Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos knows a thing or two about building a successful business. Several analysts have predicted that Amazon will be the world's first company with a trillion dollar valuation, and Bezos recently become the second richest person on earth.

In his latest letter to Amazon shareholders published Wednesday, Bezos explains why he believes that centering a business around "obsessive customer focus" is the best way to succeed.

He also touches on Amazon's use of machine learning and artificial intelligence, one of the biggest trends in tech, and how it touches nearly every part of the company.

"Jeff, what does Day 2 look like?"
That's a question I just got at our most recent all-hands meeting. I've been reminding people that it's Day 1 for a couple of decades. I work in an Amazon building named Day 1, and when I moved buildings, I took the name with me. I spend time thinking about this topic.

"Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1."

To be sure, this kind of decline would happen in extreme slow motion. An established company might harvest Day 2 for decades, but the final result would still come.

I'm interested in the question, how do you fend off Day 2? What are the techniques and tactics? How do you keep the vitality of Day 1, even inside a large organization?

Such a question can't have a simple answer. There will be many elements, multiple paths, and many traps. I don't know the whole answer, but I may know bits of it. Here's a starter pack of essentials for Day 1 defense: customer obsession, a skeptical view of proxies, the eager adoption of external trends, and high velocity decision making.

David Fuller's view

I commend this letter to subscribers because Jeff Bezos is well known as one of the most successful people on the planet.  He is a creative, ambitious, original thinker and a perfectionist.  He is also very good at motivating his team, and not afraid of making a mistake.