Jeff Bezos once sat down with Warren Buffett and posed a question that has puzzled many observers of the famed investor. Why don’t more people simply copy your strategy? The approach seems straightforward enough on paper. Buy quality businesses. Hold them for the long haul. Let compounding work its magic.
Buffett’s reply cut straight through any illusion of complexity. “Oh, Jeff, that’s easy. My approach is a get-rich-slowly scheme. And people don’t like those.”
Bezos Shares the Exchange at a Recent Forum
The Amazon founder recounted the exchange during a 2025 appearance at the America Business Forum, as reported by Yahoo Finance. Then-Miami Mayor Francis Suarez had pressed him on the puzzle. Bezos laughed as he relayed Buffett’s words. Yet he quickly turned serious. The lesson carries weight far beyond stock picking.
“If you can think in terms of seven years instead of three years, and you can defer gratification and think long term, that will give you a head start against all of your competitors, because most people can’t do that,” Bezos explained. Short sentence. Long implication. Most executives chase quarterly results. Most investors chase the next hot tip. The few who resist gain an edge that compounds.
Buffett has repeated versions of this idea for decades. In his 1996 Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter he wrote, “If you aren’t willing to own a stock for 10 years, don’t even think about owning it for 10 minutes.” The message echoes. Time, not timing, drives returns. And time tests character more than intellect.
Bezos built Amazon on similar ground. He started the company in a garage in 1994 with a focus on customer obsession, invention and operational excellence. Early years brought skepticism. Profits stayed elusive while the firm poured money into infrastructure and expansion. Wall Street analysts questioned the model. Competitors copied features but rarely matched the patience. Amazon’s retail business lost money for years. AWS, now a profit engine, began as an internal project to solve the company’s own scaling problems.
But there’s more to the story than endurance. Bezos has long admired Buffett. At Amazon’s 2017 shareholder meeting he called the Berkshire chairman a hero and said he reads all his books. He resisted pressure to split Amazon’s shares for years, following Berkshire’s lead. The decision kept focus on long-term owners rather than traders chasing volatility. “Warren’s remarks are very meaningful to me,” Bezos said then, per CNBC.
And. The two men took different paths. Buffett bought stakes in mature companies with strong moats. Bezos created new markets and endured years of negative cash flow to dominate them. Their shared trait? Willingness to appear wrong for extended periods. Markets vote in the short term, Buffett likes to say. They weigh in the long term.
Recent reminders of this philosophy keep surfacing. In April 2026, Yahoo Finance revisited Bezos’ forum comments, tying them to broader billionaire approaches to planning. The piece highlighted how both men built fortunes by ignoring short-term noise. Bezos stressed that the principle applies to everything from operations to innovation. Pride in details others overlook. Obsession with customer experience even when it hurts near-term margins.
Buffett’s own record shows the power. Berkshire Hathaway’s stock has delivered compound annual returns around 20% over decades, turning modest sums into vast wealth. Yet the ride included painful drawdowns. The dot-com bust. The 2008 financial crisis. Critics declared the end of value investing more than once. Buffett kept buying. Or simply held. The snowball, as he and Charlie Munger described it, rolls slowly at first. Then momentum builds.
Bezos applied the idea inside a high-growth technology company. Amazon’s early investors needed extraordinary patience. The stock fell sharply after the 2000 bubble burst. It took years to recover. Executives faced pressure to show profits sooner. Bezos doubled down on the long view. He famously banned PowerPoint and pushed teams to write narrative memos instead. The practice forced clearer thinking. It also slowed decisions in the moment. That friction, he argued, improved outcomes over time.
Executives today face the opposite pressure. Activist investors demand faster returns. Social media amplifies every quarterly miss. Boards reward executives who deliver smooth earnings growth. The incentives favor three-year plans over seven-year bets. No surprise, then, that few copy Buffett. Or Bezos.
But some do. Brian Chesky of Airbnb has cited similar lessons from Buffett. Other founders speak privately about extending their mental time horizons. The challenge lies in execution. Thinking long term sounds easy in a conference speech. Sustaining it through layoffs, missed targets and board skepticism proves brutal.
So what separates those who succeed? Discipline in small things. Bezos spoke of taking pride in operational excellence, even the parts no customer sees. Buffett reads for hours each day, studies businesses deeply and avoids speculative fads. Both men built cultures that reward patience. Amazon’s leadership principles still include “Think Big” and “Bias for Action,” but they sit alongside a relentless focus on customer needs that may take years to pay off.
Recent market moves underscore the tension. Berkshire trimmed its Amazon stake in recent years, a decision some analysts linked to valuation and portfolio rebalancing rather than doubts about the company. The move generated discussion on X and in financial circles, yet it changes little about the underlying philosophy. Buffett has long said he doesn’t comment on individual holdings. His actions over decades speak louder.
Investors who adopt the mindset face practical hurdles. Capital allocators must convince stakeholders to accept volatility. Founders must resist the temptation to pivot every time growth slows. Employees need to believe the mission survives today’s challenges. None of this comes naturally. Human brains favor immediate rewards. Financial markets reward quarterly performance. Society celebrates overnight successes that rarely exist.
Bezos closed his remarks with a note of realism. There’s “a lot of truth in that for everything,” he said of Buffett’s observation. The comment suggests the principle extends past investing. It applies to scientific research, infrastructure projects, education reform. Any endeavor where results arrive slowly rewards those who plan for the long arc.
Buffett turns 96 this year. Bezos, in his early 60s, splits time between Amazon, Blue Origin and other ventures. Their conversation, shared years after it occurred, offers a rare window into how two of the most successful capitalists of their era view competition. Not as a battle of ideas alone. But as a contest of endurance.
Most participants drop out early. The strategy is simple. The execution never is. Those who stick around collect the returns others forfeit. Seven years instead of three. Deferred gratification instead of instant validation. A head start against competitors who cannot wait.
The edge persists. Few claim it.
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