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MR. BEZOS: Well, it was very – that whole period is very interesting because the stock is not
the company and the company is not the stock. And so, as I watched the stock fall from 113
(dollars) to 6 (dollars), I was also watching all of our internal business metrics: number of
customers, profit per unit, you know, everything you can imagine, defects, et cetera. Every
single thing about the business was getting better and fast.
And so, as the stock price was going the wrong way, everything inside the company was
going the right way. And I, you know, so I wasn’t – we didn’t need to go back to the capital
markets, we didn’t need more money. The only reason, you know, a financial bust like the
internet bubble bursting is, you know, it makes it really hard to raise money, but, you know, we
already had the money we needed. So, we just needed to continue to progress.
MR. RUBENSTEIN: Well, Wall Street kept saying, well, Amazon’s not making any money,
they’re just getting customers. Where are the profits? Where are the profits? And Wall Street
kept beating you up on that and your response was I don’t really care what you think?
MR. BEZOS: Well, I was on television with Tom Brokaw. He pulled together half-a-dozen
internet entrepreneurs from that era. This is, you know – I think it was right before the bubble
burst maybe or right after, I can’t remember, but in that area. And he was interviewing all of us.
And he finally turned to me and he said, Mr. Bezos, can you even spell “profit?” And Tom, by
the way, Tom Brokaw is now one of my good friends. But he’s, like, can you even spell
“profit?” And I said sure, P-R-O-P-H-E-T. [Laughter.] And he burst out laughing.
But, look, Amazon was – you know, people always accused us of selling dollar bills for
90 cents and said, look, anybody can do that and grow revenues. That’s not what we were doing.
We always had positive gross margins. It’s a fixed-cost business. And so, what I could see is
that, from the internal metrics, is that at a certain volume level that we would cover our fixed
costs and the company would be profitable.
MR. RUBENSTEIN: So, who came up with the idea of Prime?
Prime seems to be a great way
to get money in advance of people actually getting the services.
MR. BEZOS: Yeah.
MR. RUBENSTEIN: Whose idea was that?
MR. BEZOS: Actually, it’s very interesting. So, like many inventions inside of a team – and I
love – team inventing is my favorite thing. So, I tap dance into the office. I love Amazon, I
have so much fun there. I love Blue Origin, I love The Washington Post, but Amazon is my full-
time job. And I get to invent, I get to live two to three years in the future. And most of the
invention we do there is, you know, somebody has an idea and then other people improve the
idea and other people come up with objections why it can never work and then we solve those
objections. And it’s a very – it’s a very fun process.
Amazon Prime is a paid subscription service offered by Amazon that includes free two-day delivery, streaming
music and video, and other benefits.