WORLDVIEW: Brilliant Bezos – advice for all of us from the world’s best entrepreneur

Barely a Berkshire Hathaway AGM passes without Warren Buffett referring to the 1990 Salomon Brothers Treasury Bond scandal where he famously stepped in to protect the greater Berkshire group's reputation. How Buffett reacted defined his company's future.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's equivalent is his 1997 letter to shareholders, a famous missive in which he referred to the time as being "Day 1 for the Internet". He committed the company to a long-term focus on and obsession for customers.

At the dawning of the Internet Age, for those of us who also grasped the potential of the marvel, Bezos's ideas were like a beacon. At a time when everyone was thrashing around trying to find a revenue model – and capture an elusive slice of a then tiny e-commerce pie – Amazon was the giant, already selling more than $150m worth of books online.

___STEADY_PAYWALL___