Video from Jeff Bezos about Amazon and Zappos

Hello, my name is Jeff Bezos. Uh, I started Amazon.com about 15 years ago. Uh, tons of stories from the early days.

So we started the company in my house. Um, we didn't have enough electric power in the house at a certain point. We only had about four employees then, but we already had enough computers and computer servers. We had to string these big orange electric extension cords from every room in the house to get enough power into the room where the office was.

So we were basically all the circuit breakers were flipping. We couldn't plug a vacuum cleaner in anywhere without flipping all the circuit breakers. So we finally had to move to a real office. When we launched the store, um, we made a very early mistake—it's one of my favorite software bugs of all time. We found that customers could order a negative quantity of books, and we would credit their credit card with the price and, I assume, wait around for them to ship us the books. Um, we fixed that one. Uh, it's fixed, and we've made a bunch of other mistakes over time, but we've learned a lot.

My whole body is covered in scar tissue. We initially programmed a bell to ring every time we got an order, and I'm very pleased to say that within the first 30 days of doing business, that bell got annoying. Uh, so we had to turn it off. There was a great moment when we were examining every order that would come into Amazon, and it was always a family member placing the order. The first order that we got from a stranger—I remember, you know, there were probably half a dozen or 10 of us in the company at that time.

We were all gathered around after the bell rang and looking at the order, and we were like, "Is that your mom?" "That's not my mom." Um, and thus it began. A lot has happened over the last 15 years. As I said, we've made a lot of mistakes, we've learned some things, and I want to tell you everything I know.

I can guarantee you everything I know; it's a very short list. This won't take long. Um, and it's pretty—it's complete too.

Um, all right. Well, the first thing I know is that you need to obsess over customers. Uh, I can tell you that we have been doing this from the very beginning, and it's the only reason that Amazon.com exists today in any form.

We've always put customers first. When given the choice of obsessing over competitors or obsessing over customers, we always obsess over customers. We pay attention to what our competitors do, but it's not where we put our energy. It's not where we get our motivation from. We really like to start with customers and work backwards, and again, that is the key thing that I know.

It covers a lot of other mistakes. If you're truly obsessed over customers, it'll cover a lot of errors. Um, the second thing I know is to invent. It's really important to invent. Uh, anytime we have a problem, we never accept either/or thinking.

Uh, we try to figure out a solution that gets both things, and that often requires invention. But you can invent your way out of any box if you believe that you can. What we talk about is inventing on behalf of customers.

Uh, it's not a customer's job to invent for themselves. Uh, you need to listen to customers; it's critical. Uh, if you don't listen to customers, you'll go astray, but they won't tell you everything.

And so you need to invent on their behalf, and that focus on invention has served us well. Some of the recent things—uh, even Kindle. Uh, not just Kindle, but EC2, the Elastic Compute Cloud. These are things that we would have never gotten to if we didn't have an inventive culture.

But also, those are kind of large grain things, but they're small things too. And then think long term. Uh, this is really critical. Any company that wants to focus on customers and put customers first, any company that wants to invent on behalf of customers has to be willing to think long term.

And it's actually much rarer than you might think. I find that most of the initiatives we undertake may take five to seven years before they pay any dividends for the company. Uh, they may start paying dividends for customers right away; they often take a long time to pan out for shareholders and the company.

So that ability to think in sort of five-year and seven-year time frames really is very, very useful for us, and it's definitely one of the things that I know. It requires, by the way, a willingness to be misunderstood.

If you think long term, many, many of the inventions that we undertake—maybe if they're disruptive in any way—they may not be understood in the early innings.

And it's always been very important for us to think long term so that we can tolerate being misunderstood. We've been called Amazon.toast, Amazon.con. Um, many different things—uh, many of them not appropriate for a video.

Um, and we, if we think we're right, then we continue. If we think we're wrong—if we're criticized about something we think we're wrong—we change it. Um, we fix it.

Um, so, uh, it's important to really think about those things, but never to buckle to sort of kind of standard kinds of pressures that come on that really force short-term thinking, and it's a huge competitive advantage to be able to think long term.

And you get to serve customers much better. All right, um, that's all that I know, really. I know one more thing—I'll save it for the end.

Um, but I want to, you know, this is a very exciting day. Um, important reason Zappos has a customer obsession, um, which is so easy for me to admire.

It is the starting point for never seen a company with a culture like Zappos. They are huge assets that I value very much, and I want to see those things continue. Um, and you're in such great hands with, uh, Fred, Alfred, and Tony. That's a really big deal.

Um, I've seen a lot of leaders of companies too, and I haven't seen people better than those three. There's a lot of growth ahead of us with Zappos. This really is the beginning.

Um, I am, uh, I'm just totally excited about what can be accomplished over time. Uh, my belief is we haven't seen anything yet, as much as Zappos' culture and that great new ways to obsess over customers. I'm super excited about.