1/ Continuing our exploration of every Amazon shareholder letter Jeff Bezos wrote, today we look at his 3rd, the 1999 shareholder letter.

In 1999, $AMZN's rev grew 169% to $1.64B

Customers jumped from 6.2M to 16.9M

An incredible year, but Bezos was only looking to the future. https://twitter.com/Matt_Cochrane7/status/1358509536076824581

2/ Bezos begins by explaining the internet was still young, millions would be going online for the first time in the coming year, and, if $AMZN did its job right, it would have the opportunity to serve these millions of new customers.

3/ In just 3 yrs, $AMZN had gone from selling books but considering music as an opportunity to selling many different consumer products on its site: from toys and music to electronics and video games.

It was already becoming the Everything Store.

4/ Again, we take the e-commerce > brick-and-mortar argument almost for granted now, but back in 1999 Bezos was still taking pains to explain the advantages of an online-only business retail model. We see a different form of the same argument many times in Bezos's early letters.

5/ This is a true gem. In 1999 at a function at Stanford University, Bezos was asked by a college student shareholder what she owned with her shares. This is how he answered.

Take time to read this excerpt!

6/ Customer obsession was always at the top of Bezos's mind.

What was his top goal for 2000? Growing and strengthening customer relationships.

What did he most look for in partnerships? The quality of their customer experience.

7/ I love the framework Bezos used for thinking of operational excellence: Greater margins/efficiency/ productivity often came from delivering a better customer experience.

8/ Visionaries always see the future so clearly. Bezos saw that $AMZN was good enough for 17M customers in 1999, but that improvement in the internet's infrastructure would make online shopping such a better experience in the years ahead.

9/ You can find the 1999 Amazon shareholder letter here https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/annual/Shareholderletter99.pdf

Next up, the 2000 shareholder letter where we see how Bezos addressed shareholders after the 2000 tech bubble burst!

Here's a picture of Bezos delivering a package to $AMZN's 1 millionth customer.