Amazon's 2016 letter to shareholders (Day 1)

About this letter

Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder and chief executive, wrote this letter to shareholders for 2016, filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in April 2017. Unlike many annual letters it contains almost no financial results. Instead it starts from a question an employee put to him at an all-hands meeting about what Day 2 looks like, a theme close to Bezos, who worked in an Amazon building named Day 1 and took the name with him when he moved.

The letter is a short essay on how a large company can keep the energy of a young one. Bezos offers what he calls a starter pack of defences, beginning with obsessive customer focus, illustrated by the Prime membership programme that no customer had asked for. He also explains the phrase disagree and commit, using the example of an Amazon Studios original he doubted but approved. As in other years, a copy of the original 1997 letter is attached.

What to notice

1. 1

   Bezos defines Day 2 as stasis leading to decline and asks how a large organisation keeps a start-up's vitality.