I think that, ah, I'm a very goofy sort of person in many ways.
— Jeff Bezos
If you only do things where you know the answer in advance, your company goes away.
The best customer service is if the customer doesn't need to call you, doesn't need to talk to you. It just works.
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.
You don't want to negotiate the price of simple things you buy every day.
I like having the digital camera on my smart phone, but I also like having a dedicated camera for when I want to take real pictures.
For many people, extended reading sessions on an LCD display cause eyestrain.
I think the definition of a book is changing.
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.
Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital.
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.
My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.
You want your customers to value your service.
What consumerism really is, at its worst is getting people to buy things that don't actually improve their lives.
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.
What's dangerous is not to evolve.
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.
Mediocre theoretical physicists make no progress. They spend all their time understanding other people's progress.
I don't want to use my creative energy on somebody else's user interface.
Real estate is the key cost of physical retailers. That's why there's the old saw: location, location, location.
People forget already how much utility they get out of the Internet - how much utility they get out of e-mail, how much utility they get out of even simple things like brochureware online.
Percentage margins don't matter. What matters always is dollar margins: the actual dollar amount. Companies are valued not on their percentage margins, but on how many dollars they actually make, and a multiple of that.
I'm skeptical that the novel will be 're-invented.'
You're not going to make Hemingway better by adding animations.
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.
My view is there's no bad time to innovate.
Infrastructure web services had to happen.
Part of company culture is path-dependent - it's the lessons you learn along the way.
I'm a big fan of all-you-can-eat plans, because they're simpler for customers.
I've always been at the intersection of computers and whatever they can revolutionize.
Strip malls are history.
The killer app that got the world ready for appliances was the light bulb. So the light bulb is what wired the world. And they weren't thinking about appliances when they wired the world. They were really thinking about - they weren't putting electricity into the home. They were putting lighting into the home.
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.
If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.
I went to Princeton specifically to study physics.
Millions of people were inspired by the Apollo Program. I was five years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television, and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering, and exploration.
On the Internet, companies are scale businesses, characterized by high fixed costs and relatively low variable costs. You can be two sizes: You can be big, or you can be small. It's very hard to be medium. A lot of medium-sized companies had the financing rug pulled out from under them before they could get big.
I very much believe the Internet is indeed all it is cracked up to be.
You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author's world.
For people who are readers, reading is important to them.
The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It's the thing that people create.
I think there are going to be a bunch of tablet-like devices. It's really a different product category.
One of the things it was obvious you could do with an online store is have a much more complete selection.
Ebooks had to happen.
Cultures, for better or worse, are very stable.
The common question that gets asked in business is, 'why?' That's a good question, but an equally valid question is, 'why not?'
The one thing that offends me the most is when I walk by a bank and see ads trying to convince people to take out second mortgages on their home so they can go on vacation. That's approaching evil.
But there's so much kludge, so much terrible stuff, we are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine stage with the Internet. That's where we are. We don't get our hair caught in it, but that's the level of primitiveness of where we are. We're in 1908.
There are two ways to extend a business. Take inventory of what you're good at and extend out from your skills. Or determine what your customers need and work backward, even if it requires learning new skills. Kindle is an example of working backward.
Amazon.com strives to be the e-commerce destination where consumers can find and discover anything they want to buy online.
