Jeff would imagine himself at age 80, "What have I regretted in life?"
And work backwards to guide your present decisions.
Most of our regrets are from the things we didn’t try, the risks we didn’t take, or the paths we didn’t travel.
Jeff Bezos left a lucrative career at 30 to start an online book store.
His letters since founding Amazon are full of insights into investing, decision making and life.
I have consumed all of Jeff's letters and interviews since 1997.
This is what I have learned:
Jeff would imagine himself at age 80, "What have I regretted in life?"
And work backwards to guide your present decisions.
Most of our regrets are from the things we didn’t try, the risks we didn’t take, or the paths we didn’t travel.
Competition is sparse when you are competing in decades.
Many companies make decisions based on the next three to five years.
Bezos is investing for the next two decades.
A company's value today is the present value of future cash flows.
85% of a company's value are from year 3 and beyond.
Invest today to ensure that a company achieves durable growth in the future.
Focus on solving problems and the share price will take care of itself.
Share prices in the short-run has no indication as to how well the company is doing.
At the heart of everything, it's about creating value.
Value creation is not a zero-sum game.
It is why people work for Amazon, why sellers sell on Amazon and why customers buy on Amazon.
The universe will try to pull you back if you try to be different.
But do it anyway.
There's a price to pay to be distinct.
But to be distinct is to survive.
Often times bets with great risk-reward ratios look crazy.
And conventional wisdom will tell you you are crazy & wrong.
This is where your work & conviction comes in.
Jeff Bezos' hiring questions:
1. Do we admire this person?
2. Along what dimension is this person a possible superstar?
3. Will this person raise the bar for their team?
Fight the entropy of mediocrity, keep raising your talent bar.
To innovate is to try.
To try is to risk failure.
Focus not on the outcome, but on the learnings.
And keep getting better.
Most decisions are reversible and should be made quickly.
As an organization grows, there's a tendency to indulge in bureaucracy for all decisions.
Being over conservative & moving too slowly may be the riskiest of all.
I hope you enjoyed it.
If you like this, follow me here @steadycompound
I write about investment concepts, business breakdowns and growth philosophies.
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https://t.co/U4ssu8Ypjf
When Bezos first started his online bookstore, he registered "https://t.co/fuGyMJSAOx".
This encapsulates his ambition and the attitude he brings to building Amazon—relentless.
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👨💻 Last resume I sent to a startup one year ago, sharing with you to get ideas:
- Forget what you don't have, make your strength bold
- Pick one work experience and explain what you did in detail w/ bullet points
- Write it towards the role you apply
- Give social proof
/thread
"But I got no work experience..."
Make a open source lib, make a small side project for yourself, do freelance work, ask friends to work with them, no friends? Find friends on Github, and Twitter.
Bonus points:
- Show you care about the company: I used the company's brand font and gradient for in the resume for my name and "Thank You" note.
- Don't list 15 things and libraries you worked with, pick the most related ones to the role you're applying.
-🙅♂️"copy cover letter"
"I got no firends, no work"
One practical way is to reach out to conferences and offer to make their website for free. But make sure to do it good. You'll get:
- a project for portfolio
- new friends
- work experience
- learnt new stuff
- new thing for Twitter bio
If you don't even have the skills yet, why not try your chance for @LambdaSchool? No? @freeCodeCamp. Still not? Pick something from here and learn https://t.co/7NPS1zbLTi
You'll feel very overwhelmed, no escape, just acknowledge it and keep pushing.
- Forget what you don't have, make your strength bold
- Pick one work experience and explain what you did in detail w/ bullet points
- Write it towards the role you apply
- Give social proof
/thread
"But I got no work experience..."
Make a open source lib, make a small side project for yourself, do freelance work, ask friends to work with them, no friends? Find friends on Github, and Twitter.
Bonus points:
- Show you care about the company: I used the company's brand font and gradient for in the resume for my name and "Thank You" note.
- Don't list 15 things and libraries you worked with, pick the most related ones to the role you're applying.
-🙅♂️"copy cover letter"
"I got no firends, no work"
One practical way is to reach out to conferences and offer to make their website for free. But make sure to do it good. You'll get:
- a project for portfolio
- new friends
- work experience
- learnt new stuff
- new thing for Twitter bio
If you don't even have the skills yet, why not try your chance for @LambdaSchool? No? @freeCodeCamp. Still not? Pick something from here and learn https://t.co/7NPS1zbLTi
You'll feel very overwhelmed, no escape, just acknowledge it and keep pushing.
The entire discussion around Facebook’s disclosures of what happened in 2016 is very frustrating. No exec stopped any investigations, but there were a lot of heated discussions about what to publish and when.
In the spring and summer of 2016, as reported by the Times, activity we traced to GRU was reported to the FBI. This was the standard model of interaction companies used for nation-state attacks against likely US targeted.
In the Spring of 2017, after a deep dive into the Fake News phenomena, the security team wanted to publish an update that covered what we had learned. At this point, we didn’t have any advertising content or the big IRA cluster, but we did know about the GRU model.
This report when through dozens of edits as different equities were represented. I did not have any meetings with Sheryl on the paper, but I can’t speak to whether she was in the loop with my higher-ups.
In the end, the difficult question of attribution was settled by us pointing to the DNI report instead of saying Russia or GRU directly. In my pre-briefs with members of Congress, I made it clear that we believed this action was GRU.
The story doesn\u2019t say you were told not to... it says you did so without approval and they tried to obfuscate what you found. Is that true?
— Sarah Frier (@sarahfrier) November 15, 2018
In the spring and summer of 2016, as reported by the Times, activity we traced to GRU was reported to the FBI. This was the standard model of interaction companies used for nation-state attacks against likely US targeted.
In the Spring of 2017, after a deep dive into the Fake News phenomena, the security team wanted to publish an update that covered what we had learned. At this point, we didn’t have any advertising content or the big IRA cluster, but we did know about the GRU model.
This report when through dozens of edits as different equities were represented. I did not have any meetings with Sheryl on the paper, but I can’t speak to whether she was in the loop with my higher-ups.
In the end, the difficult question of attribution was settled by us pointing to the DNI report instead of saying Russia or GRU directly. In my pre-briefs with members of Congress, I made it clear that we believed this action was GRU.
