Amazon CEO: Startup mentality is behind company’s success
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in his annual letter to shareholders that the e-commerce giant operates as world's largest startup.
SEATTLE — Amazon is aiming to be “Earth’s most customer-centric company,” said CEO Andy Jassy in his annual letter to shareholders.
In explaining what makes the $638 billion e-commerce company “tick,” Jassy referred to Amazon as “a Why company. We ask why and why not, constantly. It helps us deconstruct problems, get to root causes, understand blockers and unlock doors that might have previously seemed impenetrable.”
That premise has taken the company from selling books online to adding a host of categories, including home furnishings, and broadened its scope from sole seller to a marketplace for third-party merchants and smaller sellers to better offer customers a preference on selection, price and delivery speed.
Despite Amazon’s size and scope, Jassy said the company still operates like a startup, albeit the world’s largest one. What this means for the company and its approach to business is a focus on solving real customer problems with a team of builders, inventors and owners, which fosters both creativity and accountability.
Another key factor, said Jassy, is speed, which needs to be embraced by the entire company and culture.
“We have this persistent feeling, throughout the company and in every business in which we operate, that there are closing windows all around us,” Jassy wrote. “We operate in fiercely competitive market segments, with highly talented, well-funded, ambitious companies at every turn. Customers are always looking for something better. We spend a lot of time identifying how to unlock these experiences for them as quickly as possible, and know if we don’t, somebody else will.”
Other characteristics in the start-up model, he said, are eliminate bureaucracy, be scrappy, take risks and “care about delivering compelling results for customers.”
Jassy also addressed the next generation of Whys for Amazon, including its focus on artificial intelligence. “Generative AI is going to reinvent virtually every customer experience we know and enable altogether new ones about which we’ve only fantasized,” he wrote.
He said there are more than 1,000 GenAI applications being built across Amazon designed to change customer experiences in everything from shopping to video and music to healthcare.
Amazon is also addressing “whys” around personal assistants, speedy delivery and broadband connectivity, he noted.
As to his own personal why of what has kept him at Amazon for 28 years, Jassy wrote: “I’m obviously a Superfan, but there are several compelling parts to working at Amazon. First, I’m not sure that any company prioritizes customers as relentlessly as we do. Lots of companies say they will; few follow through.
“Second, it’s challenging to find a company where you can make a bigger impact on the world than you can at Amazon. Third, we make significant long-term investments and bets in both inventions and people. This allows our teams to iterate on ideas and make the right long-term decisions for customers and the company.
“We operate like the world’s largest startup in large part because of our culture of Why. We don’t always get everything right, and we learn and iterate like crazy. But we’re constantly choosing to prioritize customers, delivery, invention, ownership, speed, scrappiness, curiosity and building a company that outlasts us all.”
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