Amazon致股东信：1997 It’s All About the Long Term

Amazon真是一家神奇的公司。十年前，Google和Apple很热，一个是初创没几年，迅速在新市场挑翻了老巨头Microsoft；另一个是创始人被赶走，沉沦了多年之后，终于又在创始人手中戏剧性复兴的。结果几年过去，另一条曲线悄悄地挤过来，令人颇感意外。

这公司长期不挣什么钱，但是依旧能越做越大，并且在各种泡沫、危机中存活了。

开年疫情，让不少企业过得战战兢兢，周日看到B站上失踪人口回归的蔡老板发出一期“一名痛苦挣扎的年轻创业者”，回复一位做共享自习室的创业者的咨询。有一句说得极为实在——看似现在的困境是疫情导致的，其实没有新冠还会有其他的各种意外事件，没有准备迟早是这个局面。

那Amazon究竟做对了什么，以致于现在活得这么滋润呢？我想从致股东信来探究一番。

1997 It’s All About the Long Term

We first measure ourselves in terms of the metrics most indicative of our market leadership: customer and revenue growth, the degree to which our customers continue to purchase from us on a repeat basis, and the strength of our brand. We have invested and will continue to invest aggressively to expand and leverage our customer base, brand, and infrastructure as we move to establish an enduring franchise.

Because of our emphasis on the long term, we may make decisions and weigh tradeoffs differently than some companies.

在这一年，amazon.com已经有150万用户，但是通篇讲的都是长期如何，远未考虑割韭菜的事宜，而是继续追求market leadership。

后面多年的薄利或者微亏，其实在这第一封信也做好了预告：

We will balance our focus on growth with emphasis on long-term profitability and capital management. At this stage, we choose to prioritize growth because we believe that scale is central to achieving the potential of our business model.

在用人方面，成年人不做选择：

It’s not easy to work here (when I interview people I tell them, “You can work long, hard, or smart, but at Amazon.com you can’t choose two out of three”), …

来年目标——更多用户

Our goal remains to continue to solidify and extend our brand and customer base.

通读下来满眼都是客户、客户、客户。这不是错觉，甚至有人专门对此作了统计分析¹。只有少数年份的致股东信，customers 这个词没排进最高频出现的前五位。当所有的分析决策过程都想到客户的时候，做的事情就不那么容易和需求背道而驰了。“客户至上”四个字，作为企业核心价值观和作为企业墙上展板供参观，区别还是挺明显的。

（下回继续）

1 Amazon’s Priorities Over the Years, Based on Jeff Bezos’s Letters to Shareholders, https://hbr.org/2019/05/amazons-priorities-over-the-years-based-on-jeff-bezoss-letters-to-shareholders ↩