Thinking long-term and telling the right story

With the recent announcement that Jeff Bezos will be stepping down as CEO of Amazon later this year, there have been countless articles about the legacy that he will be leaving behind, as well as about the next act that is expected to follow. A big part of this legacy is centered around innovation.

Do any of you remember Amazon's Fire Phone? Perhaps not. It was a complete failure. But that doesn't matter because most people only remember the successes -- everything from Amazon Prime to AWS, the latter of which was heavily doubted at the time. Isn't this a distraction from the core business of selling books?

This recent FT article by Dave Lee also makes a good point about another one of Amazon's innovations: thinking long-term and getting the market to buy in to that approach.

But another Bezos innovation has been his relationship with Wall Street, a world he was intimately familiar with, having previously worked at investment firm DE Shaw.

Starting with his first letter to shareholders in 1997, Bezos consistently warned investors that profits would forever be secondary to growth, in what would become a recurring theme throughout Amazon’s history as it expanded its distribution network from seven dedicated facilities in 1999, to more than 1,500 today.

“Bezos has an unparalleled ability to peddle his vision to Wall Street,” says Stacy Mitchell, from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, who advocates breaking Amazon into smaller pieces.

“He was given this incredibly long leash, selling books at a loss. Independent bookstores could have multiplied across the country with that business model. But of course, they weren’t allowed to lose money.”

It reminds me of a blog post that Fred Wilson penned at the end of last year, where he argued that speculative frenzies tend to be

More from Brandon Donnelly

Cover image for Canada must become a global superpower

Brandon Donnelly

Mar 17

Canada must become a global superpower

The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...

Cover image for The bank robbery capital of the world

Brandon Donnelly

Dec 22

The bank robbery capital of the world

Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...

Brandon Donnelly

Jun 26

The story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris

If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...

Subscribe to Brandon Donnelly

>4.2K subscribers

This recent FT article by Dave Lee also makes a good point about another one of Amazon's innovations: thinking long-term and getting the market to buy in to that approach.

But another Bezos innovation has been his relationship with Wall Street, a world he was intimately familiar with, having previously worked at investment firm DE Shaw.

Starting with his first letter to shareholders in 1997, Bezos consistently warned investors that profits would forever be secondary to growth, in what would become a recurring theme throughout Amazon’s history as it expanded its distribution network from seven dedicated facilities in 1999, to more than 1,500 today.

“Bezos has an unparalleled ability to peddle his vision to Wall Street,” says Stacy Mitchell, from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, who advocates breaking Amazon into smaller pieces.

“He was given this incredibly long leash, selling books at a loss. Independent bookstores could have multiplied across the country with that business model. But of course, they weren’t allowed to lose money.”

It reminds me of a blog post that Fred Wilson penned at the end of last year, where he argued that speculative frenzies tend to be

Thinking long-term and telling the right story

This recent FT article by Dave Lee also makes a good point about another one of Amazon's innovations: thinking long-term and getting the market to buy in to that approach.

But another Bezos innovation has been his relationship with Wall Street, a world he was intimately familiar with, having previously worked at investment firm DE Shaw.

Starting with his first letter to shareholders in 1997, Bezos consistently warned investors that profits would forever be secondary to growth, in what would become a recurring theme throughout Amazon’s history as it expanded its distribution network from seven dedicated facilities in 1999, to more than 1,500 today.

“Bezos has an unparalleled ability to peddle his vision to Wall Street,” says Stacy Mitchell, from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, who advocates breaking Amazon into smaller pieces.

“He was given this incredibly long leash, selling books at a loss. Independent bookstores could have multiplied across the country with that business model. But of course, they weren’t allowed to lose money.”

It reminds me of a blog post that Fred Wilson penned at the end of last year, where he argued that speculative frenzies tend to be