Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a vast chasm between what consumers "have to" pay and what consumers do pay.
That is a separate issue.
Not if you can bank on it, as Amazon has.
What Jeff Bezos Knew Back in 1997 That Made Amazon a Gorilla
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Re: What Jeff Bezos Knew Back in 1997 That Made Amazon a Gorilla
#32Yup, that is why I bought Amazon stock in 2005 (really, from an interview that was very similar to this one). Jeff Bezos talks about long term thinking and also executes on it. I think it also relates to the point made a few weeks ago about Silicon Valley being ADD in some respects -- chasing the hottest new thing, rather than conscientiously building value over years. I think someone said something about Bezos choos…
It was a calculated business decision. He moved to seattle as it housed three of the top publishers that he needed to have on board to do business with at amazon.
Re: What Jeff Bezos Knew Back in 1997 That Made Amazon a Gorilla
#33One thing I learned a long time ago about really smart people: study, read, or listen to the things that they think are great. It’s a shortcut to greatness.
No. No. No. No. A million time NO. Granted, at least it's better advice to study the things great people study, rather than study great people themselves.
By obsessing over what successful people do, we forget to study what the vast majority of people who did not become great did. For the six lessons listed, you can trivially find businesses who did that and failed. I sure you can find businesses for whom that is straight forward bad advice. And finally, you can find businesses who did not do it, and who still succeeded.
Those six things was probably the right thing to do for Amazon, at the time Amazon did them. Except abstracted beyond recognition, they are not generally applicable.
Re: What Jeff Bezos Knew Back in 1997 That Made Amazon a Gorilla
#34Most of these points strike me as contrary to traditional lean startup advice--e.g. it's ok to expend a huge amount of resources without seeing results for 5-7 years, and it's important to be first in a big market. Obviously, this worked for Amazon, and there are some opportunities you won't be able to take advantage of in any other way, but it's certainly high risk. I mean, Pets.com arguably followed much of this ad…
True, but they had an enormous amount of funding early on that allowed them to do that. So the lesson for the lean startup is to know when to get the big investment type of funding that allows you to think big, think long-term and go for the jugular as he said.