Among all the contemporary business leaders, very few come close to Jeff Bezos’ talent for communicating business strategies in a simplified manner. Like Warren Buffett, Bezos writes an open letter to Amazon’s shareholders every year. He’s been doing it for over two decades.
These letters have become an extraordinary source of insight into how Bezos (the world’s richest man) and his company (Amazon) think about customers, innovation, building products, and future.
Amazon started as an online bookselling platform and interestingly didn’t turn a profit for the first six years. Today it’s the second publicly traded company (after Apple) to ever hit a market capitalization of $1 trillion.
Like me, if you’re an admirer of Bezos, then you’re in the good company of people like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger who are also big fans of the Amazon CEO. Buffett and Munger admit that they failed to see Bezos’ genius early on. Buffett called him the most remarkable business person of our age. Munger, in his nonchalant voice, said, “Jeff Bezos is a different species.”