Sublime

We hired Milton Pollack, a brilliant lawyer who later became a distinguished federal judge. The suit unfolded slowly, and I fell into a ritual of having dinner with Pollack once a month during which he would update me on our progress and his methods. At that time he had a daughter in elementary school; he told me that before he asked any question o

In the business of advice-giving, it is not enough to be right—you have to earn the right to be right.

In his 2012 book Skating Where the Puck Was, William Bernstein says to “resign yourself to the fact that diversifying yourself among risky assets provide[s] scant shelter from bad days or bad years, but that it does help protect against bad decades and generations, which can be far more destructive to wealth.”

Meanwhile, more risk-averse entrepreneurs watch from the sidelines, waiting for the right opportunity and balancing their risk portfolios before entering.

A good idea, a long-term perspective, and the creativity to implement a strategy to profit from your insight are necessary to prosper in finance, but they are not sufficient. None of these qualities will bear fruit unless you have the discipline to stay with your strategy when the market tests your confidence, as it inevitably will.

With Prime, there were a couple of things. One of our board members, Bing Gordon, always wanted us to have a loyalty program. We were always wondering, “What could a loyalty program be?” A junior software engineer came up with this idea that we could offer people kind of an all-you-can-eat buffet of fast, free shipping. The finance team went and mo

Easily measured, easily understood goals need to be carefully designed and agreed upon. Performance needs to be assessed fairly to avoid violent end-of-year arguments. Difficult messages need to be delivered with actionable suggestions, so an employee sees a clear path to greater rewards in the future. But the most difficult job in redesigning ince

the proper perspective on an investment is not what you have made so far, but rather the risk and reward ratio at any given point. The price you paid for a stock is irrelevant.