I’ve spent the past couple of weeks reading The Everything Store, a biography of Amazon published in 2013. Due to my naturally curious mind, the book got me more interested to learn about Jeff Bezos, and so I proceeded to consume several videos of his interviews & speeches on YouTube.
Now, I understand that Jeff is a controversial(and somewhat hated) figure. His Lex Luthor-like “villain” appearance and his pointed, aggressive, dry laugh don’t help! He’s seen as a rich billionaire who destroyed several local businesses(especially book stores), exploited thousands of employees with little benefit & pay, and doesn’t pay his rightful share of taxes, etc(the accusations go on). Things like making employees pay for parking, refusing to even cover their bus passes(so they will be forced to stay back at the office for longer hours), not allowing workers at the fulfilment centers to watch TV, and employing hard-negotiation tactics to squeeze more money out of publishers(all of which have been documented in the biography), etc. add merit to these accusations.
Despite all that, I believe it is worth observing Jeff and trying to understand(& appreciate) his style of thinking. It is fine to dislike someone for something they did or endorse, but at the same time admire other attributes of them. Life is rarely black & white, and everyone has good and bad attributes.
So here are five things I took out of Jeff. If I ever have to run a business(or even at my job), I will TRY to inculcate as many of these attributes as possible.
Focus on the Customer.
When a colleague went to him with a 6-page proposal for an idea, Jeff looked at it for 2 seconds before asking “Where is the customer!?”(link to video of this incident). Jeff’s customer obsession is well renowned. In 1998, when Barnes & Nobles were coming hard at Amazon with their online store, Jeff addressed his worried employees at a company meeting saying that they “should be rightfully worried. But not about their competitor, but their customer. It’s the customer who pays us our salary, not the competition.”
And it’s true, isn’t it? If you open a business(restaurant, grocery/convenience store, etc.), what do you focus on? The other restaurant down the block, or on the customers who are eating your food and paying your income? Of course, it helps to keep an eye on the competition to know what’s happening in the market, but you should always ask “Is the customer satisfied & happy with our service? What new things would they expect in the future?”, etc.
Whatever it is you are doing at the moment, always ask: Who is the end-user? Who is my customer(or client) here? What are they getting out of this? How can I make this better for them?
Be willing to Kill your own Product.
This one takes guts!
Remember Kodak? The most popular camera company in the 1970s? Their film-roll cameras were the most popular in the market at the time. In the late 70's, when their engineers made one of the first digital cameras, Kodak was so invested in its identity as a maker of film-roll cameras that they didn’t allow the digital camera to gain popularity. They were too afraid to get out of their comfort zone and take risks by promoting new product categories. Unwilling to change their identity and kill their product(for their good), they lost out to the competition and unfortunately had to file bankruptcy in 2012.
Now compare this with Jeff. In the mid-2000s, Jeff hired a team to work on an early prototype of an e-reader that would later become the Kindle. When the team wasn’t successful in their initial rounds of designing, Jeff says: “I want you to work on this product with an aim to destroy Amazon’s book business! It should put us underground!”. In other words, Jeff was willing to cannibalise himself.
Imagine if Jeff had decided not to go into the e-books business: we probably would not have good e-book readers today. Imagine if Jeff had decided not to get into the OTT business, there would have been no PrimeVideo. Imagine if Google had decided not to get into Maps/Earth, the world would have lost out on a product like Google Maps.
You cannot stick to a single product/service forever. The world will not stick to film-roll cameras forever & pretty soon, somebody is going to make a digital camera. Once they do, you better adapt(or even better, be the first one to make the digital camera!). If you don’t keep an eye on the world and be in search of new ideas, somebody else is going to overtake you.
Identity — We are a Technology Company, not a Retail one.
What exactly is Amazon? Is it a retail company? We do use it to buy things online, right?
Jeff would disagree. Its first identity is that of a technology company. Its primary business is to use (or create)technology to solve problems.
What is Amazon’s largest source of income? It is not their retail website. It is Amazon Web Services. If I told you that a company went into the cloud-based infrastructure service where it lends computing power to other businesses, who would you guess it would be? You probably would say IBM, Apple, or Microsoft. Why would a retail company like amazon.com do something like this!?
And yet, it is Amazon that has the world’s largest cloud-based infra service. It is Amazon that owns PrimeVideo, Echo, FireTV Stick, Kindle, etc. Look at these products, they are the creation of a technology company. No business that identifies itself as a retail (book)business would get into such things.
You should be clear about your identity and be willing to change and adapt to new environments with time. If Jeff thought of Amazon only as a retail company, he would be stuck selling stuff on amazon.com. Even with amazon.com, Jeff wasn’t happy to just be an online bookseller, he wanted amazon.com to become the “everything store”. This is what pushed the company to get into selling everything.
Amazon would not have been as successful or wealthy as it is today if its identity was restricted to the retail site. Every time Jeff suggested each of these products, I’m sure he would have received a backlash from his people asking “Why should we get into this business?”, it’s because we are a technology company!
Regret Minimisation.
When asked about how he got the courage and drive to take such bold risks when getting into products that Amazon had no business being in, Jeff spoke about his regret minimisation framework.
What is this regret minimisation framework? When you are old & retired, sitting on your porch and reminiscing about your life, narrating for yourself your most intimate & personal moments, it’s your choices that will have the biggest bearing. It’s the choices that you made or didn’t make that will make or break your future. The idea is to ensure that you will have as little to regret as possible when you are reminiscing about your life.
This philosophy has helped Jeff make several difficult decisions like buying the Washington Post, choosing to make the Kindle, taking on bigger competitors with deeper pockets, etc.
This is such a simple yet powerful idea. Ask yourself what would your future-self regret? And let that guide your decision-making.
Akio Morita’s(founder of Sony) vision — bigger than yourself.
In a 2010 interview, Jeff revealed his admiration for Akio Morita who co-founded Sony shortly after the second world war.
Post the war, Japan was known for low-quality, copy-cat products. When asked about his vision for Sony, Akio said that their vision is to “make Japan known for quality electronics products”. Re-read that quote again! It was not to make Sony(a company), but Japan as a country to be known for making high-quality products.
Akio had a vision that was bigger than himself or his company. I don’t know about you, but I felt goosebumps reading this. Having a vision bigger than yourself not only helps in thinking long-term but also thinking about others around you. Instead of asking How can we benefit from this situation or this market condition?, you instead ask How can this country, and its businesses benefit from this situation? How can we improve the lives of our country’s people through our company?
Anyways, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk — Mahesh S.
