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The Advice John Doerr Gave Bezos That Defined Amazon's Early Strategy

By Jeff Bezos · Investing · 2 min read

When Bezos first met John Doerr, Doerr said something that stuck with him for decades: what startup companies do is take their precious early capital and systematically eliminate risks. That's what the successful ones do.

Key Points

Successful startups take their precious early capital and systematically eliminate risks
In the early days, 99% of whether you make it is luck — timing, decisions that were wrong but turned out right
Once you have enough assets — brand, customers — your destiny is in your own control

What startup companies do is they take their precious early capital dollars and systematically eliminate risks. That's what they do — the successful ones.

Systematically Eliminate Risks

Bezos: When I first met John Doerr — the partner at Kleiner Perkins who invested in Amazon — one of the things he said really stuck with me.

What startup companies do is they take their precious early capital dollars and systematically eliminate risks. That's what they do. The successful ones.

Startups take their precious early capital and systematically eliminate risks. That's what the successful ones do.

99% Luck

Bezos: 99% of whether you make it to being a more established company is luck. We've worked incredibly hard. We've cared for our customers. I would put us up against any other company in how much we have bled and sweat for our customers.

But we had the planets align for us so perfectly in those early days — the timing, and many other things. Decisions that we made that were poor decisions turned out to be the right decision. In those early days, the company's destiny is really not in its own control.

99% of whether you make it is luck. We had the planets align perfectly. Poor decisions turned out to be right.

Now It's Under Our Control

Bezos: At this point in time, with the brand name we have — we were rated the eighth most trusted brand in Japan after only seven months in the country, right behind Matsushita.

We have so many assets now that it really is under our control. We don't worry about externalities now. What we worry about now is that we don't do our job.

We have so many assets now that it's under our control. We just worry about doing our job.