I am a huge fan of amazon.com, almost every material good I buy comes from Amazon, big exceptions are clothes and Apple products. I use Amazon for one reason, convenience, I can find the product and checkout in less than a minute, then have the product at my door in 2 days w/o paying tax or shipping (I did purchase Amazon’s unlimited free 2 day shipping for $80/year, but it has certainly paid for itself).
I also like their developer tools, although I haven’t been able to use them as much as I would have hoped, but what I have used was really simple… and convenient.
Anyway I just read the Jeff Bezos (Amazon’s CEO) interview in October’s Harvard Business Review, and pulled out these quotes:
We don’t make money when we sell things; we make money when we help customers make purchase decisions.
corporate cultures are incredibly stable over time. They are self-perpetuating, because they attract new people who like that kind of culture, while the people who don’t like it eject themselves.
Be afraid of our customers, because those are the folks who have the money. Our competitors are never going to send us money
When something seems like an opportunity—it seems like you have the skills, and maybe some kind of advantage, and you think it’s a big area—you will always get asked the question, “Why? Why do that?” But “Why not?” is an equally valid question.
it’s important to be stubborn on the vision and flexible on the details.
I always tell people that our culture is friendly and intense, but if push comes to shove, we’ll settle for intense.
