GR Diary

8 success lessons for entrepreneurs from Jeff Bezos, world’s richest man

Published

7 years ago

August 21, 2018

grassroots

A self-made multibillionaire, Jeff Bezos is the man who launched an online bookstore and turned it into the largest online retailer of all time.

His success story began in 1994, when he launched Amazon.com from his garage, according to this article by the Entrepreneur.

It was the dawn of the digital age, and Bezos was a man with a vision — he knew from the start that his online store would focus on more than just books. He set out to create an online retail empire that sold anything and everything, at a low cost, with products reaching customers within days.

Amazon.com has forever changed the online retail environment and fundamentally changed the way millions of people shop. Along the way, Bezos has become the richest man in the world, worth approximately $108 billion.

So what are the secrets behind Bezos’ wild success?

Here are the 8 most important lessons you can learn about achieving success from the richest person on the planet.

1. Embrace a “Day 1” philosophy.

Bezos came up with the Day 1 concept in the early days of Amazon. The concept means that Amazon will always strive to keep a startup mentality — it will always guard against the contentment that sweeping success can bring. Bezos defines Day 2 as stasis, followed by irrelevance, followed by decline and death, which is why he believes it’s paramount his company always stays in Day 1 mode.

Bezos discussed the Day 1 concept in his 1997 letter to shareholders. He began by listing all the milestones the company had passed that year, such as serving 1.5 million customers (Amazon now serves more than 310 million active customers), yielding a revenue of $147.8 million (it reported a revenue of $178 billion in 2017). He went on to talk about how the company must continue to look for opportunities to evolve in the competitive market.

2. Being customer-centric.

From the very beginning, Bezos has been obsessed with innovating according to customer needs and wants. He believes in focusing on customers, not competitors. Don’t waste time one-upping your rivals; instead, focus on getting ahead of the market. Find ways to make your customers excited and clamor for more.

3. What would your 80-year-old self say?

In the fast-paced, cutthroat world of business, it’s hard to know which opportunities are the right ones and which ones to leave behind. How do you determine which way to go?

This was the situation Bezos faced when he came up with the idea of launching an online retail store. He already had a great job working at a hedge fund, but he saw how fast the internet was growing and knew his idea had real potential. So how did he summon the courage to leave a stable, well-paying job to launch a startup?

4. Build the best team for your business.

The success of your business largely depends on the people you hire to help build it. Bezos takes team building seriously. His philosophy is to focus on bringing the right people on board, and then give them a stake in the success of the company, so they’re motivated to see it succeed.

In his 2017 shareholder letter, Bezos wrote: “We know our success will be largely affected by our ability to attract and retain a motivated employee base, each of whom must think like, and therefore must actually be, an owner.” In keeping with this, Amazon offers compensation heavy in stock options. This increases employee involvement in the company’s overall success.

Amazon has even taken the step of offering to pay employees who don’t want to work there anymore up to $5,000 to quit. This allows the company to weed out the employees who are unengaged or disgruntled, thus saving it more money in the long run. And those employees who stay will be more committed to their jobs.

5. Be bold and innovate where it counts most.

Bezos has said that Amazon’s goal is to be “Earth’s most customer-centric company,” so nearly everything that goes on inside the company is driven with that goal in mind.

Each step of the way in building his online “everything store,” Bezos has added features and functions that were initially considered unwarranted, but were beneficial to the customer. That’s why Amazon is constantly working on optimizing its logistic and delivery systems, to make its services run as smoothly and efficiently as possible. Amazon has poured huge amounts of resources into developing its infrastructure. These investments have paid off, as the company now holds the title of largest online retailer in the world.

6. Be frugal and efficient — put revenue back into your company.

Frugality is one of Amazon’s foundational principles. Being low-cost, efficient and extremely competitive has made Amazon billions. Bezos has a laser focus on keeping productivity high and ensuring thriftiness at all levels — from the leadership on down. The company’s own website lists frugality as a core principle, stating, “Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency and invention.”

7. Risk failure for success.

One of the key strategies to Bezos’ success is his approach to failure. Bezos believes in trying out a plethora of ideas, knowing that some projects will flop. He constantly advocates for the need to take calculated risks. Without taking that leap, he believes, you’ll never know what will or won’t work. In fact, accepting the possibility of failure helped give him the courage to launch his business in the first place.

When Bezos launched Amazon, he gave himself a 30 percent chance of success. “That’s actually a very liberating expectation, expecting to fail,” Bezos says in the book One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com. He built his business by embracing risk and accepting that sometimes doing so may mean losing money to learn lessons. Bezos himself jokes about making “billions of dollars of failures.”

But in the long run, all that experimentation has paid off. In the end, a few big successes will outweigh dozens of defeats.

8. Always look toward tomorrow and beyond.

Bezos has always been focused on long-term thinking and strategizing when it comes to Amazon. But he is also hoping to inspire others to think beyond the here and now. This is reflected in many of the other projects he takes on.

In 2000, Bezos founded Blue Origin, an aerospace manufacturer and spaceflight company, which is developing technologies to make affordable space flight for the average human. It’s part of his long-term dream to find a way for humans to live in space permanently.

He is also working with the Long Now Foundation on constructing a clock that will keep time for 10,000 years. It’s designed to be an icon for long-term thinking. As Bezos wrote on the clock website: “As I see it, humans are now technologically advanced enough that we can create not only extraordinary wonders but also civilization-scale problems. We’re likely to need more long-term thinking.”

Copyright: This article was first published by the Entrepreneur.

Events

NOTAP Announces Plan for 2025 Technology and Innovation Summit

….Harnessing R&D and Innovation Potentials of Nigeria’s STI Ecosystem

Published

1 week ago

October 11, 2025

Ani Sandra

The National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion (NOTAP) has announced the forthcoming NOTAP Technology and Innovation Summit (NTIS 2025), scheduled to hold on Thursday, 6th and Friday, 7th November 2025 at THE HALL, 16 Musa Yar’Adua Street, Victoria Island, Lagos, commencing daily at 9:00 AM.

Themed “Harnessing R&D and Innovation Potentials of Nigeria’s STI Ecosystem,” the two-day summit will convene key leaders from government, private sector, academia, development partners, and the startup ecosystem to explore strategies for strengthening Nigeria’s innovation landscape and positioning the nation as a hub for technology-driven economic growth.

Speaking on the upcoming summit, Dr. Lady Obiageli Amadiobi, the director-general of NOTAP, emphasized that the forum will serve as a strategic platform to foster dialogue and action around innovation policy, technology transfer, intellectual property, and commercialization.

“Our goal is to accelerate the transformation of research and creativity into commercially viable enterprises that drive national development,” she noted.

Summit Highlights

The NOTAP Technology and Innovation Summit 2025 will feature:

Ministerial Address and Keynote Sessions by renowned leaders in innovation, policy, and technology.
High-Level Panel Discussions on key themes such as technology transfer, intellectual property sovereignty, and building an AI-ready human resources.
Launching of Project NOVA (Nigeria’s Outsourcing Value Acceleration) and promotion of the NOTAP Local Vendor Policy (LVP) across all sectors of the economy.
Workshops and Breakout Sessions on IP management, funding access, and talent development.
Exhibitions and Innovation Showcases, featuring startups, research institutions, and technology companies.
Hackathon and Pitch Showcase, for emerging innovators and young entrepreneurs.
Networking and Partnership Sessions to foster collaboration across sectors.

The Summit will also host a Special Exhibition Pavilion to highlight Nigeria’s emerging technologies, research outputs, and development partnerships, reflecting NOTAP’s commitment to bridging the gap between invention and commercialization.

Partnership and Collaborations

The event is organized by the National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion (NOTAP) in partnership with Crestsage Limited and collaboration with stakeholders, to ensure a world-class experience that aligns with NOTAP’s mission of accelerating technology, promoting innovation and sustainable development across Nigeria.

The National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion (NOTAP) is a parastatal under the Federal Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology, mandated to regulate the acquisition of foreign technology, promote local research, and encourage the development and commercialization of indigenous technologies. Through strategic partnerships, policy advocacy, and capacity development, NOTAP continues to play pivotal roles in advancing Nigeria’s innovation ecosystem.

Events

Ortom, NOA DG, others to feature as Panelists at GOCOP 2025 Conference

Published

3 weeks ago

September 26, 2025

Ani Sandra

Panelists at GOCOP conference

The Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP) has announced that Chief Samuel Ortom, former Governor of Benue State, will serve as one of the panelists at the upcoming GOCOP 2025 Conference.

The conference theme is “Reconciling Campaign Promises with Governance Realities: Challenges and Prospects.”

A press statement by GOCOP publicity secretary, Ogbuefi Remmy Nweke, disclosed that the panel discussion will feature esteemed panelists, including Prof. Abiodun Adeniyi, Registrar, Base University, Abuja; Prof. Abigail Ogwezzy-Ndisika,2025 Director, Institute of Continuing Education (UNILAG); and Alhaji Lanre Issa-Orilu, Director-General, National Orientation Agency.

The conference, he said, will take place on October 9, 2025, at 10:00 a.m. at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos.

He recalled that GOCOP had earlier announced that the keynote speaker will be Rt. Hon. Aminu Bello Masari, former Speaker of the House of Representatives and immediate past Governor of Katsina State.

Events

Takang, Ladid Lead Africa’s Digital Sovereignty Debate At DACE 2025

Published

1 month ago

September 17, 2025

grassroots

L-R: Prof. Latif Ladid and Dr. Armstrong Takang

How can Africa remain safe and powerful in a world being rapidly redefined by Artificial Intelligence?

That pressing question will take centre stage at the 13th Digital Africa Conference & Exhibition (DACE), scheduled for October 28–29, 2025, in Abuja.

The two-day gathering will be anchored by two powerhouse keynote speakers: Dr. Armstrong Takang on Day 1 and Prof. Latif Ladid on Day 2, each bringing unique expertise to Africa’s digital sovereignty conversation.

Dr. Armstrong Takang, Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MOFI), will open the conference with a keynote that situates Africa’s digital sovereignty within the broader context of economic reform, institutional innovation, and strategic governance.

A consummate professional and visionary thinker, Dr. Takang has spent decades bridging the gap between public reform and private investment across Africa and the United States. Before his current role at MOFI, he served as Special Adviser to the Honourable Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, where he led the MOFI Transformation Team.

His career includes leading Growth Alliance Partners (GAP), a pan-African firm that helped turn around several businesses to create shareholder value, and working at KPMG in New York.

He has been instrumental in designing and implementing key national initiatives such as the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), the Voluntary Asset and Income Declaration Scheme (VAIDS), and the ICT components of EFCC/NFIU systems.

Dr. Takang has also chaired national ICT committees and contributed to landmark policies, including Nigeria’s Content Development in ICT and the country’s 50-year Development Plan. His keynote will highlight how digital and financial sovereignty intersect to secure Africa’s long-term competitiveness.

On the other hand, Prof. Latif Ladid, Founder & President of the IPv6 Forum and Chair of the AI & Blockchain Global Forum, brings decades of global leadership in internet architecture, digital policy, and emerging technologies.

His expertise spans across pivotal roles from IEEE Future Networks to the Internet Society, 3GPP, and EU research on next-generation networks.

Organizers say his keynote will set the tone for the conference, unpacking how Africa can assert digital sovereignty, safeguard its data, and lead in shaping the ethics and standards of AI on the global stage.

“This year’s theme, ‘Sovereign Intelligence: Africa’s Voice in the Global Digital Order,’ isn’t just a concept, it’s a necessity,” said Dr. Evans Woherem, Chairman of Digital Africa Consult. “Prof. Ladid’s keynote will highlight what it takes for Africa to remain safe, independent, and powerful in the new AI era.”

At a time when global powers are racing to define AI norms and secure digital dominance, Africa risks being left behind if it fails to act. Much of its technology remains imported, its data stored abroad, and its languages invisible in mainstream AI systems.

DACE 2025 is designed to change this narrative, by equipping Africa with the tools, strategies, and partnerships to become a proactive co-author of the digital future.

The conference will feature high-level dialogues on digital sovereignty, policy innovation, and cross-border cooperation, alongside exhibitions of homegrown startups, developer workshops, and showcases of African-built AI tools for health, agriculture, finance, and education.

Beyond the panels and showcases, DACE 2025 is expected to produce a concrete roadmap for Africa’s digital sovereignty.

“This isn’t just about technology,” noted Woherem. “It’s about agency, safety, and independence. With Prof. Ladid setting the stage, we hope to leave Abuja with a united vision of Africa’s place in the global AI order.”

With delegates expected from across Africa and the world, the two-day gathering promises to be a defining moment in the continent’s digital journey.