Marketplace's early days were not easy. First, we launched Amazon Auctions. I think seven people came, if you count my parents and siblings. Auctions transformed into zShops — again, no customers. But then we morphed zShops into Marketplace; today more than 40% of Amazon's units are sold by third-party sellers.

When Prime launched, we were told repeatedly that it was a risky move — we gave up many millions of dollars in shipping revenue, and there was no simple math to show that it would be worth it. The decision was built on an intuition that customers would quickly grasp they were being offered the best deal in the history of shopping.

FBA completes the circle: Marketplace pumps energy into Prime, and Prime pumps energy into Marketplace. Thanks to FBA, Marketplace and Prime are no longer two things — their economics and customer experiences are now happily and deeply intertwined.

Maintaining a firm grasp of the obvious is more difficult than one would think it should be. But it's useful to try. If you ask, what do sellers want? The correct (and obvious) answer is: they want more sales.

What customers really want in this arena is "better and faster," and if "better and faster" can come with a side dish of cost savings, terrific. But the cost savings is the gravy, not the steak.

Why enterprises adopt AWS — "I can save you money and my service is almost as good" wins no customers.

I'm pretty sure we're the first company to have figured out how to make winning a Golden Globe pay off in increased sales of power tools and baby wipes!

On Prime original content as a flywheel input rather than a standalone business.