Shareholder Inbox

Quotes from Jeff Bezos

28 quotes

  1. Focus on cost improvement makes it possible for us to afford to lower prices, which drives growth. Growth spreads fixed costs across more sales, reducing cost per unit, which makes possible more price reductions. Customers like this, and it's good for shareholders. Please expect us to repeat this loop.
  2. When forced to choose between optimizing the appearance of our GAAP accounting and maximizing the present value of future cash flows, we'll take the cash flows.
  3. Why focus on cash flows? Because a share of stock is a share of a company's future cash flows, and, as a result, cash flows more than any other single variable seem to do the best job of explaining a company's stock price over the long term.
  4. Our consumer franchise is our most valuable asset, and we will nourish it with innovation and hard work.
  5. There is more innovation ahead of us than behind us, we are close to demonstrating the operating leverage of our business model, and I get to work with this amazing team of Amazonians all over the world.
  6. the long-term interests of shareholders are tightly linked to the interests of our customers: if we do our jobs right, today's customers will buy more tomorrow, we'll add more customers in the process, and it will all add up to more cash flow and more long-term value for our shareholders.
  7. We're a company that wants to be weighed, and over time, we will be—over the long term, all companies are.
  8. In the physical world, retailers will continue to use technology to reduce costs, but not to transform the customer experience.
  9. Amazon.com today is a unique asset. We have the brand, the customer relationships, the technology, the fulfillment infrastructure, the financial strength, the people, and the determination to extend our leadership in this infant industry and to build an important and lasting company.
  11. We have a market-size unconstrained opportunity in an area where the underlying foundational technology we employ improves every day. That is not normal.
  12. this remains Day 1 for e-commerce, and these are the early days of category formation where many customers are forming relationships for the first time.
  13. Our vision is to use this platform to build Earth's most customer-centric company, a place where customers can come to find and discover anything and everything they might want to buy online.
  15. the quality of customer experience a partner delivers is the single most important criteria in our selection process – we simply won't build a partnership with any company that does not share our passion for serving customers.
  16. I constantly remind our employees to be afraid, to wake up every morning terrified. Not of our competition, but of our customers.
  17. It is truly Day 1 for the Internet and, if we execute our business plan well, it remains Day 1 for Amazon.com.
  18. Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been, and will continue to be, the single most important element of Amazon.com's success.
  19. We hold as axiomatic that customers are perceptive and smart, and that brand image follows reality and not the other way around.
  22. We believe that a fundamental measure of our success will be the shareholder value we create over the long term.
  24. When forced to choose between optimizing the appearance of our GAAP accounting and maximizing the present value of future cash flows, we'll take the cash flows.
  25. We will make bold rather than timid investment decisions where we see a sufficient probability of gaining market leadership advantages.
  26. Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been, and will continue to be, the single most important element of Amazon.com's success.
  28. We will continue to measure our programs and the effectiveness of our investments analytically, to jettison those that do not provide acceptable returns, and to step up our investment in those that work best. We will continue to learn from both our successes and our failures.