
2007: Missionaries build better products. 2008: Work backwards from customer needs to know what to build next. 2009: Focus on inputs - the outputs will take care of themselves. 2010: R&D should pervade every department. 2011: Self-service platforms unlock innovation. 2012: Surprise and delight your customers to build long-term trust. 2013: Decentralize decision-making to generate innovation. 2014: Bet on ideas that have unlimited upside. 2015: Don’t deliberate over easily reversible decisions. 2017: Build high standards into company culture. 2018: Wandering is an essential counterbalance to efficiency.
2019: In times of crisis, be aggressive and agile. 2020 (final letter): Company culture can be both employee-centric and customer-centric. We also include an appendix linking to each letter.ĭownload the report to see our deep dives into each one. In this report, we analyze the letters and unpack the most important wisdom in each. To read Bezos’ shareholder letters is to get a crash course in running a high-growth internet business from someone who mastered it before any of the playbooks were written. And nowhere is Bezos’ philosophy of business, technology, and leadership better articulated than in his annual shareholder letters, which he has written every year since the company’s initial public offering in 1997. In doing so, he carved out a unique way of looking at the world, at companies, and at tech in general. Focus on the customers, and everything else will fall into place.īezos broke all the rules when he built Amazon. Since founding Amazon in 1994, CEO Jeff Bezos has run his company according to an unconventional set of core principles: don’t worry about competitors, don’t worry about making money for shareholders, and don’t worry about the short term. The online bookseller didn’t turn a profit for 6 years - today, it’s the second publicly traded company ever to hit a $1T market cap. Over the last 2 decades, these letters have become an unparalleled source of insight into how one of the world’s richest men thinks about efficiency, online customer experience, retention, managing through crises, and more.Īmazon is a hugely successful, precedent-breaking company.
Each year, Jeff Bezos writes an open letter to Amazon’s shareholders.