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Andy Jassy has 6 tips for big companies that want to feel more like a startup.
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The Amazon CEO emphasizes solving customer problems and increasing employee ownership of employees.
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He also said speed, scrappiness, and willingness to take risks are key to operating like a startup.
Andy Jassy is set on reshaping Amazon into a startup-like structure, despite the tech giant employing over one million people globally.
“We want to flatten our organizations, to move faster and to drive more ownership,” the Amazon CEO said Tuesday during the Harvard Business Review Leadership Summit.
Jassy said that when companies scale, there are “all sorts of ways” they can start to slow down. In an effort to emulate the workflow of a startup, Amazon plans to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by 15%, and has also mandated a 5-day return to office to help drive innovation.
Amazon isn’t necessarily looking to revert to its venture-backed days, but it’s on a mission to regain some of the agility it had early on. Jassy said these are the six things big companies should do to feel like a startup.
1. Seek solutions to real customer problems
Jassy said that while a lot of tech companies “fall in love with technology” and build interesting products, they fail to solve “anything remarkable.”
Meanwhile, startups are on a mission to solve customer problems, the Amazon’s CEO said. With limited time and funding available, founders need to be laser-focused on building a product that will make a lasting impact on their target market.
“That’s what we got to make sure we spend our time on,” Jassy said.
The CEO added that even in times of tariff uncertainty and geopolitical risk, Amazon has continued to tell itself that it’s “here to make customers’ lives easier and better.” The CEO said all of Amazon’s businesses have areas that can be improved for customers, and that’s what it’s trying to stay focused on.
2. Hire a lot of builders
A strong culture of innovation is often a distinguishing factor of a startup. Jassy said that companies need to have a disproportionate number of builders, which he defines as people who like to invent products. Those people “dissect the customer experience,” figure out where there are gaps, and then recreate the product, he said.
Jassy said the process of building often begins with listening to what customers are struggling with.
“If you’re listening to them and you understand the need, then you can invent on their behalf,” Jassy said.
The demand for innovation is part of the reason Amazon enacted a five-day return-to-office policy. Jassy said that “invention is stronger” when employees can work together in person.
3. Think like an owner
Jassy said companies that want to operate like startups also need owners. That means people “who really feel accountable,” the CEO said.
“You need people to think about, what would I do if this were my money? What would I do if I owned all the resources?” Jassy said.
Jassy said the company’s effort to flatten its workforce is about making employees return to that ownership mindset.
4. Move quick
Amazon has been on a mission to slash its bureaucratic practices, whether through a “no bureaucracy” email alias or by reducing management layers.
“As you get bigger, especially as you have a lot of managers, they keep layering in processes, and pretty soon you have process upon process upon process,” Jassy said. “That really slows people down so they can’t get the real work done.”
In his former role when he was managing Amazon Web Services, Jassy said he spoke to a lot of CEOs who would tell him they were too large to move quickly.
Jassy said he believes speed is a “leadership decision.” However, if companies want to move fast, Jassy said they need to figure out what’s slowing them down and get rid of those barriers.
5. ‘Be scrappy’
Jassy said that companies can’t assign 50 to 100 people for every new project that needs to be completed. When Amazon started its computing service, it had 13 people, Jassy said.
“You can get going with a small number of people and build something that people actually find resonant,” Jassy said, adding that companies can “keep iterating from there.”
6. Take risks
When companies expand, they often become increasingly risk-averse, Jassy said. The CEO said that highly driven, Type A personalities can fall into the mindset of playing it safe. Those types of people, whom Amazon often hires, aren’t used to failure and worry about being “ostracized if they get it wrong,” Jassy said.
Jassy said the “only way” to create something unique is to do something different than what others have done.
“And you have to be willing to take risk and be willing to fail sometimes,” the CEO said.
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
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