贝佐思从巴菲特身上学到的一课

    考虑到杰夫•贝佐斯早就看到了慢慢赚钱的价值，他决定收购《华盛顿邮报》（Washington Post）一点都不奇怪。亚马逊（Amazon.com）创始人兼首席执行官贝佐斯通过将短期利润再投资到公司中，打造了611亿美元的年营业收入，那些沉不住气的投资者活该倒霉。

    事实上，早在1999年，贝佐斯就对传统行业表现出了兴趣。他当时参加了艾伦公司（Allen & Co.）在爱达荷州太阳谷举办的会议，会上，他听到沃伦•巴菲特——华盛顿邮报公司最大的外部股东——警告称，转型行业往往不能为投资者带来长期回报。我在《财富》杂志（Fortune）1999年的一篇文章中写道：

    贝佐斯对巴菲特的讲话非常好奇……于是他向巴菲特索要那些未能成功的汽车和飞机厂商的名单。贝佐斯说：“新兴产业风生水起之后，许多投资者都押错了公司。”巴菲特的名单长达70页，其中的轿车和卡车厂商如今多半已经不复存在。提及这份名单，贝佐斯补充说：“我注意到，几十年前，公司名称里带上‘汽车’这个词是时尚，就像今天大家都叫某某“网络公司”一样。我认为这个相似之处很有意思。”

    贝佐斯不但从事过对冲基金经理的工作，他还是位历史爱好者，对5.5亿年前的寒武纪生命大爆发非常感兴趣。当时多细胞生物衍生出大量物种，随之而来的是大批物种纷纷灭绝。1999年，贝索斯向我表示，巴菲特对破产企业的类比让他“很有共鸣”。巴菲特灌输的恐惧对贝佐斯影响很大，他告诫亚马逊员工要戒骄戒躁。1999年时他曾经表示：“我们仍有可能变成电子商务行业一家微不足道的公司。”

    时光飞逝，14年过去了，让我们看看亚马逊老大目前面临的挑战。贝佐斯昨天发表声明称：“互联网彻底改变了新闻行业的方方面面：缩短了新闻周期；抢走了新闻业长期可靠的收益来源；带来了各种各样的竞争……一切都没谱，指定前进的路线并不是件容易的事。”

    因此，贝佐斯现在自掏腰包，豪掷2.5亿美元，赌《华盛顿邮报》将成为另一个转型行业中的幸存者。（财富中文网）

    译者：项航

    Jeff Bezos' decision to buy the Washington Post isn't so surprising given that he has long seen the value of making money slowly. The Amazon.com (AMZN) founder and CEO built his $61.1 billion-a-year business by plowing short-term profits back into the business, restless investors be damned.

    Way back in 1999, actually, Bezos displayed an interest in old-line industries. He was at Allen & Co.'s conference in Sun Valley, Idaho when he heard Warren Buffett (BRKA) -- the Washington Post Co.'s (WPO) largest outside shareholder -- warn that transforming industries often fail to reward investors over time. I wrote the following in Fortune in 1999:

    Bezos was so intrigued by Buffett's talk…that he asked Buffett for his lists of the automakers and aircraft manufacturers that didn't make it. "When new industries become phenomenons, a lot of investors bet on the wrong companies," Bezos says. Referring to Buffett's 70-page catalog of mostly dead car and truck makes, he adds, "I noticed that decades ago, it was de rigueur to use 'Motors' in the name, just as everybody uses 'dot-com' today. I thought, Wow, the parallel is interesting.

    A former hedge fund manager, Bezos is also a history buff fascinated by the Cambrian explosion about 550 million years ago, when multi-celled life spawned unprecedented variation of species -- and with it, a wave of extinctions. Buffett's analogies about bankrupt businesses "resonate deeply," Bezos told me in 1999. That Buffett-infused paranoia has led Bezos to advise Amazon employees to stay humble. "We still have the opportunity to be a footnote in the e-commerce industry," he said in 1999.

    Fast-forward 14 years to the Amazon boss's newest heady challenge. Bezos said in a statement yesterday: "The Internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition.... There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy."

    So now he is betting $250 million of his personal wealth that The Washington Post will be a survivor in another transforming industry.