
Smart Things Jeff Bezos Has Said - lazydon
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/09/09/the-25-smartest-things-jeff-bezos-has-ever-said.aspx
======
seunosewa
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.

"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."

[http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3289-some-advice-from-jeff-
be...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3289-some-advice-from-jeff-bezos)

~~~
jacquesm
In that sense the 'flip flopper' insult from American politics should actually
become a mark of distinction. It is as if changing your opinion due to
additional insight/input/thinking is a _bad_ thing instead of a good one.

~~~
veidr
The negative connotations of 'flip flopper' are mostly based on the implicit
assumption that the politician in question changed their[1] opinion for
reasons of political expediency, i.e. for reasons more to do with polling data
than new data actually pertinent to the issue at hand.

It is true that this makes it harder for conscientious politicians to
legitimately change their mind, though.

[1]: they as singular gender-neutral pronoun FTW

~~~
ams6110
The political flip-flopper is I think more scorned for flipping or trying to
play both sides of issues that are more matters of principle than simply
changing a position based on new evidence. I have much more respect for a
politician who sticks to principles, even if I don't agree with them, than I
do one who tries to have it both ways depending on who he's talking to.

("He" can be used with gender-neutral intent. I dislike using the plural
"they" for this purpose.)

~~~
nnethercote
> "He" can be used with gender-neutral intent.

Um, no it can't.

~~~
jholman
I can't tell ams6110 what intent he or she may or may not have....

but I can say that "he" will not be reliably _read_ as gender-neutral.

------
nohuck13
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."

Amen.

~~~
scanr
Woah. I independently came up with something similar. I used to wonder what
kind of advice I'd give myself if I could go back in time. At some point, I
realised that I could change it around and project myself forward in time
instead and imagine what future me would say to me right now. What the advice
lost in accuracy it made up for in actionability.

~~~
graeme
Thanks for posting that. I've tried it since I read it, and it made it easier
much to make the right decisions all day, with less drain on willpower. We'll
see if that keeps up.

------
sergiosgc
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.

Examples:

\- "(...) 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.

\- "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.

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.

~~~
smu
Out of curiosity: who else would be in contention for "best manager of the
generation"?

~~~
sergiosgc
The one I admire the most is from a previous generation: Amancio Ortega, from
Inditex. The innovations in logistics by Inditex are amazing. As for
current(ish), and with a heavy skew towards IT, my list would be, in no
particular order:

\- Bill Gates, for MS strategy during the 90s. Evil and Borg-esque but ultra
effective.

\- Steve Jobs, for Pixar and the early 00s turnaround at Apple.

\- Elon Musk, not so much for co-founding PayPal, but rather because of Tesla

Now that I'm at it, let me nominate the worst CEO: Eric Schmidt. Title earned
for destroying engineer culture at three great companies: Novell, Sun and
Google. Novell and Sun tanked, Google will be the first to survive Schmidt's
effects, albeit scarred. There are financially worse CEOs, but Schmidt
attacked companies that I particularly liked with the same repeat effects.

~~~
rhizome
I would add that Novell and Sun also failed through a strategy of focussing on
enterprise and government market segements. Google is an open question here,
but it's something to watch when a company is under Schmidt-control.

~~~
specialist
Radioactive RAM chips, costing Sun billions, played a part.

"When Sun folks get together and bullshit about their theories of why Sun
died, the one that comes up most often is another one of these supplier
disasters. Towards the end of the DotCom bubble, we introduced the UltraSPARC-
II. Total killer product for large datacenters. We sold lots. But then reports
started coming in of odd failures."

[http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/at_the_mercy_of_suppl...](http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/at_the_mercy_of_suppliers)

\---

I hated Novell with the passion of a billion burning novas. As only a NetWare
admin could. So I was happy to see them tank.

I vaguely recall that Ray Noorda wanted to take on Microsoft, so went on a
spending spree to acquire an Office competitor, completely ignoring their
NetWare and GroupWise (?) offerings, allowing Microsoft to get traction in
both applications servers and directory services.

------
Florin_Andrei
> _3. "Your margin is my opportunity."_

Very scary and very aggressive. Also, smart (if you can pull off that sort of
thing).

> _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."_

Making a note to tell this to my kids.

> _14. "[don't] get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn't last."_

This one, too, sounds like a good general-purpose life advice.

~~~
lbarrett
> 3\. "Your margin is my opportunity."

Isn't that just Microeconomics 101?

~~~
mfringel
If you;re in a commodity business and there are no other comparative
advantages, then sure.

------
rmason
Here's another favorite of mine:

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.

~~~
dredmorbius
Two words: diminishing returns.

------
anuragramdasan
I think the best thing he ever said was at a commencement speech. This one I
could never forget.

 _Smartness is a gift, kindness is a choice._ (paraphrased)

~~~
untilHellbanned
think both are choices if you consider the context in which people commonly
compare each other's "smartness

~~~
mseebach
That's pedantry. To the extend smartness is a choice, it's not something you
can decide to do from day to day. Being nice very much is.

~~~
Timmmmbob
Is it? I mean obviously you _can_ choose to be nice or nasty, but maybe in the
same way that obese people can choose to exercise and eat healthily. Some
people are definitely nicer than others by default.

------
michalu
"All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you,
you're Woolworth's."

This made me think of facebook.

~~~
gamegoblin
According to various younger folks I know around here (in the 12 +- 2 years
range) most kids just use instagram and whatnot nowadays rather than facebook.

------
sidjoshi
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!".

------
joshstrange
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.

~~~
GuiA
More like writer started writing, got lazy, bumped it down to 20 and changed
the title, but their CMS didn't update the permalink :)

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harigov
One quote that really made quite a bit of difference in how I approach
problems in life:

"Good intentions never work, you need good mechanisms to make anything happen"

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maxmzd_
Love this one "...you need to have that long-term willingness to be
misunderstood. It's a key part of invention."

------
rtpg
The tenth one is funny in its own little way

"We did studies and we didn't listen to them"

~~~
kbutler
We did studies, but decided they didn't measure what was most important.

------
6ren

      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."

~~~
burgerz
Yes I read the article too.

------
pazimzadeh
_" A company shouldn't get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn't
last."_

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".

~~~
njharman
"Last" means 25, 50, 100 years. Apple is the poster child, cause they only
have "shiny"(well and customer service) and __must __continually be shinnyer,
it 's not sustainable. The new iPhones failed to achieve a sufficient
shininess delta.

~~~
pazimzadeh
I don't think that I said anything particularly controversial, though I
realize that every company can't be like Apple.

Apple has lasted 37 years, and has a cash balance of 150 billion dollars. Jeff
Bezos' Amazon is 19 years old and has a low cash balance due to famously razor
thin margins.

Apple's model is clearly sustainable for them, but not necessarily for others.
Do you disagree with that?

With regards to the new iPhones not being shiny enough, perhaps you should
withhold judgement until the devices go on sale.

See also: [http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/16/rethinking-the-
ipho...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/16/rethinking-the-iphone-5c)
[http://www.marco.org/2013/09/15/iphone-
reactions](http://www.marco.org/2013/09/15/iphone-reactions)

~~~
sirmarksalot
But Apple stopped being shiny in the late '80s, and didn't get shiny again
until Steve Jobs came back. Even so, it took many years after that to regain
its luster. The iMac looked shiny in some circles, but most technically-minded
people I knew thought it was stupid. The iPod, in 2001, was the first thing
they made that was truly disruptive, and even then it didn't quite sway public
opinion to think Apple was an innovation powerhouse.

Personally, my perception of Apple switched when the iPhone came out in 2007.
Other people became interested in 2003 or so. Either way, Apple's shine is
around 10 years old, and is starting to fade already.

~~~
pazimzadeh
I agree with most of what you've said. My interest in Apple was piqued when I
saw Steve Jobs' presentation of the 2006 Intel Macbook Pro.

I think that the iPod taught Apple how to perfect their iterative process and
release their innovations in discrete amounts which maximize profits and gives
them time to work on their next big product category.

I too believe that Steve Jobs played a great role in making Apple exciting in
the first place and bringing that excitement back after it faded away.
However, don't you think that we should wait a few more years before
determining whether or not Steve set up any precautions or learned from
Apple's mistakes the first time around?

Apple's second wind is also correlated with the amount of influence that
Jonathan Ive has had at Apple, which as we know is higher than ever right now.

~~~
sirmarksalot
Agreed. I'm not counting them out, I'm just saying that the current public
perception isn't what it used to be. At least that's what I mean by
"shininess."

------
bizbody
I found it very interesting, but this quote stood out in a bad way:

 _" If you're long-term oriented, customer interests and shareholder interests
are aligned."_

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
_interest_ (i.e. health), but because customer _perception_ is what matters
it's a great business decision, even in the long term.

I also noticed I was subconsciously confusing his statement with the claim
that shareholder interests and _society 's_ 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.

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.

~~~
willvarfar
Isn't this what makes his outlook special, though?

~~~
bizbody
There's no denying that Amazon have a great product and think long term, but
saying you have the customer's best interests at heart sounds a bit like a
generic "corporate values" statement.

------
hobolobo
They don't mention

"We should set up on a reservation. Taxes are for little people."

Possibly because he might not have worded it like that.

------
um304
"If you double the number of experiments you do per year, you're going to
double your inventiveness."

------
taopao
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?

~~~
asdasf
What do you mean? Feels like 1998 as in it is simple, easy and works? Doesn't
have enough javascript errors to prevent you from making purchases?

~~~
rhizome
You mean you don't like when pages hang with spinners because they're waiting
40sec for a Comscore (et al) tracker to download?

------
ivanbrussik
url structure says "25 smartest things..."

------
the1
my favorite: "Developers, developers, developers"

~~~
astine
I think you're conflating Bezos and Ballmer.

~~~
CrankyPants
I think he's being ironic.

------
marincounty
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?

2\. Require your 2 party sellers to tell customers up front about the
availability of an item.

3\. Require sellers to state more than they just paid for shipping.

4\. Bye

5\. Oh yea--the company's main phone line needs "to be set up" at least today.

