Jeff Bezos: Extraordinary Entrepreneur

This is part of my Series on Entrepreneurial Culture.

If you’d like to hear an amazing entrepreneur talk about what he’s learned about over the past fifteen years, definitely listen to Jeff Bezos in this video below.  You’ll also hear why he’s so excited about his recent acquisition of Zappos. For those who don’t have time to watch it in its entirety his major points were:

• Be relentlessly focused on your customers

• Be ready to invent on behalf of your customers

• Be ready to think long term and ignore the noise

• Zappos is a remarkable company and is obsessed with its customers

• Remember, it’s always Day One!!
   
  

It’s easy to look at the behemoth that Amazon has become today and forget that all of this started with a tiny team working out of Jeff’s house. He is a true visionary.

Comments

[CarrieMulherin@comcast.net]

Thanks for the words of wisdom. I'm a sales and marketing person to the core, and do obsess over customers and do think about the next product. My company is currently 15 people, with a $20,000 piece of gear and a $50 "razor blade" residual. We have about 60 customers who own the gear. Our biggest issue is that we can't afford (time, people or money) to de-focus on the next gen product. I also worry a bit that we spend too much time on current unproductive customers at the expense of going out to get more. To a large extent, many of our current customers were likely badly targeted in the first place. Sometimes when you build it (sell it), they will not come. Do you have any examples of radical course changes, how you recognized it and how you got the team to come along?