“Bezos wanted to personally approve each equation and track the results over time. It would be his way of guiding a team’s… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“Eric and Susan Benson didn't come to Amazon alone every day - they brought their dog Rufus, a Welsh corgi.” — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“Engadget, the technology blog, had the first details about Amazon’s new e-reading device,” — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“Bezos even wondered aloud whether Amazon could hire college students on every block in Manhattan and get them to store popular products… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“In the copy he brought to Kathryn Dalzell, he had underlined one particular passage in which Walton described borrowing the best ideas… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“Miller knew nothing about toy retailing, but in a pattern that would recur over and over, Bezos didn’t care. He was looking… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“Whenever Jeff Bezos roamed a fulfillment center or his own Seattle headquarters, he looked for defects—flaws in the company’s systems or even… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“He says Bezos takes a red pen to press releases, product descriptions, speeches, and shareholder letters, crossing out anything that does not… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“The Kindle wasn’t an overnight success, of course, but an avalanche of publicity and its prominent placement at the top of the… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
Amazon may be the most beguiling company that ever existed, and it is just getting started. It is both missionary and mercenary...… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“Amazon may be the most beguiling company that ever existed, and it is just getting started. It is both missionary and mercenary,… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“As part of his ongoing quest for a better allocation of his own time, he decreed that he would no longer have… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“Later Bezos recalled speaking at an all-hands meeting called to address the assault by Barnes & Noble. “Look, you should wake up… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
I don't think we yet know - because it's probably not big enough - what exactly Amazon does to our cities, but… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“There was little science to Amazon’s earliest distribution methods. The company held no inventory itself at first. When a customer bought a… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“Bezos dismissed those objections and insisted that to succeed in books as Apple had in music, Amazon needed to control the entire… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“Bill Miller, the chief investment officer at Legg Mason Capital Management and a major Amazon shareholder, asked Bezos at the time about… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
I think it's a competitive advantage that both Amazon and Google and other tech companies have over a lot of their counterparts.… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“Eric Benson took about two weeks to construct a preliminary version that grouped together customers who had similar purchasing histories and then… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“If you want to get to the truth about what makes us different, it’s this,” Bezos says, veering into a familiar Jeffism:… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“The junior executives recommended a variety of different techniques to foster cross-group dialogue and afterward seemed proud of their own ingenuity. Then… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“One early challenge was that the book distributors required retailers to order ten books at a time. Amazon didn’t yet have that… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“The television episode was the foundation of another official award at Amazon, this one presented to an employee who identified an activity… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“Book publishers needed only to listen to Jeff Bezos himself to have their fears stoked. Amazon’s founder repeatedly suggested he had little… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“Drawing on Collins’s concept of a flywheel, or self-reinforcing loop, Bezos and his lieutenants sketched their own virtuous cycle, which they believed… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“Bezos kept pushing for more. He asked Blake to exact better terms from the smallest publishers, who would go out of business… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“The book clearly resonated with Amazon’s founder. On the last page, a section completed a few weeks before his death, Walton wrote:… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“That summer, Harrison Miller and Bezos butted heads in front of the board of directors over the size of the bet on… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“The electronics effort faced even greater challenges. To launch that category, David Risher tapped a Dartmouth alum named Chris Payne who had… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“By that time, Bezos and his executives had devoured and raptly discussed another book that would significantly affect the company’s strategy: The… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“Bezos had seemingly made up his mind that he was no longer going to indulge in financial maneuvering as a way to… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
Amazon is famously run by studying and responding to its own data; yet when it comes to promotions, decisions are often subjective… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“At the same time, Bezos became enamored with a book called Creation, by Steve Grand, the developer of a 1990s video game… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“Unlike traditional retailers, Amazon returned few unsold books, often less than 5 percent. The big book chains regularly returned 40 percent of… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“Bezos didn’t believe anyone could make a good decision about a feature or a product without knowing precisely how it would be… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“from his company. After the stock market crash in 2000, Amazon went through two rounds of layoffs. But Bezos didn’t want to… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“I didn’t know Jeff Bezos but I just remember being blown away by the fact that he was there with his sleeves… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“Bezos took a series of odd jobs throughout high school. One summer he famously worked as a fryer at a local McDonald’s,… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“The first week after the official launch, they took $12,000 in orders and shipped $846 worth of books, according to Eric Dillon,… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“There was little science to Amazon’s earliest distribution methods. The company held no inventory itself at first. When a customer bought a book, Amazon… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“They agreed on five core values and wrote them down on a whiteboard in a conference room: customer obsession, frugality, bias for action, ownership,… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“In a world where consumers had limited choice, you needed to compete for locations,” says Ross, who went on to cofound eCommera, a British… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“The first week after the official launch, they took $12,000 in orders and shipped $846 worth of books, according to Eric Dillon, one of… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“Look, you should wake up worried, terrified every morning,” he told his employees. “But don’t be worried about our competitors because they ' re… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“Amazon may be the most beguiling company that ever existed, and it is just getting started. It is both missionary and mercenary, and throughout… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
We see Google experimenting in so many places outside of its core search and advertising business, whether that's bringing broadband Internet to the world… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“The production philosophy pioneered by Toyota calls for a focus on those activities that create value for the customer and the systematic eradication of… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“Apple’s founder reportedly fired employees in the elevator and screamed at underperforming executives. Perhaps there is something endemic in the fast-paced technology business that… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“Just as Clayton Christensen had predicted in The Innovator’s Dilemma, technological innovation caused wrenching pain to the company and the broader industry” — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
“Eric Benson took about two weeks to construct a preliminary version that grouped together customers who had similar purchasing histories and then found books… — Brad Stone Copy Share Image
