The question really is, are you improving the world? And you can do that in many models. You can do that in government, you can do that in a nonprofit, and you can do it in commercial enterprise.
If you're competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.
What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you - what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind - you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn't a strategy.
I know Elon, we're very like minded in many ways. We're not conceptual twins. One thing I want us to do is go to Mars, but for me it's one thing. He's singularly focused on that. I think motivation wise, for me I don't find that Plan B idea motivating. I don't want a plan B for Earth, I want Plan B to make sure Plan A works.
What consumerism really is, at its worst is getting people to buy things that don't actually improve their lives.
Amazon.com strives to be the e-commerce destination where consumers can find and discover anything they want to buy online.
The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It's the thing that people create.
The thing that motivates me is a very common form of motivation. And that is, with other folks counting on me, it's so easy to be motivated.
I very much believe the Internet is indeed all it is cracked up to be.
I don't want to use my creative energy on somebody else's user interface.
Beautiful speech doesn't need protection, it's ugly speech that needs protection. We have these cultural norms that allow people to say really ugly things. You don't have to invite them to your dinner party, but you should let them say it.
Cultures, for better or worse, are very stable.
We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It's our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.
The best customer service is if the customer doesn't need to call you, doesn't need to talk to you. It just works.
If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.
Humans are unbelievably data efficient. You don't have to drive 1 million miles to drive a car, but the way we teach a self-driving car is have it drive a million miles.
Because, you know, resilience - if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you'd be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn't a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.
With the amount of fixed expense that goes into developing something like the BE-4 engine, you want it to be used as much as possible.
There'll always be serendipity involved in discovery.
For many people, extended reading sessions on an LCD display cause eyestrain.