Jeff Bezos

“And I sort of asked him like, what's your criteria for sort of investing in something new? And he said, well, it's like three things. One, is it a big idea? And then second, is it something we should be doing? So if maybe you have an idea, if you have this new…”

“I actually borrowed a Jeff Bezos question from early stage Amazon, where I asked people, You know, without much warning in an interview, I'll ask them whether it's okay to do a bit of a thought experiment together and whether they are comfortable, you know, as…”

“We had, as Jeff would say, we took it as an article of faith. If we served customers well, if we prioritized customers and delivered for them, we took it as an article of faith that then things like sales, Things like revenue and active customers and things li…”

“One was when we went to go build, you know, digital media and AWS, we put like two of our smartest, you know, leaders in the company on those things, Steve Kessel and Andy Jassy. And number two, they were meeting with Jeff regularly. Jeff was deeply engaged wi…”

“Jeff, Jeff wrote about a product, you know, there was a puck that sat on your, on the, in your kitchen that you would talk to and ask it for things and, you know, could shop from it. He wrote about that in 2004. Well, the technology wasn't there to be able to …”

“And so there'd be times when even after we've had that discussion, I maybe still disagree, but then what I would do is I'd focus on, okay, well, what is the kernel or the core of like why Jeff thinks that we should do this? And I would focus on that kernel. I …”

“I think that this was the single most influential and effective management book for our company, because what it caused Jeff to do, and I won't describe what, you know, most of you probably know what it is. If you don't know what it is, go read the good to gre…”

“What I want people to understand is if I can get away with publicly failing One of the richest and most famous inventors on earth, and then get promoted and finish my career at Amazon very successfully, you can dig out of any hole. You just have to manage it r…”

“Jeff's, I mean, Jeff and fire phone, which, you know, it's like his, that'll be an albatross around his neck. You know, Jeff and fire phone will be a phrase of anybody who knows Amazon for the rest of his life.”

“Angry emails are easy. Stitting three feet from someone and being angry with them face to face is hard.”

“The anecdote usually trumps the data. And there are many times when I see teams that are, you know, doing very sophisticated analysis and they've sort of forgotten what the question is or what the conclusion they can draw from it truly is. So never lose sight …”

“He is by far the smartest person I've ever met in my life. In that, ah, I've worked with a lot of smart people, but his ability to go deep in any domain And nail that the core issue and remember, like we would have quarterly meetings and from quarter to quarte…”

“Because, frankly, most doors that look like two-way doors are actually one-way doors. They are two-way doors at Bezos's level. But as a PM leader, for you, they are a one-way door. And that's what's making you busy.”

“Apparently he was the one that drafted this memo. He handed it to Jeff, sent it out. They didn't think it was going to be that big a deal, but of course the deal that not only changed all of Amazon, it probably changed every other company.”

“The moment you start having those conversations, you are probably not on that track. Like you should not be on that track because the moment the word work-life balance comes I think Jeff Bezos has this thing that he hits the word because it means like they're …”

“And in fact, Andy Jassy at Amazon, everyone on the C staff used to be someone who'd been the tech assistant to Bezos.”