Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
aboutamazon.com
aboutamazon.com
It had a name, and that name was "Cadabra".
It didn't become Amazon until Jeff watched a documentary about the Amazon River. His lawyer had already turned up his nose at "Cadabra", and Jeff was looking for something else.
It's also worth noting that the idea didn't grow over time - Jeff always intended to build something like "Sears for the 21st century". The bookstore was just the way in, not the long term plan.
ps. amazon employee #2
Also, hello mr famous internet person: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Davis_(programmer)
Got this from your Wiki entry. Hats off to you dear sir!
True. I've heard (employee #20k-something, joined in early 2008) that the issue with Cadabra was its resemblance to the sound of the word "cadaver".
I doubt that he started out imagining he would build the world's biggest cloud hosting platform or open the first chain of checkoutless grocery stores.
I always find retrospective and hypothetical discussions of idea genesis and maturation fascinating.
Amazon retail aside, I wonder if you (or anyone else) would be willing to give perspective on AWS:
Was it similarly fully formed on conception?
I’ve heard the (potentially stylized) stories about holiday traffic bursts, selling off-season compute to startups, etc.
But assuming AWS the idea did need to grow with increased perspective, the times, and experience - do you think AWS could have become what it is today if that had been the goal from the onset?
Giving it the benefit of the doubt, I could not help but wonder if this was the Usenet post you saw back in the day that made you apply for a job at Amazon :)
I won't ask what Jeff did wrong for obvious reasons, but what did he do really well?
I loved your other comment on here about living a fulfilled life. Thanks for sharing.
Were there any choices in the first few years that you think made a particularly big difference in setting Amazon up for what it is today? Anything you're particularly proud of that you did there?
I hope it worked out for you! Early days employees bear a high risk.
How was Amazon back then when only a handful people ran the show? Any lessons to be learned?
Just curious, no agenda, I grew up on the Sears Catalogue.
Offhand it sounds a bit too close to cadaver for the marketing dept, but what would a legal objection be?
That logo is brilliant.
Oh wow that's nice. Yeah, Amazon was definitely a better name choice.
Please tell me you held onto your stock
1) Any cool anecdotes from Amazon that you can tell?
2) Any advice you have for young entrepreneurs looking to uproar an industry?
I wonder if you have an opinion on this bit of gossip: Is there any relationship between Jeff's departure and this FTC Tips scandal? https://komonews.com/news/local/amazon-took-away-62-million-... The only evidence I see is relating to their very similar timing of publication.
Lol, so your take is that you have a better handle on the history of Amazon than its founder? He is likely referring to a point in time when Amazon was just an idea.
> It had a name, and that name was "Cadabra".
This seems like nitpicking. Lots of projects start out with long forgotten names. I'm involved in one that's pretty successful, but you can see from the code base the name evolved over time (~15 years). Codenames and attempts at product placing in the market evolve, stuff becomes myth or forgotten. I can absolve Bezos (this once) of not remembering exactly what that embryonic Amazon was to begin with, or was called, because it was ~25 years ago, probably during a period of great turmoil.
And the tone of this comment feels like someone who checked out of the company too early and feels a bit sour at doing so. I say this as a single digit employee who could have made a small fortune a couple of times but either bottled it, or the gig wasn't right for me. I missed out on some nice payouts, but I'm not that sour about it. It was my choice.
Jeff's pitch at the time (1997); so on point, so precise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWRbTnE1PEM
> The question I was asked most frequently at that time was, “What’s the internet?” Blessedly, I haven’t had to explain that in a long while.
Here's Jeff explaining the Internet (at a TED talk): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMKNUylmanQ
> Invention. Invention is the root of our success. We’ve done crazy things together, and then made them normal... If you get it right, a few years after a surprising invention, the new thing has become normal. People yawn. And that yawn is the greatest compliment an inventor can receive.
Jeff speaking about innovation, invention (based on first principles), making data-driven decisions (and also when to not trust data), learned helplessness at Stanford (2005): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhnDvvNS8zQ
> When times have been good, you’ve been humble.
Heh. Reminds me of this 2008 lecture where Jeff is selling AWS to startup school students: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nKfFHuouzA Classic.
> Amazon couldn’t be better positioned for the future. We are firing on all cylinders, just as the world needs us to.
Not sure about that last part, Jeff.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
For reference, I'm someone who hadn't used amazon (i'm in Australia, and I've just had no need). These holidays was my first real experience with the amazon brand and the amazon website.
What I saw was an incredibly user hostile site: reviews mashed together from all over the world, and you can't even be sure whether they're reviewing the right product or the seller. Search that doesn't work and you're never really sure what you're getting and from whom. I was searching for keyboard trays and it quickly became apparent various products were all the same but just re-labelled cheap chinese output.
When I went to check out, i had at least 3 dark patterns encountered where Amazon was directly trying to screw me: trying to trick me to sign up for prime, promising free shipping on the click but then default you out of it when you check out until you go searching for it, and continually spamming me with offers for whatever their streaming service is.
They weren't "customer first", they were actively customer hostile. I don't understand how this keeps getting repeated, unless their tech side is completely different from their consumer side...
Agreed! He knew exactly what he was doing.
Interesting that he talks about attention being a scarce resource. Things did not improve from that point....
I'm wondering for what else it is day 1, right now.
I know cryptocurrencies have been booming, it's not clear exactly if they will continue to boom but the space is already so big that one has to really read a lot to catch up.
What else seems like a promising field that one could go 100% into right now to bet on?
Biotech/bioinformatics/bioengineering.
That isn't meant to take away from your question. As a developer I'm often focused on leaf concerns. Your question is more about broad strokes and I have to remind myself to think about fundamental changes.
Come on man, that's just bs. From wikipedia:
> Researchers working at Bell Labs are credited with the development of radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, the photovoltaic cell, the charge-coupled device (CCD), information theory, the Unix operating system, and the programming languages B, C, C++, S, SNOBOL, AWK, AMPL, and others. Nine Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories.
Previously, the lab was protected by an agreement between the US and AT&T where AT&T has a lawful monopoly but there were only so much it can earn and X% will always go to fundamental research, and that's why the lab was so successful.
That all changed when the federal government decided to break AT&T up in 1983. The for profit baby bells had no incentive to keep the lab and they proceeded to ruin it.
If you want to read a great book about when Bell Labs was really Bell Labs:
> We pioneered customer reviews, 1-Click, personalized recommendations, Prime’s insanely-fast shipping, Just Walk Out shopping, the Climate Pledge, Kindle, Alexa, marketplace, infrastructure cloud computing, Career Choice, and much more.
1-click was hardly an "invention" IMO, the Kindle was "just another e-book reader" (arguably the best, but they did not "invent" the concept), Alexa is a Siri clone, and so forth.
Only "infrastructure cloud computing" is something there Amazon really took the lead and invented stuff. Not a small thing, but also hardly worthy of the bold claim in the article. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Sun, and many other companies seem to have done more invention than Amazon.
> I don’t know of another company
He didn't say contemporary company.
Jeff Bezos bragging about this is for sure illustrative of the dissonance billionaires have over the value of their companies.
I tend to look at Amazon and Apple and wonder. Both of them are valued at trillion dollars but the path couldn't have been more different. Apple being very deliberate, very long term, sometimes decade or more long, planning. Amazon on the other hand, hundreds of experiments, most fail and some succeed spectacularly. I remember an Amazon exec comparing these experiments to Cambrian explosion and I think it beautifully captures Amazon's DNA.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/03/jeff-bezo...
* public cloud computing -- Amazon got it to work in a scalable and secure way.
* S3 object storage
* Dynamo -- A distributed, key-value store that ended up in products from S3 to Cassandra
* Redshift -- First cloud SQL data warehouse with ground-breaking ease of use
* RDS -- Cloud relational databases
* Amazon Aurora -- Relational DBMS that pushes the log and store into a virtualized, replicated storage layer
They've been particularly innovative in applications related to data.
When he started selling just books, he was laughed at by some people; but he had a why behind starting off with books. One thing is certain, Bezos has stayed consistent on his principles. His annual letters to his shareholders contain a lot of business wisdom.
I wrote about him covering the theme: Thinking as a means of leverage in https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/jeff-bezos-amazon-an...
As a founder of Amazon - having built Amazon from nothing, Bezos probably had certain in-built persona and gravitas which probably helped with leadership talent acquisition and vision setting in all domains of the business universe. The opportunity to report to Jeff Bezos was probably a huge selling point - no matter what industry you were coming from.
Its interesting Amazon never attempted to give Andy Jassy a trial run as a public facing COO running both sides of the house.
I do agree that the shitstorm over warehouse workers, automation, unionization etc. is only going to get a lot worse over the next few years, and Jassy may even find handling that becoming his primary job.
As noted by others, the shipping cost-to-item-average-cost ratio is precisely why Jeff chose books to start with. But yes, he also looked way out (even if he couldn't see as clearly as some people seem to think he could).
Though i imagine a lot of reasons justified books.
It's amazing what he's been able to do. Good for him.
A bold claim for a company widely known to exploit and underpay workers in distribution warehouses.
There has to be some comparison here. You can't say "underpay" and leave it at that.
You might try and weasel and say "underpay compared to a decent living wage". Well, I have news for you - even that's relative.
A fair comparison would be "underpay compared to the rest of the warehouse industry". Which begs the question - why do people go work for Amazon, then? Are they trapped by not being able to leave the small towns where Amazon hires? Doesn't sound likely. Could it be that their overall conditions are more or less on par, or quite probably somewhat better than the rest of the industry?
I'm going to call your bullshit and say what I think directly: Amazon is a cheap target for young idealists simply because it's visible, it's fashionable to attack, makes a lot of money overall, and most people attacking it have no idea what's a good pay for that kind of work because they never did that kind of work.
Maybe its a target because is a behemoth of a target.
Amazon is so big US states were competing in a bezos d*k sucking competition to have their hq built in their state.
A company famous for paying zero taxes and its biggest slice of workforce are being optimised like a computer program to squeeze every last $ they can produce at the expense of the workforce.
So if amazon is a bad target what else should be then? Or maybe everything is fine and the invisible hand is going to fix all of the problems?
Amazon's choice to exploit workers might very well be an industry standard, but this doesn't make it a choice any less: Amazon boasts about leading on important social issues, but that's the real bullshit. They just do as the others, no virtue at all. Being in the strong position, they might have the opportunity to make the industry fairer, but they willingly decided not even to try.
I like how in your world megacorp automatically get the benefit of doubt, while people pissing in their pants because they cannot go to the bathroom are "relatively" fine.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/02/amazon-...
Easy targets are the best targers.
Amazon is the raise of centralized retail and computing.
Furthermore replacing store workers with fully appized gig delivery drivers is probably no net gain for small towns.
You don't have to be a "young idealist" to be worried about Amazon eating everyones lunch.
Lowest workers for Jeff are just cogs in the machine.
I also wonder what's the overall CO2 footprint of Amazon and what's their record about recycling, repairing, etc. I know they propose some tools to help for that and they may even be more efficient than others, but as a company with "lead on social issues", it needs to have more than "a lead", it needs to question its very own existence. So the mail of Bezos, is, in my view, not ambitious at all.
“Amazon is what it is because of invention. We do crazy things together and then make them normal. We pioneered customer reviews, 1-Click, personalized recommendations, Prime’s insanely-fast shipping, Just Walk Out shopping, the Climate Pledge, Kindle, Alexa, marketplace, infrastructure cloud computing, Career Choice, and much more,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “If you do it right, a few years after a surprising invention, the new thing has become normal. People yawn. That yawn is the greatest compliment an inventor can receive. When you look at our financial results, what you’re actually seeing are the long-run cumulative results of invention. Right now I see Amazon at its most inventive ever, making it an optimal time for this transition.” "
Here's the quote.
Perhaps, but you didn't get them right (nobody did so far).
> 1-Click
Reminds me of the guy who invented "half-click" buying, i.e. you buy on the mousedown event.
I expect Amazon to be as ambitious as ever. Though, I am slightly afraid of a shift in focus towards AWS over retail. But I suspect Jassy's selection had to do with fears that a pick from the retail side may see Jassy as a threat and may seek to undermine AWS in an effort to keep him in check.
Apple Silicon Macs aren’t really raking in cash yet, but Mac sales are up $1B in the last quarter, so by time transition is complete they will be.
I think Facebook, too, could use a new face at the top as a matter of fact.
Source: my humble opinion, and I worked at AWS and met him several times.
With Jobs, it sounded like there was a singular personality role that was a chaotic influence in the company. That wasn't the only thing that made Apple great, but were people throughout the company inspired to be more like Jobs?
>Fellow Amazonians:
>I’m excited to announce that this Q3 I’ll transition to Executive Chair of the Amazon Board and Andy Jassy will become CEO. In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives. Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence.
This reads to me as Jeff Bezos doesn't want the boring job of running AWS and Amazon anymore. He want something new,
>As Exec Chair I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions.
There are plenty of Growth left in Amazon and AWS. But that is not as exiting as Blue Origin or Funding other initiative via Day 1 Fund.
I still remember when Amazon was only selling Books. People laughed, Media Laughed, and I guess most of us laughed.
Amazon is now a ~$1.6 Trillion Dollar Company.
What an era.
It's $280.5 billion in revenue in 2019 put it above the GDP of Romania, Peru, Ukraine, etc.
Corporations should never be allowed to get this large.
Will this simple thing called retail produce yet more trillion dollar companies, or is it running out of gas? Will there be an Amazon killer? History suggests yes.
Looks like he still intends to run his philanthropies, Blue Origin, and the Post, but after the type of run he has had, he's probably taking some more free time while he's healthy.
I try not to fall into the "cult of personality" trap, but Amazon is where it is _because_ of Bezos, and it'll be fascinating to watch how the transition plays out with the Jassy era.
Did we? I just remember thinking oh neat and buying a bunch of books.
Perhaps I'm overly cynical, but I don't think they made these moves because of altruism. They do pay their warehouse employees more than some warehouses, and people talk about changing jobs to work at Amazon because the pay is better. But they also talk about how demanding/grueling it is. I'm not sure Amazon could get people to do this work, for this many hours on end (in some cases allegedly without sufficient bathroom breaks) for less than $15/hr.
As for the climate, I think they would have been clobbered by environmentalists had they not done this. So while it's good that they pay their employees more than minimum wage, and they make efforts to reduce their environmental footprint, I view both of these moves as being in service of the bottom line.
Before that I think they had an adaption of the pay scale for higher-earning employees where part of compensation was in stock. But if you're making minimum wage you probably don't want to deal with selling shares, waiting for vesting, reporting taxes etc.
> As for the climate, I think they would have been clobbered by environmentalists had they not done this.
For a tech company moves like this are critical for hiring. Amazon's reputation has always been a place to work out of college until your shares vest, and then you quit because management is abusing you. So they probably would like to be thought of as less evil.
Most people have no idea what AWS is, but know what Amazon the consumer business is.
AWS is only well known among tech circles.
Their current logo, which smiles from A to Z (buy everything from A to Z!) hasn't always been the logo- as they started out just selling books with a vastly different image.
Here's an interesting journey through the logos: https://www.freelogodesign.org/blog/2018/09/10/the-amazon-lo...
javascript didn't exist.
existing retail mail order couldn't deal with "almost in time" inventory.
there were no "web frameworks".
so it wasn't a choice to write it ourselves, it was the only possible thing to do.
This, son, is the market at play. Without regulations to raise the minimum wage for everyone, companies are supposed to raise it to compete. Amazon has chosen to raise it for publicity, to compete, or by pure generosity. In the mean time, most American workers are paid well below minimum wage, and the situation is not getting better, I should even say: the situation is getting worse. Amazon has given ammunition for people to claim that see, companies are doing the right thing, all is well.
Edit: risking -> risky; fixed life sentence
I like Apple, but there is quite a seam with the Jobs/Cook transition. That seam is the overly minimalistic industrial design patterns witnessed in the butterfly keyboard, vanishing ports, trashcan Mac, etc. They seem to finally be coming around on this.
Bill gates is still renting.
What do you think he was going to do with all that cash.
After few years he will review his life after vacationing becomes dull for the workhorse.
What does that mean?
He shares the vision of Gerard O'Neill. Making it reality will require large amounts of money.
“ Keep inventing, and don’t despair when at first the idea looks crazy. Remember to wander. Let curiosity be your compass. It remains Day 1.”. - Jeff Bezos
We will have Apple (Tim Cook), Amazon (Andy Jassy), Alphabet (Sundar Pichai), Microsoft (Satya Nadella & Steve Ballmer) all taking over from non-MBA founders. Facebook is next in size and has Sheryl Sandberg as COO but don't know if Mark Zuckerberg would ever hand over the reins.
Why don't non-MBAs manage to get to the top?
Because smart and talented people who are interested in business or administration tend to go on and study it. It’s self selecting. I think maybe you are imprinting “MBA” as some sort of personality? I know designers, coders and biologists with MBAs. It’s just an accreditation.
Every business has its roots or foundation with makers. But that doesn’t mean a chef should be running McDonalds, or a woodworker should be running Home Depot...
And Musk also has Tesla (including solar), Open AI, Boring, Neuralink, and lots of tweeting...
Keeping a healthy culture in a small company seems feasible. Not sure about large companies?
All those creating the value. Many of them having poor working conditions and living off social welfare programs. One guy at the top skimming everything. Is he really worth all those billions? Could he survive on a little less and share with those doing the work? Or is his contribution really more than all those million combined..?
Decades later. We see in fact they are "to the moon" financially and with Blue Origin. Well played. Well played.
"I don’t know of another company with an
invention track record as good as Amazon’s,"
- Jeff Bezos
Maybe we should consider -- oh I don't know, Bell Telephone, which had Bell Laboratories?
Which won 13* Nobel Prizes for revolutionary, groundbreaking research about the Transistor and created and funded a "Legal Typesetting System" on which 90% of overall computer operating systems are descended from!
Even ignoring Bell Laboratories, we could look at IBM, which created the modern home computer market! Or Xerox PARC! Or Apple!
* - or 9, my brain is giving me two numbers on that and I don't remember which one it was
"For me, it's day 2. I’m excited about this transition."
So that would be a logical step, although I'm doubtful how effective the Amazon principles would be for spaceflight.
Also, I think the claim to have pioneered "marketplace" might be exaggerated. I would say eBay lead in that department, so, unless Amazon Marketplace was around before 1995, I don't think this is correct. Or, am I missing something here? I think the essential bit is having third party sellers, but Amazon does go to some lengths to make it semi-transparent to buy from a Marketplace seller.
Perhaps tech vs non-tech background is not that important a factor for being a successful leader of technology company. Or can we say that Amazon/AWS and Intel are different kinds of organization based on their core competencies?
But, for my money, the world is an immeasurably better place for the presence Jeff Bezos and Amazon.
Thanks Jeff!
[imitates Bezos]
With that said, I’m out. Don’t call me, I’ll call you. If I don’t show up for a meeting, it’s because I’m paid and gonna do whatever tf I feel like for the rest of my life. Peace!
Thank you, Jeff.
“Keep inventing, and don’t despair when at first the idea looks crazy. Remember to wander. Let curiosity be your compass. It remains Day 1.
Jeff”
AWS head will take over as new CEO.
As Exec Chair I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions. I’ve never had more energy, and this isn’t about retiring. I’m super passionate about the impact I think these organizations can have.
- Day 1 Fund
- Bezos Earth Fund
- Blue Origin
- The Washington Post
So a combination of philanthropy, crazy cutting-edge tech, and media. He'll still be pretty busy haha
That said, I think it can use his focus more than anything else (and he is investing 1B/year in it)
After hours traders seem to like this move.
Now I am trying to purge Amazon from my life, and it is hard. Much more difficult than Google. I had even started to use their grocery deliveries during Covid lockdowns. Maybe if it was Jeff's doing, and he is gone, I could justify continuing to buy from Amazon. But I guess not.
Interesting that many say AWS is the actual business of Amazon, and they may get rid of the rest. It seems to me AWS would be the easiest to replace, after all, there are lots of cloud standards. Can't you just take your Docker images and publish them somewhere else?
It seems much more difficult to me to replace the aggregation and efficient logistics. In fact I don't see any competition.
Now that they want to see me dead, I want to see Amazon dead, but I have little hopes for it.
Their achilles heel might be trust - online reviews are almost completely broken now, and complaints about fake products are rising. Their answer to the latter seems to be to steal successful products and sell them as "Amazon Basics", but that is evil and also won't work for having "everything".
Another issue could be people returning their stuff or even damaged goods. I see a surprising number of people who have no ethical qualms about returning things they already used or that are broken.
Maybe the future will be to buy directly from producers? That seems to be the only way to avoid the fake products? So someone should come up with ways to make it easy for producers to sell their products online, or at least provide a chain of trust.
Trump was responsible for that decision, that’s who.
(This is a snarky comment that deserves to get downvoted, couldn't help it.)
For instance, being paraded in front of Congress committees so each member can get a little sound bite shitting on him.
Truly, we didn't deserve Bezos. Maybe he's realized that.