One contribution to Amazon's success was also the great culling of (potential) competitors after the dotcom burst. They were really lucky to rake in a 700 million investment barely a month before the crash, and most competitors afterwards had a hard time raising serious money.
Now sure you can argue that there's strategies you can pick that maximise your chances of abusing these crashes, but they're very hard to predict and if they don't come you might lose out, and I don't think Bezos ever anticipated the dotcom bubble.
So chance and timing really play a gigantic role in creating successful businesses, there are not always secrets or geniuses behind successful enterprise.
So what then is the secret sauce?
Generally big payouts don't come from a sure thing; you have to take multiple risks that could potentially have big payouts and survive long enough for one or more of them to pan-out.
Edit: for formatting
Right time and place, luck, skill and money in varying relative quantities. People focus on the skills, not unimportant by all means, but it is not the secret sauce.