In his annual letter to shareholders, Jeff Bezos said Amazon’s biggest successes have come from failures.
As a company grows, everything will need to scale, including the size of failed experiments, he wrote. Bezos often shares thoughts, analysis and glimpses into future plans in his annual shareholders letter, which started in 1997.
In the letter, he pointed to examples of growing pains. After the 2014 launch of the Fire Phone — the company’s biggest financial failure — Amazon found major success with its smart speaker Echo. The products were developed around the same time.
Bezos said the company was ultimately able to take what it learned from the Fire phone failure and accelerate its Echo efforts and development for its voice assistant Alexa.
“The good news for shareowners is that a single big winning bet can more than cover the cost of many losers,” he said.
This year’s letter began by highlighting the growth in Amazon’s third-party sellers. Sales from small and medium-sized businesses have grown to $160 billion in 2018 from $0.
