if any—things more important than customers.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Principle 14: Believe It’s Always “Day 1”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Measure What Matters, Question What’s Measured, and Trust Your Gut Q: Have you identified the key data drivers in your business? Q: Are you able to sort through all the data you measure and figure out which metrics really matter? Q: (You are measuring something, right?)”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Our ultimate financial measure, and the one we most want to drive over the long-term, is free cash flow per share.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Measuring Financials When it comes to financial data, most publicly traded companies focus on earnings, earnings per share, and earnings growth rate. But not Bezos. Bezos prefers free cash flow per share.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“The term free cash flow is the amount of cash flow a company has left over after paying the fixed expenses it needs to keep the doors open—such as rent, necessary equipment, maintenance or upgrades, technology—and keep current in its debt obligations.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“We enable experimentation at massive scale to help Amazon build better products for customers. A/B testing is in Amazon’s DNA and we’re at the core of how Amazon innovates.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Wandering in business is not efficient … but it’s also not random. It’s guided—by hunch, gut, intuition, curiosity, and powered by a deep conviction that the prize for customers is big enough that it’s worth being a little messy and tangential to find our way there.”—Bezos (2018 Letter)”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Math-based decisions command wide agreement, whereas judgment-based decisions are rightly debated and often controversial, at least until put into practice and demonstrated. Any institution unwilling to endure controversy must limit itself to decisions of the first type. In our view, doing so would not only limit controversy—it would also significantly limit innovation and long-term value creation.” —Bezos (2005 Letter)”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Principle 13: Measure What Matters, Question What’s Measured, and Trust Your Gut”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Focus on High Standards Q: What are the three or four important characteristics of your highest-performing, highly-successful employees? Q: Do you (and your hiring managers) focus on those characteristics when hiring? Q: Who is responsible for “quality control” at your company—and how are they doing?”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.” —Bezos (2016 Letter)”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“If your customer experience is inconsistent, you will never be able to scale. If your customer experience is frequently poor, you will never be able to scale. You will only be able to scale when your customer experience is consistently good.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Along what dimension might this person be a superstar?”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Will this person raise the average level of effectiveness of the group they’re entering?”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“During our hiring meetings, we ask people to consider three questions before making a decision: “Will you admire this person?”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“It’s not easy to work here (when I interview people I tell them, ‘You can work long, hard, or smart, but at Amazon.com you can’t choose two out of three’), but we are working to build something important, something that matters to our customers, something that we can all tell our grandchildren about. Such things aren’t meant to be easy.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“There’s an old saying in business: “If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Principle 12: Focus on High Standards”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon