February 26, 2013 at 10:5712 business lessons from Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. Part 2
- Transfer
Translated to Alconost . Part 1 - habrahabr.ru/company/alconost/blog/170201
In an interview with Charlie Rose, Bezos says: “Usually, at a corporate meeting, someone alone comes forward and presents to the public ... something like a slide show. From our point of view ... in this way you get very little information, instead of it you get only theses. This makes the task easier for the person making the presentation, but complicates the understanding for those who listen. Therefore, instead of all of our meetings, we are considering a document prepared in advance - a 6-page narrative note. And so, when you have to write out your ideas in the form of complete sentences and full paragraphs, it makes you think more clearly and clearly. ”
As soon as you can write, you will notice how amazing things happen. Your brain will give out ideas faster than your fingers can pick them up. You will be in your best shape. This is a delightful and disturbing experience when you try to write down everything that comes to mind so as not to forget anything.
Creating a slide show does not have this effect. And even if this effect arose, you would still have to think through only the main points. While writing a 6-page document makes the author think about everything, and reading and discussing it allows the audience to understand all the ideas of the author.
“Customer focus makes the company more sustainable.”
Jeff Bezos
Amazon has a general principle: " Work from the consumer ."
Bezos has repeatedly said that first you need to focus on the needs of the consumer - and work on the basis of them. In an interview with Charlie Rose, he said: “We are not worried about competitors, we are concerned about the needs of consumers. We start with them - and work on the basis of them. ”
When you act this way, you start with the consumer, his needs and problems. Typically, companies do exactly the opposite: they come up with ideas, create a product and then watch whether consumers like it.
Bezos is firmly convinced that what is best for the consumer is also the best for business. At the re: Invent conference in 2012, he said: “If we can arrange everything so that our interests are in line with the interests of our consumers, then in the long run both consumers and Amazon will benefit.”
Here are some examples of how Amazon works from the consumer, sometimes putting consumer interests above the company's short-term profit.
Amazon has noticed that some users accidentally order the same products that they have already purchased. Therefore, it was decided to help them: place an appropriate warning on the pages of those products that the user has already ordered.
Amazon estimates showed that it reduced sales, but the company believed that it would increase customer loyalty.
Of course, it is impossible to say whether this will lead to increased loyalty years later. But Bezos says: “You must rely on your opinion. In such cases, we say: “Let's be simpler. We know that consumers will benefit from it, so let's do it. ”
In another classic example of how Amazon puts user interests above quick profit, Bezos decided to allow competitors to advertise their prices on Amazon.
It seems crazy, right? Let competitors advertise their prices on your website! Bezos did this because he thought it would be better for consumers. He says: “The decision has sparked controversy within the company. There was a lot of excitement about this. ”
He decided it was better to give consumers a choice. This principle still applies to Amazon.
Pay attention to user reviews on product pages. This is another case where it can be assumed that Amazon would prefer to remove negative reviews about products so that they do not force consumers to refuse purchases. But Bezos decided that reviews are useful for consumers: “When we first introduced consumer reviews , it caused a serious rejection. I received letters from publishers who informed me: “You do not understand your business. You make money selling things. Get rid of these negative consumer reviews. ” We never launched anything worthwhile that would not cause disagreement at first. But if you want to be the first, you need to get used to misunderstanding. ”
Over the years, Amazon has collected so many consumer reviews that it has become a resource where people are looking for detailed and reliable information about products. I always go there myself for product reviews (with the exception of movies and music). The fact that Bezos sided with consumers benefited his business. The story of how he ignored the publishers (claiming he did not know what he was doing) is one of my favorite stories about him. Consumers before publishers - this is her lesson.
Despite the high pace of technological change, Bezos is also looking for benefits for consumers.
In an interview with Fast Company in August 2004, Bezos said: “There is an element of fantasy in our business. The initial components of our business — things like processor power, channel bandwidth, disk space — are halving every 12-18 months. Disk space today is 30 times cheaper than five years ago. Thirty times! So the questions come to the fore: “What to do with a 30-fold increase in disk space, a 20-fold increase in computing power and channel capacity, which has become 30 times wider? Okay: how to make consumers like it? ”As it turned out, there are no simple answers to these questions.”
It turned out that one of the answers to these questions was Amazon Web Services (AWS), and this answer turned out to be incredibly successful .
From a speech by Bezos at the re: Invent conference in 2012:
“I am often asked what changes will happen in the next decade. This is a very interesting question, but very common. They almost never ask me what will remain unchanged in the next 10 years. And I assure you: the second question is actually much more important, because you can build a business strategy only around what is stable over time ... We in the retail industry know that consumers want low prices, and I know that for the next decade there is nothing will not change. Consumers want fast delivery and a wide selection. It is impossible to imagine a future in which in 10 years a consumer will come and say: “Jeff, I really like Amazon, but I would like prices to be a little higher” or “I love Amazon, but you would be better off delivering goods a little slower.” It is impossible to imagine. So we invest our energy and efforts, knowing that this will continue to benefit our consumers in 10 years. When you have something that will work in the long run, you can afford to invest a lot of energy in it.
Great ideas for AWS were also quite simple. I also can’t imagine that someone came to me in 10 years and said: “I like AWS, just make it a little less reliable”, or “AWS suits me, but still raise the prices a little”, or “ I love AWS and would like you to slow down a bit with the innovations and improvements to the API. ” It is impossible to imagine.
So, big ideas in business are often very obvious, but it’s very difficult to maintain a constant vision of these ideas. If you succeed and you are able to support the work of this flywheel, invest your energy, as we do with AWS, over time your services will become better for consumers due to what is really important for them.
So what will remain equally important for your users in 10 years? Listen to Bezos's advice: work on it daily and it will pay off. Amazon is always working to lower prices, expedite delivery (and introduce delivery on the day of order). And surely they add new products every day.
Netflix focused on streaming data, because this is the future. Therefore, they are working to increase the reliability of streams, expand choice and improve content. They know that all this is what users want. Google knows that their consumers will also want accurate search results and immediate answers. At Verizon Wireless - that users will still need wider coverage, higher speeds and greater reliability.
No one will tell a Verizon Wireless employee: “I would like my phone not to find a network here”, or “I want to get a slower Internet connection from my smartphone”, or “More problems with your network.” No consumer will say this seriously. So every day Verizon makes efforts to improve its services.
What would your consumers tell you? Where do you put your energy? Are these the things that will remain important to users in 10 years? If not, start working on something that will not lose relevance in the next decade. Then thank Jeff Bezos.
What do you always hear about entrepreneurs? That they love risk. What he nourishes and invigorates them.
According to Bezos, the best entrepreneurs do not like to take risks: they identify and eliminate risk in the early stages.
He says: “Good entrepreneurs do not risk; they are looking for a way to reduce the risk ... Creating your company is already a risky business, after which you need to systematically eliminate the risk step by step, from the very beginning ... You need to systematically determine the risk. When the company grows and gets stronger, you can take risks again, but at the initial stage the main question should be: “So, there is a good idea; how to reduce the risk? "
What is the worst thing to live with? Regrets, guilt, sadness? When Bezos thought about creating Amazon, he had to decide: to open his own business or to keep a good job on Wall Street. Then he came up with a decision-making system, which he called the System of minimizing regrets. This helped him realize that he did not want to give up the idea of starting his own business and regret it later. The fear of regrets was one of the key reasons that motivated him to create Amazon.
Speaking at the re: Invent conference in 2012, Bezos gave some direct advice to all entrepreneurs:
1) “Never follow the fashion ... you need to position yourself and wait for the waves. To do this, look at what you care about. This is the number one advice I would give to anyone who wants to start a business or launch a new project within a large company. Make sure you are really interested. Missionaries create better products ... I will always prefer a missionary to a regular mercenary. The latter want to use the company for enrichment, and missionaries seek to create an excellent product or service. And, paradoxically, as a result, missionaries still make money ... So do what the soul lies to. ”
2) “Start with the needs of the consumer and build on them. These two things - passion and customer focus - will provide you a long life in business. ”
What impresses me the most about Jeff is that he is still relatively young (he is 49 years old), so most likely we will have many more lessons from him in the future. What will be his legacy? He himself wants it to be "the oldest person in the world."
Perhaps his legacy will be Amazon, but there are many other possibilities. Affordable and safe space travel with Blue Origin? Will people in 2080 thank Bezos for the opportunity to travel into space?
10,000 year old watches? In 5000, people will look at them (the clock will be located inside a mountain in Texas) and know that Jeff Bezos helped build them. Along with Amazon, space travel and the many entrepreneurs who have had the opportunity to create the products of their dreams thanks to Bezos and the availability of AWS.
Or maybe it will be something even more ambitious, which so far no one knows (remember that he thinks for many years to come and is very secretive).
Whatever people eventually remember about Bezos, today there are tons of things to learn from him.
About the translator
Translation of the article was done in Alconost.
Alconost localizes applications, games and sites in 60 languages. Native-language translators, linguistic testing, cloud platform with API, continuous localization, project managers 24/7, any format of string resources.
We also make advertising and training videos - for sites that sell, image, advertising, training, teasers, expliner, trailers for Google Play and the App Store.
More details:https://alconost.com
7. Present and discuss documents, not slide shows
In an interview with Charlie Rose, Bezos says: “Usually, at a corporate meeting, someone alone comes forward and presents to the public ... something like a slide show. From our point of view ... in this way you get very little information, instead of it you get only theses. This makes the task easier for the person making the presentation, but complicates the understanding for those who listen. Therefore, instead of all of our meetings, we are considering a document prepared in advance - a 6-page narrative note. And so, when you have to write out your ideas in the form of complete sentences and full paragraphs, it makes you think more clearly and clearly. ”
As soon as you can write, you will notice how amazing things happen. Your brain will give out ideas faster than your fingers can pick them up. You will be in your best shape. This is a delightful and disturbing experience when you try to write down everything that comes to mind so as not to forget anything.
Creating a slide show does not have this effect. And even if this effect arose, you would still have to think through only the main points. While writing a 6-page document makes the author think about everything, and reading and discussing it allows the audience to understand all the ideas of the author.
8. Take care of consumers
“Customer focus makes the company more sustainable.”
Jeff Bezos
Amazon has a general principle: " Work from the consumer ."
Bezos has repeatedly said that first you need to focus on the needs of the consumer - and work on the basis of them. In an interview with Charlie Rose, he said: “We are not worried about competitors, we are concerned about the needs of consumers. We start with them - and work on the basis of them. ”
When you act this way, you start with the consumer, his needs and problems. Typically, companies do exactly the opposite: they come up with ideas, create a product and then watch whether consumers like it.
Bezos is firmly convinced that what is best for the consumer is also the best for business. At the re: Invent conference in 2012, he said: “If we can arrange everything so that our interests are in line with the interests of our consumers, then in the long run both consumers and Amazon will benefit.”
Here are some examples of how Amazon works from the consumer, sometimes putting consumer interests above the company's short-term profit.
Help customers avoid accidentally duplicating orders
Amazon has noticed that some users accidentally order the same products that they have already purchased. Therefore, it was decided to help them: place an appropriate warning on the pages of those products that the user has already ordered.
Amazon estimates showed that it reduced sales, but the company believed that it would increase customer loyalty.
Of course, it is impossible to say whether this will lead to increased loyalty years later. But Bezos says: “You must rely on your opinion. In such cases, we say: “Let's be simpler. We know that consumers will benefit from it, so let's do it. ”
Let competitors advertise on your site
In another classic example of how Amazon puts user interests above quick profit, Bezos decided to allow competitors to advertise their prices on Amazon.
It seems crazy, right? Let competitors advertise their prices on your website! Bezos did this because he thought it would be better for consumers. He says: “The decision has sparked controversy within the company. There was a lot of excitement about this. ”
He decided it was better to give consumers a choice. This principle still applies to Amazon.
Ask consumers to leave feedback
Pay attention to user reviews on product pages. This is another case where it can be assumed that Amazon would prefer to remove negative reviews about products so that they do not force consumers to refuse purchases. But Bezos decided that reviews are useful for consumers: “When we first introduced consumer reviews , it caused a serious rejection. I received letters from publishers who informed me: “You do not understand your business. You make money selling things. Get rid of these negative consumer reviews. ” We never launched anything worthwhile that would not cause disagreement at first. But if you want to be the first, you need to get used to misunderstanding. ”
Over the years, Amazon has collected so many consumer reviews that it has become a resource where people are looking for detailed and reliable information about products. I always go there myself for product reviews (with the exception of movies and music). The fact that Bezos sided with consumers benefited his business. The story of how he ignored the publishers (claiming he did not know what he was doing) is one of my favorite stories about him. Consumers before publishers - this is her lesson.
Use new technologies to satisfy consumers
Despite the high pace of technological change, Bezos is also looking for benefits for consumers.
In an interview with Fast Company in August 2004, Bezos said: “There is an element of fantasy in our business. The initial components of our business — things like processor power, channel bandwidth, disk space — are halving every 12-18 months. Disk space today is 30 times cheaper than five years ago. Thirty times! So the questions come to the fore: “What to do with a 30-fold increase in disk space, a 20-fold increase in computing power and channel capacity, which has become 30 times wider? Okay: how to make consumers like it? ”As it turned out, there are no simple answers to these questions.”
It turned out that one of the answers to these questions was Amazon Web Services (AWS), and this answer turned out to be incredibly successful .
9. Build a strategy that is not subject to change
From a speech by Bezos at the re: Invent conference in 2012:
“I am often asked what changes will happen in the next decade. This is a very interesting question, but very common. They almost never ask me what will remain unchanged in the next 10 years. And I assure you: the second question is actually much more important, because you can build a business strategy only around what is stable over time ... We in the retail industry know that consumers want low prices, and I know that for the next decade there is nothing will not change. Consumers want fast delivery and a wide selection. It is impossible to imagine a future in which in 10 years a consumer will come and say: “Jeff, I really like Amazon, but I would like prices to be a little higher” or “I love Amazon, but you would be better off delivering goods a little slower.” It is impossible to imagine. So we invest our energy and efforts, knowing that this will continue to benefit our consumers in 10 years. When you have something that will work in the long run, you can afford to invest a lot of energy in it.
Great ideas for AWS were also quite simple. I also can’t imagine that someone came to me in 10 years and said: “I like AWS, just make it a little less reliable”, or “AWS suits me, but still raise the prices a little”, or “ I love AWS and would like you to slow down a bit with the innovations and improvements to the API. ” It is impossible to imagine.
So, big ideas in business are often very obvious, but it’s very difficult to maintain a constant vision of these ideas. If you succeed and you are able to support the work of this flywheel, invest your energy, as we do with AWS, over time your services will become better for consumers due to what is really important for them.
So what will remain equally important for your users in 10 years? Listen to Bezos's advice: work on it daily and it will pay off. Amazon is always working to lower prices, expedite delivery (and introduce delivery on the day of order). And surely they add new products every day.
Netflix focused on streaming data, because this is the future. Therefore, they are working to increase the reliability of streams, expand choice and improve content. They know that all this is what users want. Google knows that their consumers will also want accurate search results and immediate answers. At Verizon Wireless - that users will still need wider coverage, higher speeds and greater reliability.
No one will tell a Verizon Wireless employee: “I would like my phone not to find a network here”, or “I want to get a slower Internet connection from my smartphone”, or “More problems with your network.” No consumer will say this seriously. So every day Verizon makes efforts to improve its services.
What would your consumers tell you? Where do you put your energy? Are these the things that will remain important to users in 10 years? If not, start working on something that will not lose relevance in the next decade. Then thank Jeff Bezos.
10. Identify and eliminate risk
What do you always hear about entrepreneurs? That they love risk. What he nourishes and invigorates them.
According to Bezos, the best entrepreneurs do not like to take risks: they identify and eliminate risk in the early stages.
He says: “Good entrepreneurs do not risk; they are looking for a way to reduce the risk ... Creating your company is already a risky business, after which you need to systematically eliminate the risk step by step, from the very beginning ... You need to systematically determine the risk. When the company grows and gets stronger, you can take risks again, but at the initial stage the main question should be: “So, there is a good idea; how to reduce the risk? "
11. Start now to not regret later
What is the worst thing to live with? Regrets, guilt, sadness? When Bezos thought about creating Amazon, he had to decide: to open his own business or to keep a good job on Wall Street. Then he came up with a decision-making system, which he called the System of minimizing regrets. This helped him realize that he did not want to give up the idea of starting his own business and regret it later. The fear of regrets was one of the key reasons that motivated him to create Amazon.
12. Bezos Tips for Entrepreneurs
Speaking at the re: Invent conference in 2012, Bezos gave some direct advice to all entrepreneurs:
1) “Never follow the fashion ... you need to position yourself and wait for the waves. To do this, look at what you care about. This is the number one advice I would give to anyone who wants to start a business or launch a new project within a large company. Make sure you are really interested. Missionaries create better products ... I will always prefer a missionary to a regular mercenary. The latter want to use the company for enrichment, and missionaries seek to create an excellent product or service. And, paradoxically, as a result, missionaries still make money ... So do what the soul lies to. ”
2) “Start with the needs of the consumer and build on them. These two things - passion and customer focus - will provide you a long life in business. ”
Other helpful tips from Jeff Bezos
- In difficult periods, communicate more with employees .
- To think through the long term, you must have your own vision. If you are always limited to the short term, you will get bogged down in a routine. This is similar to the Regret Minimization System.
- Failures are part of entrepreneurial work. Do not exaggerate their significance.
- The Fast Company has a very good quote from Bezos: “For every leader in the company, not just for me, there are decisions that can be made on the basis of analytics. And this is the best kind of solutions! They are based on facts. The best thing about them is that they ignore the hierarchy. The company’s youngest employee can win the oldest dispute with a factual solution. Unfortunately, there are many other solutions that cannot be reduced to mathematical problems. ” In addressing such challenges, Bezos relies on the most experienced executives, whom he regularly hires from larger companies.
- Bezos calls himself “changeable” and always adapts to changing reality.
- Want to know what a meeting with Jeff Bezos looks like? Read this postSteve Yegg. If you do not want to read the post, just remember: he is very smart and knows more than you. Spend weeks preparing a presentation for him - and he will still catch you on what you missed. My favorite quote from this post: “He will replay you. Knowing everything about the presentation topic is just the first line of your defense. It’s like the armor that he will break through in the first couple of minutes. Right during the meeting, he will understand something so important on your topic that he will make you look like an absolute clown. Believe me guys: I watched for many years how this happens. Jeff Bezos has all these exceptionally smart, experienced experts in various fields who surround him in huge meetings, and every day he thinks about things that they never even thought of. And this is a guaranteed facepalm test. ”
- Think easier when it comes to your customers.
- Bezos is also a big fan of science fiction. He says this passion goes hand in hand with long-term thinking. Probably the same passion underlies Blue Origin.
What impresses me the most about Jeff is that he is still relatively young (he is 49 years old), so most likely we will have many more lessons from him in the future. What will be his legacy? He himself wants it to be "the oldest person in the world."
Perhaps his legacy will be Amazon, but there are many other possibilities. Affordable and safe space travel with Blue Origin? Will people in 2080 thank Bezos for the opportunity to travel into space?
10,000 year old watches? In 5000, people will look at them (the clock will be located inside a mountain in Texas) and know that Jeff Bezos helped build them. Along with Amazon, space travel and the many entrepreneurs who have had the opportunity to create the products of their dreams thanks to Bezos and the availability of AWS.
Or maybe it will be something even more ambitious, which so far no one knows (remember that he thinks for many years to come and is very secretive).
Whatever people eventually remember about Bezos, today there are tons of things to learn from him.
About the translator
Translation of the article was done in Alconost.
Alconost localizes applications, games and sites in 60 languages. Native-language translators, linguistic testing, cloud platform with API, continuous localization, project managers 24/7, any format of string resources.
We also make advertising and training videos - for sites that sell, image, advertising, training, teasers, expliner, trailers for Google Play and the App Store.
More details:https://alconost.com