Our point of view is we will sell more if we help people make purchasing decisions.
Though we are optimistic, we must remain vigilant and maintain a sense of urgency.
We've got thousands of investors counting on us. And we're a team of thousands of employees all counting on each other. That's fun.
You know, if you make a customer unhappy they won't tell five friends, they'll tell 5,000 friends. So, we are at a point now where we have all of the things we need to build an important and lasting company, and if we don't, it will be shame on us.
There are a whole bunch of people who don't like to shop. But there are also people, maybe, who even do like to shop but are very time pressured. And so shopping online can save people time.
Millions of people were inspired by the Apollo Program. I was five years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television, and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering, and exploration.
My view is there's no bad time to innovate.
Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.
All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you, you're Woolworth's.
I've not seen an effective manager or leader who can't spend some fraction of time down in the trenches... If they don't do that they get out of touch with reality, and their whole thought and management process becomes abstract and disconnected.
The thing that motivates me is a very common form of motivation. And that is, with other folks counting on me, it's so easy to be motivated.
There's so much stuff that has yet to be invented. There's so much new that's going to happen. People don't have any idea yet how impactful the internet is going to be and that this is still Day 1 in such a big way.
The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it.
You want to look at what other companies are doing. It's very important not to be hermetically sealed. But you don't want to look at it as if, 'OK, we're going to copy that.' You want to look at it and say, 'That's very interesting. What can we be inspired to do as a result of that?' And then put your own unique twist on it.
It’s very important for entrepreneurs to be realistic. So if you believe on that first day while you’re writing the business plan that there’s a 70 percent chance that the whole thing will fail, then that kind of relieves the pressure of self-doubt.
I never worked on the school newspaper.
On the Internet, companies are scale businesses, characterized by high fixed costs and relatively low variable costs. You can be two sizes: You can be big, or you can be small. It's very hard to be medium. A lot of medium-sized companies had the financing rug pulled out from under them before they could get big.
The one thing that offends me the most is when I walk by a bank and see ads trying to convince people to take out second mortgages on their home so they can go on vacation. That's approaching evil.
Your brand is formed primarily, not by what your company says about itself, but what the company does.
Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice.
You don't choose your passions; your passions choose you.
One of the things it was obvious you could do with an online store is have a much more complete selection.
We change our tools and then our tools change us.
You don't want to negotiate the price of simple things you buy every day.
Real estate is the key cost of physical retailers. That's why there's the old saw: location, location, location.