Reacting to the effects of climate change is another challenge today’s businesses face, according to Bezos. While countering claims that Amazon does not care for its employees, he says the company needs “a better vision for how we create value for employees – a vision for their success.” Bezos also recognizes that some shareholders may think that focusing on employees will make Amazon less customer-centric, an opinion he strongly disagrees with. He says that he takes no comfort in the outcome of the union vote in Bessemer, Alabama, which saw most workers voting against forming a union. Don’t let it happen.” Challengeīut while Amazon has succeeded in pursuing innovation, Bezos admits that the tech giant was less successful on other fronts. The world wants you to be typical – in a thousand ways, it pulls at you. Bezos says that businesses and employees have to be “realistic about how much energy it takes to maintain that distinctiveness. What made such value creation possible is the willingness of Amazon to work hard to become and stay different. Bezos calculates that Amazon created $301B in total value in 2020 for all 4 of these groups. It’s also about paying employees well, supporting third-party sellers, and saving time and money for consumer customers and AWS customers. Companies that fail to do so are on the way out, even if they appear successful on the surface.Īnd creating value isn’t only about enriching shareholders. In his last annual shareholder letter as the CEO of Amazon, Bezos argues that success in business and in life boils down to one rule: create more value than you consume. It will take continuous effort, but we can and must be better than that.” Takeaway The world will always try to make Amazon more typical – to bring us into equilibrium with our environment. You’ll have to put energy into it continuously. Being yourself is worth it, but don’t expect it to be easy or free. The fairy tale version of ‘be yourself’ is that all the pain stops as soon as you allow your distinctiveness to shine. “You have to pay a price for your distinctiveness, and it’s worth it.
Links to Jeff Bezos’ Shareholder Letters (1997-2020)Ģ020 (final letter): Company culture can be both employee-centric and customer-centric. 1997: Bring on shareholders who align with your values. 1999: Build on top of infrastructure that’s improving on its own. Day one amazon free#
2001: Measure your company by your free cash flow. 2002: Build your business on your fixed costs. 2003: Long-term thinking is rooted in ownership. 2004: Free cash flow enables more innovation. 
2005: Don’t get fixated on short-term numbers. 2006: Nurture your seedlings to build big lines of business. 2007: Missionaries build better products. 2008: Work backwards from customer needs to know what to build next. 2009: Focus on inputs - the outputs will take care of themselves. 2010: R&D should pervade every department. 2011: Self-service platforms unlock innovation. 2012: Surprise and delight your customers to build long-term trust. 2013: Decentralize decision-making to generate innovation. 
2014: Bet on ideas that have unlimited upside. 2015: Don’t deliberate over easily reversible decisions. 2017: Build high standards into company culture. 2018: Wandering is an essential counterbalance to efficiency. 2019: In times of crisis, be aggressive and agile. 2020 (final letter): Company culture can be both employee-centric and customer-centric. Together, these letters form a library of Jeff Bezos’ most distilled thinking on running a successful, high-growth company. To read Bezos’ shareholder letters is to get a crash course in running a high-growth internet business from someone who mastered it before any of the playbooks were written.īelow, we analyze the letters and unpack the most important wisdom in each. We also include an appendix linking to each letter at the bottom of the post. Since 1997, Amazon’s stock price has risen from $5 per share to over $3,000 per share. And nowhere is Bezos’ philosophy of business, technology, and leadership better articulated than in his annual shareholder letters, which he has written every year since the company’s initial public offering in 1997. In doing so, he carved out a unique way of looking at the world, at companies, and at tech in general. Focus on the customers, and everything else will fall into place.īezos broke all the rules when he built Amazon. Since founding Amazon in 1994, CEO Jeff Bezos has run his company according to an unconventional set of core principles: don’t worry about competitors, don’t worry about making money for shareholders, and don’t worry about the short term.
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