#23 Listening and wandering š
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In this (2018) letter to shareholders, Bezos shares Amazonās intention to create a culture of builders, the different paths available for growth, and the importance of failures.
Bezos shares the characteristics of ābuildersā. A builderās mentality helps a company approach big, hard-to-solve opportunities with a humble conviction that success can come through iteration: invent, launch, reinvent, relaunch, start over, rinse, repeat again and again.Ā
Bezos highlights outsized discoveries/non-linear growth/biggest needle movers will be from things that customers donāt know to ask for. This requires invention on their behalf, we need to tap into our own imagination about what's possible. This path is highly likely to require wandering
Bezos provides AWS as an example. AWS as a whole, no one asked for it. Amazon had a hunch, followed our curiosity, took the necessary financial risks, and began building - reworking, experimenting, and iterating countless times as we proceeded. Today much of what is built at AWS is based on listening to customers.
Amazon Go is another example of approaching physical retail stores with a need to invent something that would really delight customers. Amazon started with a vision to get rid of the worst thing about physical retail - checkout lines. Amazon imagined a store where you could walk in, pick up what you wanted and leave. Getting there was hard but Amazon has 10 stores.
Bezos highlights the importance of failure for growth. As a company grows, everything needs to scale, including the size of failed experiments. If the size of failures isnāt growing, you arenāt going to be inventing at a size that can actually move the needle. A single winning bet can more than cover the cost of many losers.
You can read Bezos' letter here.