Jeff Bezos responds to CNBC reporter who says Amazon isn’t a “pure internet company”

The CNBC reporter asks Jeff in this 1999 interview:

“You’re not really a pure internet company anymore, are you? You’ve got millions of square feet of real estate, a huge and growing inventory of items, and you’ve got thousands of employees now.”

Jeff responds:

“Yes, we have over 3,000 employees and over 4 million square feet of distribution center space. And those are things I’m very, very proud of. That distribution center space allows us to get product close to customers so that we can ship it to customers in a very timely way, which improves customer service levels. If there’s one thing Amazon is about, it’s obsessive attention to the customer experience end-to-end.”

The reporter protests that this approach is more capital-intensive than the “pure internet play” business models that stock market analysts prefer.

Jeff responds again:

“It doesn’t matter to me if we’re a pure Internet play. What matters to me is whether we provide the best customer service… Our investors should be investing in a company that obsesses over customer experience. In the long term, there’s never any misalignment between customer interests and shareholder interests.”

Full video: CNBC “Jeff Bezos In 1999 On Amazon's Plans Before The Dotcom Crash“ (Jul 1999)

More popular advice from Jeff Bezos

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