Jeremie Rouah

Examining Amazon.com’s first letter to its shareholders reveals how determined and sustainable Bezos’ vision has been in the last 10 years. Here is what your strategy should look like if you are serious about running a successful tech company.

• “Maintain a firm grasp of the obvious at all times”
• Seize opportunities with brute force, whatever it costs
• Focus on long term strategy, typically 5 to 7 years: aim at long term market share, an enabler of long term profits
• Be bold in your investments: if they fail, you still get to learn a lot
• Focus on customers, make their experience close to perfection

Learn more about Amazon.com’s strategy by reading our study: Amazon.com: the Hidden Empire

Source: Forbes, 6 Things Jeff Bezos Knew Back in 1997 That Made Amazon a Gorilla; WIRED, Jeff Bezos Owns the Web in More Ways Than You Think

Strategies to stay focused on reaching product market fit, by Jason Freedman:

• Delay everything that is not absolutely necessary to reach “user delight”: your pre-product startup is a “time-ticking bomb” without it
• Solve problems quickly and only when they arise: Jason had a shoebox as a bookkeeping system, till the day he needed to raise cash; he then paid a bookkeeper
• Outsource as much as possible to work on your product: healthcare, taxes, etc.

Source: Jason Freedman’s blog, Don’t. Waste. Time
Photo: The Library of Congress