All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you, you're Woolworth's. Jeff Bezos More Quotes by Jeff Bezos More Quotes From Jeff Bezos In Seattle you haven't had enough coffee until you can thread a sewing machine while it's running. Jeff Bezos espressocoffeerunning We like to pioneer, we like to explore, we like to go down dark alleys and see what's on the other side. Jeff Bezos pioneersdarksides Cultures aren’t so much planned as they evolve from that early set of people. Jeff Bezos evolveculturepeople We are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine stage with the Internet. Jeff Bezos machinesinternetstage People loved their horses, too. But you don't keep riding your horse to work just because you love it. Jeff Bezos ridinghorsepeople Maintain a firm grasp of the obvious at all times. Jeff Bezos firmobviousall-time If you decide that you're going to do only the things you know are going to work, you're going to leave a lot of opportunity on the table. Jeff Bezos crazytablesopportunity People don't want gadgets, they want services. Jeff Bezos gadgetswantpeople I'm going to go do this crazy thing. I'm going to start this company selling books online. Jeff Bezos sellingcrazybook 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. Jeff Bezos businessopportunitythinking 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. Jeff Bezos machineslevelshair If you have a business model that relies on customers being misinformed, you better start working on changing your business model. Jeff Bezos relymodelsbusiness Our point of view is we will sell more if we help people make purchasing decisions. Jeff Bezos decisionviewspeople People who were right a lot of the time were people who often changed their minds. Jeff Bezos changedmindpeople The world is littered with corpses that predicted technology in a particular arena was done. If there's another gigantic step change out there, we don't yet know what it is. Jeff Bezos technologydoneworld 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. Jeff Bezos lighthomethinking Percentage margins are not one of the things we are seeking to optimize. It’s the absolute dollar free cash flow per share that you want to maximize, and if you can do that by lowering margins, we would do that. So if you could take the free cash flow, that’s something that investors can spend. Investors can’t spend percentage margins. Jeff Bezos cash-flowdollarswant 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. Jeff Bezos skillstwoneeds I'm not saying that advertising is going away. But the balance is shifting. If today the successful recipe is to put 70 percent of your energy into shouting about your service and 30 percent into making it great, over the next 20 years I think that's going to invert. Jeff Bezos businesssuccessfulthinking I'm not prepared to make any multi-decade commitments. Jeff Bezos prepareddecadescommitment
