I'm meeting Jeff Bezos tonight-- what should I ask him? | Hacker News Reader

I'm meeting Jeff Bezos tonight-- what should I ask him?

23 pointsjoshwa42 comments

Going to an event at NYU/Stern tonight, where Jeff Bezos will be speaking, as well as the private reception afterwards.

Anything that fellow HNers would like me to ask him?

Bezos had gone on record many times as saying that Amazon tries out a lot of things on their site(s), and then gauges reaction to them based on usage. He talks about how inexpensive it is to test something new because you can just put it out there.

Over the years, I've found Amazon becoming more and more cluttered. I find myself becoming blind to useful new features because they are hidden in amongst blogs, plogs, video testimonials, recommendation, lions and tigers and bears.

In aerospace, there's the notion of new displays "buying their way into the cockpit", which is not about money, but about being worthwhile enough to share the valuable real estate with other displays. There is an acknowledgement that the existing displays will either get smaller or viewed less or both.

I'd be interested in hearing how he thinks about the fracturing of attention that occurs when there is so stuff on Amazon's pages. There's a real cost associated with that, and it feels like Amazon is not paying attention to it at all.

I find that Amazon is getting better all the time. Eg. the recommendation system is like "magic" - the books it recommends are actually highly relevant to me.

I agree on recommendations.

But have you ever read a plog?

Most people aren't laser-focused they're on Amazon - it's more like browsing in a store. Why do you think shopping is considered an activity instead of a task? If they're doing micro-testing, I can guarantee they only keep the features that increase browsing, time spent, dollars spent, etc. If it hits the mainstream, it's because testing proved it increased the metrics Amazon cares about.

I really like this point. I use Amazon a fair bit, but I wish there was a way for me to turn off half the stuff on their page. Recommendations, "users also bought" etc are not things I care about 90% of the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/B_testing

Are they planning to provide a good portal/software management for all their offerings (S3/EC2 etc.). Why do most of the hard part, but just not care about the last touch; the way a user interacts with them?

Their offerings are awesome, but they need to improve the interface with them, and make them more user friendly.

Have you tried the Firefox extensions?

http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?ex...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3247

Yes. And there is scalr too, but it would have been much better if Amazon provided a very robust solution themselves, as they know their systems better than anybody else.

Then Google's app engine would really pale in comparison to Amazon's offering. Right now google is providing an engine that scales up, and which is very easy to get started (their main advantage), but the downside you have to be tied to a very cripled enviroment.

If Amazon provided the glue that sticks all their offerings into one comprehensive package that is easy to use that this would be the best of both worlds. Who would even use google's app engine where you can have great scalability, easy to use, and have your own linux systems running on Amazon?

Ask him if Amazon intends to attack any other niche vertical markets. Recently they have gotten involved with footwear via endless.com http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/01/05/amazoncom-launches-inde...

Since I operate an ecommerce statup in a niche market (motorcycle gear - revzilla.com) , his answer to that is very interesting to me.

What does he know now that he didn't know when he started Amazon? What would he now do differently?

But everyone asks this question, and the response is always the same. You can ask a question like this if you're getting a written response, but when you're asking someone to immediately think of things in person and then justify them on the spot, it doesn't work well.

What is Amazon's strategy around an offering (EC2/S3) that wouldn't be subject to the PATRIOT act for those of us who aren't American? (ie the rest of the world)

One of the biggest gaps to me using AWS as a Canadian is that I would face a firestorm of crap for storing personal information that could be mined at the whims of US services.

Any plans to open/license S3 to someone in Canada or the EU?

What is Amazon's strategy regarding digital media sales? Their MP3 store is built around open standards, but Unbox video is tightly DRMed and doesn't even run on Macs, and their Kindle books only work on a single, closed device. Is this all purely tactical based on the individual markets? Do they have a long-term vision for how digital media ought to work?

Not sure about Unbox, but Kindle is just doing what the iTunes did - start out locked so that media owners agree to get on board, then once they're addicted to your revenue stream, then you can pry some openness out of them if you want (or any other concession for that matter).

What counter intuitive things have they learned by analyzing all their user data?

Who came up with the brilliant idea for EC2/S3?

In all honesty, if you have ever wondered what to do about the cycles and storage that went unused or underused in your datacenters (and the effect of said on operating profit and loss), I have to wonder who wouldn't have come up with it eventually.

Amazon came up with a way to rent supercomputing facilities to people outside of academia, and continue to refine the offerings. I'm a little surprised it took this long, but that could just be a reflection of Amazon being the first to get it mostly-right for a maturing market.

I'd be more interested in their thought process in terms of "OK, we can offer this, but it's too risky to offer that, and a waste of time to implement that..." That could be enlightening.

How many Kindles has Amazon sold :)

And does he have as much faith in Kindle as he did in "Ginger"?

ask him when I can buy a kindle without a ridiculous waiting list.

I usually do not ask celebrities about their work. it quickly puts you in the "eager follower category" and gives you little chance of getting outside of that. I think i would ask Jeff what his favorite beer was, and if you could take him out for one sometime. I suggest just talking to him like a friend. You will have time for work later.

his values about software patents & why is he forcing the 1-click patent onto the EU

Have you looked at buying Heroku?

I would ask Jeff:

1) What would you attribute your success to?

2) What was the early days of Amazon like? When did you realize that you can change the way people buy books (and anything for that matter) for ever?

Please ask him about his (all time favorite) reading list and report back ;)

Probably not very interesting for most people, but I'd be curious if they're planning on opening an Italy office.

I'm curious because I worked for an Italian online bookseller for a few years.

Who had the fantastic idea to hire Werner Vogels as the CTO of Amazon?

Fact that he was a student of Andrew S. Tanenbaum might have made this decision a lot easier.

I'd love to know how he considers an investment when it is brought to him and if/how he seeks out his investments.

Also, where does he believe e-commerce is going? Mobile? Why?

What was the most frequent mistake the company made?

http://ben.casnocha.com/2007/08/what-was-your-m.html

Are they interested in adding features like global availability zone regions, private availability zones, various security compliance (PCI, CISP, etc...)?

Note: see followup here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=164849

Why not enter the search market again? A9 had some cool features... and it would be fun to access that type of data via EC2.

and about the right to read. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html http://diveintomark.org/archives/2007/11/19/the-future-of-re...

Are you planning a free version of AWS to compete with Google App Engine?

In general, what does App Engine mean for AWS?

What is minimum amount of money for a startup today?

Can I get a free Kindle?

lol No one thought that was funny? Yeks!

No, funny would have been: Would you like to see the dessert menu, sir?

Why is six afraid of seven? :)

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