How Jeff Bezos's long-term thinking evolved

„The framework I found, which made the decision incredibly easy, was what I called — which only a nerd would call — a 'regret minimization framework.' So I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, 'Okay, now I'm looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have.' I knew that when I was 80 I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed I wouldn't regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried.”

„We believe that a fundamental measure of our success will be the shareholder value we create over the long term. This value will be a direct result of our ability to extend and solidify our current market leadership position. The stronger our market leadership, the more powerful our economic model. Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital.”

„Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.”

„One thing I learned within the first couple of years of starting the company is that inventing and pioneering requires a willingness to be misunderstood for long periods of time.”

„If we're out in the solar system, we can have a trillion humans in the solar system, which means we'd have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins. This would be an incredible civilization.”

„When forced to choose between optimizing the appearance of our GAAP accounting and maximizing the present value of future cash flows, we'll take the cash flows.”

„Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been, and will continue to be, the single most important element of Amazon.com's success.”

„Word of mouth remains the most powerful customer acquisition tool we have, and we are grateful for the trust our customers have placed in us.”

„OUCH. It's been a brutal year for many in the capital markets and certainly for Amazon.com shareholders. As of this writing, our shares are down more than 80 percent from when I wrote you last year.”

„The stock is not the company, and the company is not the stock.”

„Our ultimate financial measure, and the one we most want to drive over the long-term, is free cash flow per share.”

„Why not focus first and foremost, as many do, on earnings, earnings per share or earnings growth? The simple answer is that earnings don't directly translate into cash flows, and shares are worth only the present value of their future cash flows, not the present value of their future earnings.”