Q: Do you have any doubts about the future of Amazon.com?

Jeff Bezos:

We still have a tremendous amount of hard work ahead of us, but we have all the assets in place now. We have eliminated the necessity for the luck that a start-up company requires.

And now, our future is in our own hands as a team and as a company, and we have so many smart people, we have so many customers who treat us so well, and we have the right kind of culture that obsesses over the customer.

If there's one reason we have done better than most of our peers in the Internet space, you know, over the last six years, it is because we have focused like a laser on customer experience, and that really does matter, I think, in any business. It certainly matters online, where word of mouth is so very, very powerful. You know, if you make a customer unhappy, they won't tell five friends, they'll tell 5,000 friends.

So we are at a point now where we have all of the things we need to build an important and lasting company, and if we don't, it will be shame on us.

Q: Do you have any doubts about the future of Amazon.com?

Jeff Bezos:

We still have a tremendous amount of hard work ahead of us, but we have all the assets in place now. We have eliminated the necessity for the luck that a start-up company requires.

And now, our future is in our own hands as a team and as a company, and we have so many smart people, we have so many customers who treat us so well, and we have the right kind of culture that obsesses over the customer.

If there's one reason we have done better than most of our peers in the Internet space, you know, over the last six years, it is because we have focused like a laser on customer experience, and that really does matter, I think, in any business. It certainly matters online, where word of mouth is so very, very powerful. You know, if you make a customer unhappy, they won't tell five friends, they'll tell 5,000 friends.

So we are at a point now where we have all of the things we need to build an important and lasting company, and if we don't, it will be shame on us.