我对商业案例开始感兴趣是上学期听了得到的《张潇雨·商业经典案例课》，从最经典的亚马逊，谷歌，苹果，到中国的腾讯，京东，阿里巴巴，再到奢侈品，和新出的商业模式比如Netflix，Uber和Airbnb，张潇雨老师将每个公司的历史，转折点，商业模式，未来发展趋势，纷纷拆解，端详，讲解，之后用一种我从来没有思考过的方式拼接起来，让我对这些公司有了新的了解，也让我对整体的商业世界有了更全面和深刻的理解。
于是我那时候就产生了一种想法，得到的这种课是中文版本的，但是我现在在美国，如果我把这门课的内容重新用英文整理一遍，不仅可以让我对这些公司有更系统性的理解，我还可以分享给美国的老师，我的导师，同学，甚至面试的时候都可以直接说这是我的想法！反正他们看不懂中文嘛。这种直接“借鉴/翻译”的思维很不道德，但是我后来发现这不仅仅是不道德，我根本就是低估了所谓的市场有效性，也完全高估了中国的信息流通度——简而言之，我发现我犯了傻。
当然当时的我还不知道，于是我选择了最经典的亚马逊公司，将张潇雨老师写亚马逊的文章好好的读了一次，然后做了笔记，写出了英文版的Business Analysis of Amazon，亚马逊商业分析。原文如下：（读不懂的英文可以跳过这一段直接看翻译）
Amazon
Amazon is one of the greatest companies in the world because it not only influences how we live in the world but also because of its CEO Jeff Bezos’ philosophy and his great ambition. While many people might interpret Amazon as an e-commerce retail company, platform company, or maybe AI company, that is far more simple compared to the real intention of Amazon. What Amazon finally wants to do is “collect tax” from ALL online activities.
In order to understand this great ambition, we need to understand four big strategies that Bezos created in the long term: Flywheel Effect, Customer-Is-the-God, Dominant Strategy, and its “Super Interface”, which all reinforced each other to create an open and flowing ecosystem.
1. First, let us talk about Flywheel Effect.
At the start of Amazons 2014 Letter to Shareholders, Bezos wrote:
“A dreamy business offering has at least four characteristics. Customers love it, it can grow to a very large size, it has strong returns on capital, and it’s durable in time – with the potential to endure for decades. When you find one of these, don’t just swipe right, get married.
Well, I’m pleased to report that Amazon hasn’t been monogamous in this regard. After two decades of risk-taking and teamwork, and with generous helpings of good fortune all along the way, we are now happily wed to what I believe are three such life partners: Marketplace, Prime, and AWS. “
Prime services serve consumers. If you pay membership for Amazon, you can enjoy a series of amazing services, including free shipping; unlimited streaming of movie and TV episodes; discounts to all shopping categories like Amazon Essentials, wholefoods, Amazon Fresh, etc; free and early access to e-books on Kindle. Currently, the subscription is over 200 million, and the annual revenue is $35B.
Marketplace serves third-party sellers. Except for Amazon’s own products, all the other sellers can also join the Amazon platform and directly sell their own products. There are over 2 million third-party sellers on Amazon, representing 60% of the units sold.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) serves big enterprises and small businesses by providing cloud services with databases, storage, software, machine learning, etc., where all enterprises can set up their IT system on this AWS platform. It is cheap, efficient, and very stable, much more convenient compared to establishing a system by itself. The customer base includes Verizon, Netflix, and GE, which is one of the best cloud service providers, generating $62B revenue, which is the most profitable segment.
These three services created the flywheel effect, which happens “when small wins for your business build on each other over time and eventually gain so much momentum that growth almost seems to happen by itself”. Think about these three services, prime services increases customer loyalty. If you purchased the prime services, you tend to buy more – because you buy more you save more based on the fixed amount of money you paid every year – and customers are not going to leave. While with Marketplace, customers’ choice of products increases, and they are more willing to buy Prime Services and also stick with Amazon in the long run. With more customers, third-party sellers are also more willing to join the Amazon Platform to sell their own products. When customers are increasing, Amazon’s market power to negotiate with the supplier will increase, so they will also be able to share profits with their customers, pushing third-party sellers to control their price or quality at the same time. Amazon also has Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) services that help third-party sellers to transport their products, making these third-party sellers sticky to the platform as well. While with the Marketplace, more third-party enterprises will also stick with Amazon because their whole IT system is established upon it!
These wheels rotate increasingly fast, generating amazing cash flows for Amazon in the long run.
2. But how does Bezos come up with this system? It is his belief of “Customer is the God.”
Every business has a slogan saying how much they care about their customers, but no one is willing to sacrifice their own profits to do it- except Amazon.
For example, Amazon developed a function for customers to put comments on their products– however, many customers will post negative comments that decrease purchases. In fact, according to their survey, customers do stop purchasing when they saw negative comments. However, Bezos said: “We dont make money when we sell things. We make money when we help customers make better purchase decisions.” In fact, this function seems to hurt the profits of Amazon but helps provide better services for customers, thus increasing revenue in the long term.
Moreover, think about Marketplace, which is also hurting Amazon’s own profits, because sometimes customers will choose products from third-party sellers instead of Amazon’s own products. However, from Bezos’ perspective, if there is a product, and its prices or quality is better compared to Amazon’s own product, it is better for customers to get it easily on Amazon instead of spending great efforts to find it somewhere else. Same logic– the customers’ profits are Amazon’s profits.
Another crazy example that can demonstrate this belief is this: Target used to be a ten-year customer of Amazon’s AWS services, but they are planning to leave. Amazingly, Amazon even helped Target to transfer all the data from AWS to their own IT system, although their own system broke down after a while.
Bezos’ strategy of putting customers’ profits in the first place is the core of their strategy, which not explain why their three services can create such a Flywheel Effect, but also make Amazon the most profitable firm in the long term.
3. We know that Amazon starts by selling books online. But in fact, Bezos knows that selling books is not his only goal in the long term, but is the best starting point. Why is that? It is because of the Dominant Strategy.
For the retail industry, the theoretical framework is quite mature: the most important thing about customers’ experience is rich product offerings, fast speed, good quality, and cheap prices.
Usually, when a company starts to do business, it will focus on one or two areas to focus on and use that to attract customers. For example, Walmart focused on rich product offerings and cheap prices, and Costco focused on high quality and cheap prices. In order to compete, they need to sacrifice some areas in order to take some part of the market share. However, if you find a strategy that does not change whatever your competitors do, you should do it, because this is the Dominant Strategy. In the retail industry, if you can find a way that can ensure four qualities at the same time, you should ignore your competitors and do it directly.
Bezos find this Dominant Strategy, and the reason he is the one who discovered is that he realized the advanced technology of the internet can achieve all in the long term period. At the initial stage, Bezos has already said that: “Our vision is to be earths most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online. To achieve this, we have initially focused on the book industry.” And the reason he chose the book industry is obvious if we think about the advantage brought by the internet:
Without physical barriers, the book offered online will definitely be richer compared to the physical bookshop, so it satisfies “rich product offering”. There is no need to consider the quality of the book because the book is pretty standardized– the one you bought online will be the same in the bookshop, which directly skipped “high quality”. Because there are no rental costs, the online market has lower expenses, therefor Amazon is able to provide cheap services. And finally, the delivery services can improve and be super fast depending on the future internet advancement.
Therefore, Amazon starts by focusing on the book market because it satisfied all the requirements of customers. At the same time, Amazon is transporting different products to online shops, while polishing their own services to expand to different areas. With their long-term planning and belief in a dominant strategy, they are able to form a very wide moat that no one can challenge at a later stage.
4. Amazon’s other core concept of Amazon is to transform its internal functional businesses into external service-oriented ones. I would like to call this as Amazon’s “Super Interface”.
Think about Amazon’s FBA services. Establishing an internal delivery system is the essential task of a large e-commerce company, but Amazon prompts this system to a new level, which not only serves Amazon itself but is also standardized and modularized to serve external customers. That goes the same with their AWS system. When Amazon first thinks about developing a more efficient internal IT system to support business operations, they realized that an independent cloud service IT system is not an easy task, and in fact, all companies will need this. Therefore, they decided to make AWS an external service as well.
There are several advantages to doing this. First, it definitely provides a new channel to generate revenues. But more importantly than that, it gives Amazons internal group to try new businesses with little cost like start-ups. They can even do what Startup does “Agile development with rapid iteration” to establish the services. This kind of service will have the first major customer– Amazon themselves, so they will know how to satisfy customers’ demand on the right track, and even if this business is not so successful, the worst situation is that Amazon itself can still use it.
Moreover, once Amazon put these services as an external one, the service is exposed to a real competitive environment and faces real survival issues, turning them into a real successful enterprise. Think about the Flywheel effect again, with more customers for the services, they cant leave Amazon, and they really “grow” on the Amazon platform and this makes you lose the ability to imagine a world without Amazon. In fact, Amazon, in this sense, is no longer a company anymore, it is an interface that everything connects to it and cannot leave with it. Just like an open ecosystem that supports all the creatures in the world.
5. While with all these four features of Amazon, we can see how Amazon is a really great company. But there is a final step in order to understand the essence of Amazon, which is Amazon’s final ambition – to “collect taxes” from all online activities. If you want to use the internet, you will pay for Amazon.
Think about the business models of FBA and AWS, they all have a common feature: They all have high upfront cotsts and fixed costs, which are beneficial from Economic of Scale – more people using it, those costs become relatively cheap.
Now let us look at Amazon’s recent acquisition of Wholefoods. Whole Foods are not as standardized as books or other retail products, therefore Amazon is not so successful in this market. Therefore, in the past, the only thing you cannot buy from Amazon is fresh and organic food. However, fresh groceries also have the same feature described above– high upfront costs but benefits from Economies of Scale. Therefore, it fits into Amazon’s system very well, while also reconstructing a whole supply chain for fresh groceries, something Amazon does not have in the past, and making Amazon comprehensive at a new level. Whole Foods will help Amazon to provide services to individuals, small restaurants, and big catering enterprises.
From this acquisition, we can clearly see the ambition of Amazon.
While living in 2023, what do we usually do online? Buy necessities, shop, entertainment, write, start your own business, manage big enterprises… And in fact, Amazon provides all these services.
If you are a consumer who wants to purchase anything– buy Prime.
If you own a small business – come to Marketplace and sell your products to more people.
If you own big enterprises– build your IT services on AWS.
If you are a creator– let us create good content together and Amazon will help you to publish it.
…
Therefore, with Amazon’s roots spreading over the earth, you live with it and rely on it. You pay for all the activities you did online for Amazon!
翻译如下：（看过英文版的可以直接跳过这一段往下读）
亚马逊
亚马逊是世界上最伟大的公司之一，原因不止是因为它影响了我们在这个世界上的生活方式，还因为其首席执行官杰夫·贝佐斯的哲学和伟大抱负。虽然许多人可能将亚马逊理解为一家电子商务零售公司、平台公司或者人工智能公司，但与亚马逊的真正意图相比，这些都显得过于简单了。亚马逊最终想要做的是从所有在线活动中“收税”。
为了理解这一伟大抱负，我们需要了解贝佐斯长期以来创造的四大战略：飞轮效应、客户至上、主导策略以及其“超级接口”，它们相互强化，创建了一个开放和流畅的生态系统。
1. 首先，让我们谈谈飞轮效应。
在亚马逊2014年的股东信中，贝佐斯写道：
“一个梦幻般的业务提供至少有四个特点。顾客喜欢它，它能够成长为一个非常大的规模，它有强大的资本回报率，它在时间上是持久的 – 具有持续几十年的潜力。当你找到了这样的业务时，不要与它擦肩而过，你要和它‘步入婚姻的殿堂’！
我很高兴地报告，亚马逊在这方面做到了极致。经过两十年的尝试和努力，以及一路上的好运，我们现在很高兴地宣布，我与我相信是三位这样的终身伴侣结婚了：市场、Prime和AWS。”
Prime服务为消费者提供服务。如果你付费成为亚马逊的会员，你可以享受一系列令人惊叹的服务，包括免费送货；无限制观看电影和电视剧集；各种类别的购物折扣，如Amazon Essentials、Whole Foods、Amazon Fresh等；以及在Kindle上免费和提前访问电子书。目前，订阅人数超过2亿，年度收入为350亿美元。
Marketplace为第三方卖家提供服务。除了亚马逊自己的产品外，所有其他卖家也可以加入亚马逊平台，直接销售自己的产品。亚马逊有200多万第三方卖家，占销售总量的60%。
亚马逊网络服务（AWS）为大型企业和中小企业提供云服务，包括数据库、存储、软件、机器学习等，所有企业都可以在AWS平台上建立他们的IT系统。它便宜、高效、非常稳定，比自己建立系统方便得多。客户包括威瑞森、Netflix和通用电气等，是最赚钱的业务部门，年收入620亿美元，是最有利可图的部门。
这三项服务共同创建了飞轮效应，“当你的业务取得小胜利，并随着时间的推移互相增强，最终获得如此多的动力，以至于增长似乎几乎是自然而然发生的时候”。想象一下这三项服务，Prime服务增加了顾客的忠诚度。如果你购买了Prime服务，你倾向于购买更多 – 因为你购买得越多，根据你每年支付的固定金额，你就能节省更多 – 并且顾客不会离开。而在Marketplace方面，顾客的产品选择增加了，他们更愿意购买Prime服务，并且长期与亚马逊合作。随着更多的顾客，第三方卖家也更愿意加入亚马逊平台销售自己的产品。当顾客增多时，亚马逊与供应商谈判的市场力量也会增加，因此他们也能与顾客分享利润，推动第三方卖家在价格或质量上控制。亚马逊还拥有Fulfillment by Amazon（FBA）服务，帮助第三方卖家运输其产品，使这些第三方卖家对平台有粘性。而在Marketplace方面，更多的第三方企业也会长期与亚马逊合作，因为他们的整个IT系统都建立在亚马逊之上！
这些轮子越转越快，为亚马逊长期产生了惊人的现金流。
2. 但是，贝佐斯是如何构建这个系统的呢？这是因为他坚信“客户即上帝”。
每家企业都有一句口号，说他们有多么关心他们的顾客，但除了亚马逊之外，没有人愿意为了这样做而牺牲自己的利润。
例如，亚马逊开发了一个功能，让顾客对他们的产品发表评论 – 然而，许多顾客会发表负面评论，降低购买率。事实上，根据他们的调查，顾客在看到负面评论时会停止购买。然而，贝佐斯说：“我们不是通过卖东西赚钱，而是通过帮助顾客做出更好的购买决策赚钱的。”事实上，这个功能似乎损害了亚马逊的利润，但却有助于为顾客提供更好的服务，从而在长期内增加收入。
此外，想想Marketplace，它也损害了亚马逊自己的利润，因为有时候顾客会选择第三方卖家的产品，而不是亚马逊自己的产品。然而，从贝佐斯的角度来看，如果有一个产品，其价格或质量比亚马逊自己的产品更好，那么顾客很容易在亚马逊上找到它，而不是在其他地方费力寻找。同样的逻辑 – 顾客的利润就是亚马逊的利润。
另一个令人惊讶的例子可以证明这种信仰，例如，Target曾经是亚马逊AWS服务的客户长达十年，但他们计划离开。令人惊讶的是，亚马逊甚至帮助Target将所有数据从AWS迁移到他们自己的IT系统，尽管后来他们的系统崩溃了。
贝佐斯将顾客利益置于首位的策略是他们战略的核心，这不仅解释了他们的三项服务如何能够创造这种飞轮效应，还使亚马逊成为长期内最具盈利性的公司。
3. 我们知道亚马逊最初是在线销售图书。但事实上，贝佐斯知道卖书不是他长期的唯一目标，而是最好的起点。为什么呢？这是因为主导策略。
对于零售行业，理论框架已经相当成熟：顾客体验最重要的因素是丰富的产品选择、快速的速度、优质的质量和便宜的价格。
通常，当一家公司开始经商时，它会专注于一两个领域，以吸引顾客。例如，沃尔玛专注于丰富的产品选择和便宜的价格，而Costco专注于高质量和便宜的价格。为了竞争，他们需要牺牲一些领域以夺取市场份额的一部分。然而，如果你找到一种策略，无论你的竞争对手做什么都不会改变，那么你应该做它，因为这就是主导策略。在零售行业，如果你能找到一种方法，可以同时确保四个质量，那么你应该忽略你的竞争对手，直接做它。
贝佐斯找到了这个主导策略，他之所以能够发现这一点，是因为他意识到互联网的先进技术可以在长期内实现所有这些。在初期阶段，贝佐斯已经说过：“我们的愿景是成为地球上最以客户为中心的公司；建立一个人们可以在这里找到和发现他们可能想要在线购买的任何东西的地方。为了实现这一点，我们最初专注于书业。”他之所以选择了书业，显而易见，如果我们考虑互联网带来的优势：没有物理障碍，在线提供的书籍肯定会比实体书店更丰富，因此满足了“丰富的产品选择”。不需要考虑书的质量，因为书相当标准化 – 你在线购买的与书店购买的是一样的，直接跳过了“高质量”。由于没有租金成本，网络市场的开支较低，因此亚马逊能够提供便宜的服务。最后，随着未来互联网的进一步发展，交付服务可以提高并变得非常快。
因此，亚马逊开始专注于书市，因为它满足了顾客的所有要求。与此同时，亚马逊将不同的产品运送到在线商店，同时改进他们自己的服务以扩展到不同领域。凭借他们的长期规划和对主导策略的信仰，他们能够建立一个无人能够挑战的广泛护城河。
4. 亚马逊的另一个核心概念是将其内部功能业务转变为外部面向服务的业务。我愿称之为亚马逊的“超级接口”。
想想亚马逊的FBA服务。建立一个内部交付系统是大型电子商务公司的基本任务，但亚马逊将这一系统提升到一个新的水平，它不仅为亚马逊自身提供服务，还将其标准化和模块化，以为外部客户提供服务。AWS系统也是如此。当亚马逊首次考虑开发更高效的内部IT系统以支持业务运营时，他们意识到
独立的云服务IT系统并不是一项容易的任务，事实上，所有公司都会需要这个。因此，他们决定将AWS也作为外部服务提供。
这样做有几个好处。首先，它肯定提供了一种产生收入的新渠道。但更重要的是，它为亚马逊的内部团队提供了一个以小成本开展新业务的机会，就像创业公司一样。他们甚至可以像创业公司一样进行“敏捷开发和快速迭代”，以建立这些服务。这种服务将有第一个主要客户 – 亚马逊自己，因此他们将知道如何在正确的轨道上满足顾客的需求，即使这个业务不是很成功，最坏的情况也是亚马逊自己仍然可以使用它。
此外，一旦亚马逊将这些服务作为外部服务提供，该服务就会置于真正的竞争环境中，并面临真正的生存问题，将它们转化为真正成功的企业。再次思考飞轮效应，随着更多的服务顾客，他们无法离开亚马逊，并且他们真正“成长”在亚马逊平台上，这使您失去了无法想象没有亚马逊的能力。实际上，在这个意义上，亚马逊不再是一家公司，它是一个一切都与之连接的接口，不能离开它。就像一个支持世界上所有生物的开放生态系统一样。
5. 尽管亚马逊具有所有这四个特点，但要理解亚马逊的本质还需要有最后一步，那就是亚马逊的最终抱负 – 从所有在线活动中“收税”。如果你想使用互联网，你将为亚马逊付费。
想想FBA和AWS的商业模式，它们都有一个共同的特点：它们都有高额的前期成本和固定成本，这是从规模经济中受益的 – 使用它的人越多，这些成本就相对便宜。
现在让我们看看亚马逊最近收购Whole Foods。Whole Foods的产品不像书籍或其他零售产品那么标准化，因此亚马逊在这个市场上并不那么成功。因此，过去，你不能从亚马逊购买的唯一东西就是新鲜和有机食品。然而，新鲜杂货也具有上述描述的相同特征 – 高额的前期成本，但受益于规模经济。因此，它非常适合亚马逊的系统，同时也重新构建了新鲜杂货的整个供应链，这是亚马逊过去没有的，使亚马逊在新的层面上具备综合能力。Whole Foods将帮助亚马逊为个人、小餐馆和大型餐饮企业提供服务。
从这次收购中，我们可以清楚地看到亚马逊的野心。
在2023年生活中，我们通常在网上做什么？购买必需品、购物、娱乐、写作、创办自己的企业、管理大型企业……实际上，亚马逊提供了所有这些服务。
如果你是一个想购买任何东西的消费者 – 加入Prime。
如果你拥有一家小企业 – 来到Marketplace，向更多人销售你的产品。
如果你拥有大型企业 – 在AWS上建立你的IT服务。
如果你是一个创作者 – 让我们一起创造优质内容，亚马逊将帮助你出版它。
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因此，随着亚马逊的根扎根于大地，你与它同在，依赖它。你为在亚马逊上进行的所有在线活动付费！
我写完之后成就感满满，虽然这篇文章的观点不是我原创的，但是当我写出这篇文章之后，我感觉这篇文章的观点已经被我内化了。但是我还想规模化，于是我发给了我对科技公司非常了解的导师J，让他看看我写的这篇文章如何。我本来自信满满的等待他夸我有思想，结果我收到的回复是这样的：
#图：聊天记录
如果大家读不懂，没关系，我给大家翻译一下，简而言之，J回复我说：“你写的这些关于Amazon的东西都已经是共识了，不管是Flywheel Effect（飞轮效应），还是Consumer-Centric（顾客至上），都是大家已经讨论过好多的主题。你可以读读Ben Thompson的Stratchery，我感觉你应该借鉴了他的文章。”
然后我点开了他发给我的Stratchery的网站，读了Ben Thompson写的亚马逊商业分析，再一看那篇文章的日期，我呆住了——原来我不是在借鉴张潇雨老师，是张潇雨老师直接借鉴Ben Thompson，而我读到的东西其实已经是“三手资料”了……这也太讽刺了，本来我还思考着想要把这些东西转换成英文，没想到这东西本来就是英文的，我根本就没必要写一篇Business Analysis of Amazon，我应该直接读Ben Thompson的文章。这简直就是思维上的降维打击。Ben Thompson的文章和张潇雨老师的课程，至少这篇关于Amazon的文章，所有的重点基本上是一模一样的。这至少能说明两点：一，的确，Amazon的商业分析和我自以为非常有思想的文章已经是商业世界的共识，这个“市场”其实非常有效；二，在中国，这些所谓的“共识”可能并不能算共识，这就是为什么我这么容易就能被思维降维打击。
J还评论到：“哈哈哈，我知道很多中国人会读我们写（指英语）的文章，但是我们因为没有翻译也不懂中文，没办法读他们写的文章。”
好吧，我觉得更讽刺了，因为我觉得他们其实也没必要读我们写的文章，如果我们只是Copy Paste他们的文章的话。
当然，除了被打击到的失落和意识到自己是傻子的尴尬，我同时感到了无比的兴奋。思维打击是一个结果，但同时我学习到的东西是另一个成果，而我也意识到了我之前浪费了多少资源。从那以后，我开始逐渐减少中文的摄入，直接开始听英文的博客和读英文的文章，比如说Stratcher（博客文章），比如说MoneyStuff（观点文章），还有最近我简直爱惨了的Acquired（播客）和Business Breakdown（播客）。其实因为这些网站他们发布的都是完全原创（或至少更加原创）的内容，信息的汲取密度和质量会有所下降，但是这也能被内容的新鲜度和原创度所弥补。
这篇文章所讲的亚马逊降维打击事件发生在大一下学期，现在已经大二开学一段时间，本来早就想要谈这件事，没想到拖到现在，以上。
祝大家新学期开学快乐（真心的）。