谢谢关注缓慢思考！
原文来自25iq网站。文章讨论了亚马逊创始人贝索斯与众不同的经营思想，核心是三条：1）追求生意的本质，即自由现金流 2）追求长期，7年思维会让你少去很多竞争对手 3）追求期权性风险，不断创造发明。Enjoy！
1. “Percentage margins are not one of the things we are seeking to optimize. It’s the absolute dollar free cash flow per share that you want to maximize, and if you can do that by lowering margins, we would do that. So if you could take the free cash flow, that’s something that investors can spend. Investors can’t spend percentage margins.” “What matters always is dollar margins: the actual dollar amount. Companies are valued not on their percentage margins, but on how many dollars they actually make, and a multiple of that.” “When forced to choose between optimizing the appearance of our GAAP accounting and maximizing the present value of future cash flows, we’ll take the cash flows.”
Jeff Bezos is very focused on this “absolute dollar free cash flow metric.” You will see many people talk about Amazon’s focus on “growth” vs. margins, but the right focus is instead absolute dollar fee cash flow. Jeff Bezos spelled out his focus on absolute dollar free cash flow in his 2004 letter to shareholders. He is not about to run his company based on a ratio much beloved by someone outside the company, such as a Wall Street analyst. Next weekend I will write about Howard Schultz who similarly ignores metrics beloved by analysts (the ignored metric is “same store sales” in the case of Starbucks). If you want to see Amazon’s approach to absolute dollar free cash flow generation taken even further, go to China and see Xiaomi and Alibaba up close.
“利润率不是我们寻求优化的一个因素。我们想要最大化的是每股绝对美元自由现金流，如果可以通过降低利润率来实现这一点，那么我们会这样做。自由现金流才是投资者可以花费的东西， 而利润率不能花。” “最重要的是美元利润：实际的美元金额。公司的估值不是按利润率来的，而是按他们实际赚到的美元，乘以一个倍数。” “当我们被迫在优化GAAP会计准则报表和最大化未来现金流的现值之间进行选择时，我们选择现金流。”
杰夫·贝佐斯
非常专注于”绝对美元自由现金流指标”。你看到许多人谈论亚马逊关注“增长”而不是“利润率”，但实际上正确的关注指标是绝对美元现金流。杰夫·贝佐斯在2004年给股东的信中阐述了他对绝对美元自由现金流的关注。他运营公司的方法，不是按照公司之外的人喜欢的指标来做的的，特别是华尔街的分析师。下周末，我会写关于霍华德·舒尔茨，他同样忽略了分析师所关心的指标（对星巴克而言，被忽视的指标是“同店销售”）。如果你想看亚马逊的绝对美元自由现金流的方法更进一步的做法，去中国，看看小米和阿里巴巴。
2. “Your margin is my opportunity.”
Jeff Bezos sees a competitor’s love of margins and other financial “ratios” as an opportunity for Amazon since the competitor will cling to them while he focuses on absolute dollar free cash flow and slices through them like a hot knife through butter.
“你的利润是我的机会。”
杰夫·贝佐斯认为竞争对手对利润率和其他财务比率的热爱是亚马逊的一个机会，因为竞争对手会受制于此，而他专注于绝对的美元自由现金流， 和这些公司竞争如同一把热刀切黄油。
3. “Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital.”
Jeff Bezos knows when to use economies of scope and scale to his advantage. He also knows that in maximizing absolute dollar free cash flow, velocity of capital and inventory turns matter in a huge way. When Jeff Bezos lacks scale or scope advantages in a given business, Amazon’s attack on competitors will be asymmetric in nature. At this point readers might expect that I would give my opinion of the value of a share of AMZN stock. I will give readers a methodology but not a number. If you can’t calculate your own number, like 97% of all investors you should be buying a diversified portfolio of index funds/ETFs anyway. If you want simple numerical stock “tips,” there are lot of other bloggers and writers who will to give them to you. If you invest based on these third party stock tips, your performance will fall somewhere between lousy and dreadful. Me giving readers of this blog a valuation number for a stock just encourages the wrong investing behavior. I will say that to generate the return on invested capital necessary to support the existing stock price you must believe that AMZN’s cash flow will at some point in the future rise significantly faster than AMZN’s need for new capital expenditures. Under this thesis as capital expenditures fall, depreciation’s slower growth will mean it will have less negative impact on GAAP results. This thesis requires that you believe that AMZN will create a more significant moat for itself via brand, intellectual property, supply side economies scale, economies of scope and demand side economies of scale (network effects). How much any company’s moat will increase or decrease in strength over time is a qualitative and not quantitative determination.
“市场领导地位能够直接转化为更高的收入，更高的盈利能力，更大的资本流动速度，以及相应的更强的投资回报”
。杰夫·贝佐斯知道何时使用范围经济和规模经济来获得优势。他也知道，要最大限度地实现绝对美元自由现金流，资金和库存的运转速度至关重要。当杰夫·贝佐斯在特定的业务中缺乏规模或范围优势时，亚马逊对竞争对手的攻击将是不对称的。在这一点上，读者可能会期望我会对AMZN股票的价值给出我的看法。我会给读者一种方法，而不是数字。如果你不能自行计算自己的数字，就像97％的投资者，你应该购买多元化的指数基金/ ETF组合。如果你想要简单的数字化的股票“提示”，其他的博主和写手可能会给你。如果你根据这些第三方股票技巧进行投资，你的表现将会落在糟糕和可怕之间。我如果给这个博客的读者一个股票的估值数字，只会鼓励错误的投资行为。我会说，为了产生支持现有股票价格所需的投资回报率，你必须相信，AMZN的现金流在未来的某个时候将比AMZN的新资本支出需求快得多。这个逻辑下，一旦资本支出下降，折旧的增长将放缓，这意味着GAAP会计准则的负面影响将减小。这个逻辑需要你确信：AMZN将通过品牌、知识产权、供应侧规模经济和范围经济、需求侧的规模经济（网络效应）为自身创造更为显著的护城河。任何公司的护城河随着时间的推移增加或减少多少是定性而不是定量的问题。
4. “On the Internet, companies are scale businesses, characterized by high fixed costs and relatively low variable costs. You can be two sizes: You can be big, or you can be small. It’s very hard to be medium. A lot of medium-sized companies had the financing rug pulled out from under them before they could get big.”
Jeff Bezos is talking about what Michael Porter calls being “stuck in the middle.” A company stuck in the middle lacks the scale and scope economies as well as the greater access to capital of a big company, but is too big to effectively pursue a differentiation strategy.
“在互联网上，公司都是规模生意，其特点是固定成本高可变成本相对较低。你可以是两种规模：你可以是大的，或者你可以是小的。很难处在中间。很多中型公司还没来得及变大，就断了融资的来路。”
杰夫·贝佐斯谈论的是迈克尔·波特（Michael Porter）所说的”中间困境“。一家陷于中间的公司缺乏规模经济以及大公司获得资本的能力，但是又大到了一定程度而无法有效实施差异化战略。
5. “If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people, because very few companies are willing to do that. Just by lengthening the time horizon, you can engage in endeavors that you could never otherwise pursue. At Amazon we like things to work in five to seven years. We’re willing to plant seeds, let them grow—and we’re very stubborn.” “We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.”
By investing on a seven year time frame Jeff Bezos generates a behavior-based moat since other companies who invest for the short term flee Amazon’s approach to preserve their financial “ratios.”
“如果你所做的一切都需要在三年的时间里实现，那么你和许多人竞争。 但是，如果你愿意投资七年的时间，你现在只与其中一小部分人竞争，因为很少有公司愿意这样做。 只要延长时间长度，你就可以追求你以前所不能的事。 在亚马逊，我们喜欢做五到七年才有结果工作。 我们愿意播种，让他们成长 - 我们非常固执。” “我们在亚马逊有三大想法，我们已经坚持了18年，这就是我们成功的原因 ：把客户放在第一位、发明、耐心等待。”
通过在七年时间框架上投资，杰夫·贝佐斯形成了一种基于行为的护城河，因为注重短期投资的其他公司会躲避亚马逊方法，维护其财务比率。
6. “The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies…the individual is empowered… The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it. If I build a great product or service, my customers will tell each other….In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.” “Your brand is formed primarily, not by what your company says about itself, but what the company does.”
The essence of business is the ability to cost effectively acquire customers. The very best businesses acquire customers “organically” without advertising. Great products and word of mouth drives sales at these companies. By contrast, companies which must sell their wares with huge advertising budgets are losing their edge in the Internet era. Television advertising enabled the creation of mass market advertising driven brands, but the Internet is undoing this in many cases.
“权力的平衡正在从公司向消费者转移...个人比以前更强大了...如果你是公司，正确的方式来回应这个问题，就是把绝大多数的精力、注意力和金钱投入到打造伟大的产品或服务上去，并减少呐喊和营销它的费用。如果我创造了一个伟大的产品或服务，我的客户会相互告诉对方...。在旧世界，你投入了30％的时间来建立一个伟大的服务，70％的时间来呐喊。在新的世界里，这反过来了。” “你的品牌形成，不再依靠公司对自己的描述，而是公司所做所为。”
公司的关键是低成本有效获取客户的能力。最好的公司无需广告，“有机地”获取客户。伟大的产品和口碑推动了这些公司的销售。相比之下，必须以巨额广告预算销售商品的公司正在互联网时代失去其优势。电视广告创建了大众市场上广告驱动的品牌，但互联网在许多情况下正在消除这种情况。
7. “We will make bold rather than timid investment decisions where we see a sufficient probability of gaining market leadership advantages. Some of these investments will pay off, others will not, and we will have learned another valuable lesson in either case.”
Jeff Bezos seeks to harvest optionality (relatively small potential downside, massive potential upside) Harvesting optionality *requires* failure. It can’t be avoided since failure provides information that enable success. This is
via negativa
.
“我们如果看到有足够的可能性获得市场领先优势的时候，我们会做出大胆而不是胆小的投资决定。 其中一些投资将会得到回报，其他投资则没有结果，但是不管哪种结果，我们都会学到另一个有价值的教训。”
贝索斯追求期权性风险（相对较小的潜在下行空间，巨大的潜在上行收益）。收获期权性风险必须要求有失败。 失败是不可避免的，因为它提供了有助于成功的信息。 所谓否定之方法。
8. “There’ll always be serendipity involved in discovery.” “If you double the number of experiments you do per year you’re going to double your inventiveness.”
This is why Nassim Taleb recommends tinkering when engaging in the innovation/harvesting optionality. Another related Jeff Bezos quote:
“Even well-meaning gatekeepers slow innovation. When a platform is self service, even the improbable ideas can get tried because there’s no expert gatekeeper ready to say ‘that will never work!’”
“发现的过程总会有意外好运”。”“如果你每年做的实验数量翻一倍，你的创造力也会翻一倍。”
