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Founders: #180 Jeff Bezos (Invention of a Global Empire)

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What I learned from reading Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire by Brad Stone. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- [1:47] Every interesting thing I've ever done, every important thing I've ever done, every beneficial thing I've ever done, has been through a cascade of experiments and mistakes and failures. I'm covered in scar tissues as a result of this. [6:19] I absolutely know it's hard, but we'll learn how to do it. [8:30] Thinking small is a self fulfilling prophecy. [12:13] Begin any conversation about a new product in terms of the benefit it creates for customers. [19:08] Bezos deployed his playbook for experiments that produced promising sparks: he poured gasoline on them. [22:41] You can regulate yourself quite easily or think about what you're going to do with your existing resources. Sometimes, you don't know what the boundaries are. Jeff just wanted us to be unbounded. [25:48] If I have to choose between agreement and conflict, I'll take conflict every time. It always yields a better result. [27:19] Don't come to me with a plan that assumes I will only make a

[00:00:00] Number one, his genius was not in inventing. Rather, it was in inventing a system of invention. Dozens of researchers and engineers and tinkerers labored beneath Edison in a carefully constructed hierarchical organization that he founded and oversaw. Number two, it has always seemed strange to me the things that we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the complements of failure in our system. [00:00:30] And those traits that we detest, sharpness, greed, meanness, egotism, and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while…

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