How to think critically:

(mental models and logical fallacies)

I read two-and-a-half decades worth of Jeff Bezos’s Amazon shareholder letters.

It’s like a mini MBA.

Here I’ve pulled out a free guide for startups, investing, marketing, and “web3”🧵

(It’s a thread, not an ebook)

First, why the focus on web3?

It’s the mid 90’s. A 30-year-old Jeff Bezos is trying to raise money for Amazon. And investors are wondering,

“What’s this internet thing?”

Fast forward, the year is 2022, and folks today are wondering,

“What’s web3?”

Now, a little background…

In 1994, Bezos quit a well paying job to start Amazon.

It wasn’t an easy decision. But Bezos used his famous “regret minimization framework.”

In other words, he didn’t want to be 80 and regret not doing what he really wanted to do.

But what did he want?

Bezos didn’t set out to disrupt retail from the outset.

He simply wanted to come up with a business idea based on the internet and then let the internet grow around it while he kept working on it.

Today, that idea is worth $1.7 trillion and counting.

Moving on to the lessons…

Each year since 1997, Bezos has written an annual letter to Amazon shareholders.

These letters reveal a great deal of lessons and secrets behind his massive success.

So what are they?

I've read all of Jeff Bezos's 23 years of Amazon shareholder letters twice now.

It's an MBA of its own.

Here's what I learned about startups, entrepreneurship, investing and more:

Your customers are loyal to you right up until the second that someone else offers them a better service.

Listen to customers, but don't just listen
to customers also invent on their behalf.

Here's Jeff Bezos on coming up with the Amazon Kindle:

We set ourselves the incredibly audacious goal of improving upon the physical book.

So don't be afraid to set big goals.

And remember that if you don't execute well, it will be done by someone else.

Many of the problems you'll face will have no textbook solutions, and so you should happily invent new approaches.

How to think about your career:

Phil Knight is the co-founder of Nike.

I found this advice in the last few pages of Phil's memoir about creating Nike.

It's some of the best I've ever received:

1/6

Hit pause.

Think long and hard about how you want to spend your time.

And with whom you want to spend it for the next forty years.

2/6

Don't settle for a job or a profession or even a career.

Seek a calling, even if you don’t know what that means.

If you’re following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you’ve ever felt.

3/6

Here's a warning:

The best of you, the iconoclasts, the innovators, the rebels, you will always have a bull’s-eye on your back.

The better you get, the bigger the bull’s-eye.

It’s a law of nature.

I just read all of Jeff Bezos's 23 letters to Amazon shareholders. And here's a thread with just one key-takeaway from each of these letters.

So if you're an artist or an entrepreneur looking to get some insight into the mind of this genius, read this right now.

1997: Focus relentlessly on your customers and long-term growth.

1998: Here are the 3 criteria Bezos wants managers to consider when hiring (to set the bar high):

1. Will you admire this person?

2. Will they raise the average level of effectiveness of the group?

3. Along what dimension might this person be a superstar?

1999: How to think long-term? Think: it's good enough today, but it will get so much better.

2000: "In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.” - Benjamin Graham

We aren’t 10% smarter when the share goes 10% up, nor 10% dumber when it goes down. We want to be weighed, & we're always working to build a heavier company.

"Thus a wise prince will think of ways to keep his citizens of every sort and under every circumstance dependent on the state and on him; and then they will always be trustworthy."

- Niccolo Machiavelli, 1469-1527

Learn to take advantage of other people’s work to further your own cause.

Time is precious and life is short.

If you try to do it all on your own, you run yourself ragged, waste energy, and burn yourself out.

The fate of those who do not make others dependent on them:

Sooner or later someone comes along who can do the job as well as they can — someone younger, fresher, less expensive, less threatening.

@48_quotes Be discreet and never reveal your next sgeps or jow you got there.

One of my favorite characters is Michael Corleone from The Godfather

A key lesson I learnt from him:

'Active listening' need not always involve 'active engagement'
Sometimes, it is best to stay quiet and simply observe
Very intently
With a poker face