Excited to read the latest Amazon shareholder letter. Amazing the scale they are operating at: 100M prime members, $20B AWS business, >50% of products sold from third-party sellers. buff.ly/2HdSpMH
Bezos seems intent on stressing the economic value Amazon creates for so many, including "560,000 employees, 2 million sellers, hundreds of thousands of authors, millions of AWS developers, and hundreds of millions of divinely discontent customers around the world"
Love this year's focus on high standards, especially regarding the importance of expectation on scope: "Second, you must have realistic expectations for how hard it should be (how much work it will take) to achieve that result – the scope." There are no shortcuts to great work.
Amazed to see the six-page narratives continue to be featured so prominently: "They simply can’t be done in a day or two. The key point here is that you can improve results through the simple act of teaching scope – that a great memo probably should take a week or more."
and I share a belief that perks and benefits are not the best way to create a great culture. Instead high standards are: "people are drawn to high standards – they help with recruiting and retention."
"We’ve also begun the technical work needed to recognize Prime members at the point of sale and look forward to offering more Prime benefits to Whole Foods shoppers once that work is completed." ⬅ Amazing to think about what Amazon will be able to do with this POS grocery data..
If there is anything to be disappointed about in the letter, it's this: "a thousand independent authors surpassed $100,000 in royalties in 2017 through Kindle Direct Publishing." Only 1K? Not surprising, but you still really can't make a living being an independent author
It's clear that between Amazon's recent Ring acquisition and Alexa now supporting over "4,000 smart home devices from 1,200 unique brands" that Amazon is betting on home automation to be the killer app for Alexa
