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Comment by marricks | Hacker News Reader

"Bezos achieved" it's never one person that changes the world, it's the conditions being ripe for it along with some bloke having enough seed money and brutal determination to make it happen.

- Internet was just starting to be a thing in the 90's so right time to capitalize on a new easier way to sell things

- Bezos got hundreds of thousands of dollars in money from his parents to start his book empire. It's not like he was a rags to riches story, they never are.

- Amazon warehouse workers suffer nearly 2x the numbers of bodily injuries[1] and it's almost like the company expects (and wants) to burn through these workers bodies because they have a ridiculously high turnover rate[2]

If he didn't do it someone else would have and for all we know they could have broken less bodies along the way.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/01/study-amazon-workers-injured...

[2] https://labor411.org/411-blog/warehouse-worker-turnover-rate...

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> "Bezos achieved" it's never one person that changes the world, it's the conditions being ripe for it along with some bloke having enough seed money and brutal determination to make it happen.

IMO Bezos's main achievement was to get through the dot com bubble by keeping enough investors in so that the company wouldn't collapse. Execution probably played a role, but I think what played a bigger role were his extremely good contacts to wall street and the money owning elite in general. Keeping people convinced that your "books.com" remains a fine investment while the "pets.com"s around you are dying like flies is an achievement IMO.

>It's not like he was a rags to riches story, they virtually never are.

>Bezos got hundreds of thousands of dollars in money from his parents

still, going from e.g 600k (300k in 94) to trillion dollar company is impressive as hell

how many startups do receive way, way more than that and fail?

> how many startups do receive way, way more than that and fail?

There is always the assumption that people failed because they're stupid, and some people succeed because they're genius. This is nonsense. Of course Dr Evil, I mean, Bezos, has a strong work ethic, intelligence, and business drive, but this is not guarantee of anything. He was doing the right thing at the right time, period. He got billions of dollars to apply a business strategy that worked well for the market conditions, but this is not because he is so different from other business people.

Honestly, I don't know if I buy it.

Even today, when I buy online from a small business, it's normal to wait 3-5 business days for the order to be processed and a shipping label to be created, 1-2 days for the product to enter shipping system, and 3-5 more days for delivery. I routinely wait 2-3 weeks for popular stuff from decently big websites that are clearly 10000000X smaller than Amazon.

Meanwhile, Amazon hits same day and next day shipping all the time zero issue.

Amazon wasn't the right thing at the right time. It imagined a different type of delivery that no one else today gets anywhere near. Amazon is to delivery what Apple is to hardware. It's different and not repeatable no matter who tries.

I try to support smaller shops all the time, but it's definitely frustrating to wait 2-3 weeks on a delivery that know Amazon will next day to me.

Shout out to local pet foodstore hollywood feed which puts a branded car at each location and does physical deliveries. Y'all beat Amazon with a 30 minute delivery. Can't argue with results.

The example of same/next day delivery doesn't suggest anything special about Amazon though. It's really just an argument of economies of scale.

A small business usually only addresses a very specialized part of the market so they don't really ship that much stuff and thus can't hire that many people to deal with shipping without a huge overhead. However, if you stack thousands of businesses onto a marketplace, and then handle logistics for all of them, now there's much less overhead: the same shipment can combine many different specialized things.

Also fwiw Amazon is by far not a pioneer of fast delivery. Same day delivery has been around in densely poplated places (like in China) years before Amazon even started trialing the service.

Sorry mate, but I'm going to call bullshit on this. I've grown a home-based eCommerce business from nothing to 400k sales a year with 5000+ active SKUs.

Once you've hit around 5-10 sales per day, there is absolutely nothing physically stopping anyone from doing same-day delivery apart from poor inventory management or a simple unwillingness to do so (which is valid; some people can't work every day due to family commitments).

> 5000+ active SKUs.

You have provided evidence for the exact same point I'm making, economies of scale. You have a large ecommerce business with a variety of things to sell so you benefit from economies of scale in shipping.

Most small individual sellers have maybe like 50 SKUs which makes it prohibitively expensive to do same day delivery.

No, I think you've missed the point. 5000+ SKUs make the logistics _harder_, not easier.

Back when we only had a couple of dozen SKUs, it was much easier to get everything out same day. Package them all in the same envelope, stick in a red post box. Done.

It doesn't make logistics easier, but it makes it worth investing resources into. Economies of scale means you get more value for the resources you do invest into logistics.

Anecdotally, almost all small online businesses I've seen the back end of do not have a dedicated logistics person. When there's only a handful of different kinds of stuff to ship, shipping becomes an extra low-skill task usually given to whoever is free. They also usually do not have a sophisticated inventory management system (because it is not worth it to purchase one), and instead use spreadsheets that are manually managed.

Secondly, sending out stuff same-day is not even close to same-day _delivery_. For that you need to control all aspects of the logistics chain, which only makes sense at Amazon scales. I've encountered many times where I've ordered things, had a label created the same day but then with no progress for a week. After contacting the seller, it turned out the courier only picks up packages from their warehouse once every 3 days, and then takes another couple of days to "ingest" it and do the origin scan.

Zappos and others have done it (Zappos did it better, even), but most were sucked up or forced out by Amazon as it had all the momentum. That's exactly being in the right place at the right time.

> Amazon is to delivery what Apple is to hardware

That's a key point. Amazon isn't an ecomm company. It's a logistics / fulfillment company. It markets, sells and delivers commodities.

It's magic is execution.

Which is a lesson for all of us. That is, average idea...world beating execution.

>but this is not because he is so different from other business people.

What makes you think so?

It's possible he's special, but you often see the pattern that someone starts a highly successful company, but then go on to start other companies that don't do well. That they can't replicate their success suggests luck or circumstance was involved.

And there is always the possibility that the CEO wasn't the one to make the company successful. A company isn't one person.

Mainly because some people loathe the idea that they aren't entitled to a share of what Bezos created so they prefer to view his success as something anyone could have done if only for xyz.

> how many startups do receive way, way more than that and fail?

This is not the right way to look at it. In a competitive market obviously only a few, or one will survive.

The point is, how many "rags to riches" startup can you think of? The ones with founders who did not have a safety net. The 600k (or 300k in 94) is immaterial, he could have also done it with zero capital. What matters is he was able to take risks because of his family's safety net. He would never be homeless if he failed.

The risks he could take were very different than one who refinanced their home to fund their startup.

So let him thank his parents. What’s the problem? Are you suggesting that everyone should average down to being poor? Children are an extension of their parents. Genetically and socially.

I'm suggesting that ignoring the role of their parents is hypocrisy.

We don’t really know how impressive it is, a lot of founders made it huge in that golden time period even for terrible ideas that died shortly after, and network effects always crown one or two as massively disproportionate winners in each area.

If you acknowledge that timing, connections, background and network effects dominate the equation (if Bezos was 2 years late, is there any doubt there’d be a “different” one?), you realize there’s something gross about how wealth is distributed.

There’s definitely doubt about another Amazon appearing!

Sure we might get a dominating e-store that sells goods, that’s easy to imagine. But that same company also creating the largest cloud provider, being the largest distributor, going international, creating the kindle, now property acquisition, and so on. Yeah I do doubt there’d be another Amazon.

AWS wasn't Bezos, it was a whole squad of Amazon execs and employees and an idea that formed over a long time period through many people, if anything it proves the opposite point that he deserves outsize rewards. The rest of the success makes a ton of sense in context (Kindle and distribution from becoming the network-effect winning e-commerce store/bookstore).

>if Bezos was 2 years late, is there any doubt there’d be a “different” one?

Bezos was 25 years late to Australia, and still nobody put together a business like his during that 2-decade gap.

Kogan had some of the successful elements, but it's nothing like Amazon US.

This is a very good point. And Australia is not some tiny market and has what appears to be competent businessmen

I didn't say it wasn't impressive but it's as impressive as... watching someone win the Squid Games by backstabbing everyone else? I don't think it deserves any applause or proves anything.

Sure, but the impressiveness scales logarithmically here.

> It's not like he was a rags to riches story, they never are.

21 billionaires who grew up poor https://www.businessinsider.com/billionaires-who-came-from-n...

Sam Walton: Born as a Poor Farmer, Died as The Billionaire CEO and Founder of Wal-Mart https://corporatebytes.in/sam-walton-born-poor-farmer-died-b...

On that list is at least one Russian oligarch, whose friendship with Putin guaranteed him billionaire status.

I'm no fan of Russia but I've read Putin moonlighted as a Taxi driver in the 1990's, just saying.

> If he didn't do it someone else would have and for all we know they could have broken less bodies along the way.

That's a bold statement to make and I'm not sure I believe it. Even companies like Sears or Walmart who were better positioned to dominate the space missed the boat.

Like you said, it's never one person who changes the world. It's usually one talented person who has the right connections and gets a lot of luck at just the right time. There's no guarantee that someone else would have made the same choices and gotten the same breaks if Bezos didn't exist.

Amazon exists because of Bezos, but that doesn't mean he did it all by himself.

The conspiracy theory that one person can't rise to great wealth on their skill and talent and some luck rather than mostly luck and connections, is a conspiracy theory.

Classic strawman argument. OP didn't accredit all success to Bezos.

And yes, Amazon is frighteningly large.

What was his vision? Destroying millions of mom and pop shops and forcing millions of people to work for poor wages and harsh conditions delivering Amazon products? I'm not sure a 2 day delivery window is worth that.

> What was his vision? Destroying millions of mom and pop shops...

Wal-Mart was already leading that charge. And it shocks me to no end how many people I still encounter complaining about Wal-Mart for destroying their diverse local retail centers and eliminating jobs, while simultaneously receiving notifications on their smartphone from the Ring doorbell alerting Amazon packages being delivered on their front step.

Amazon is basically Wal-Mart 2.0, now with even more consolidation, counterfeit goods, and fewer local jobs.

Bezos isn't coming for the mom and pop shops, he's coming for Wal-Mart. Maybe Home Depot and Lowes are next?

Wal-Mart itself is probably the second-most-thorough online general-store; they know that they and Amazon are in the same business.

By mom and pop shops you mean retail. I don’t think the aspiration of humanity (or a participant) should be to have a retail business. It’s neither the good being sold nor the person utilizing it. The retail shop itself was inefficient and often expensive with little selection and almost no reviewing mechanism. It’s sad sure, but it was replaced with something far better.

That replacement also drove costs down, and unlocked tremendous amounts of time spent “doing” retail shopping and as a society it’s our job to put that time and those savings to use. It’s also our job , in a moral sense, to make sure displaced industries/people like “retail” also find a new way of being productive.

Let’s not forget the investors that have reaped tons of benefit from this. They too have allocated those funds back to the market either via spend, investment, or tax. Even if the capital is idle, the bank has it which is also giving someone a job.

It's feels like your "utopia" is a world controlled by a few giant corporations which guarantee the "effective movement of capital" around. If that's the case we have few things we'd agree on as our world views are just too different.

I'll just say that as we have fewer major players the more those players will lower wages and generally exploit workers. Most people won't enjoy living in that world.

If you zoom in time scales it’s kinda what happens? Sure in 1,10,20 years it isn’t good. I don’t agree we need few companies controlling everything but when you disrupt something as pervasive as retail what do you expect to have happen? I wonder what Ford thought when he put horses and livery out of business… I wonder what the local grocery store thought when they killed the butcher shop. It probably takes a while for the “next” thing to come along that displaces amazon. I guess my point is evolution happens. It’s our job as individuals to find ourselves on the right side of these changes. It’s not the governments job to make sure I’m treated fairly and it’s certainly not bezos or fords job to make sure they don’t disrupt the status quo. The market votes and we all casted ours votes.

I do believe in capitalism so maybe we disagree on a few things but I’d be curious how you see innovation without some value transfer proportional to that innovation. Amazon and I guess the “problem” is obvious but how do you get one without the other. Genuinely interested in your views.

Capitalism doesn't work when the market is non-free, and the market is non-free when it's monopolized. So if you believe in capitalism and want it to function as intended, you should be actively promoting antitrust enforcement against the likes of Amazon.

Do you not believe in the existence of Walmart? I can see no aspect of potential monopoly that doesn’t also apply more strongly to other companies.

what would antitrust enforcement against amazon look like? amazon basics is a bit questionable, but aside from that they have credible competition in every business segment.

yes

> I don’t think the aspiration of humanity (or a participant) should be to have a retail business.

Shopkeepers have been around for a long time, genociding them may not be wise.

Strictly as an ecological approach, no value judgement. Sparrow killing backfired on paradise builders.

I think “genociding” is being a bit pedantic. The shop keeper you are romanticizing was often a local inventory of goods. You were just a sale and they made a living on the arbitrage of goods. Not even all American made goods.

They weren’t always knowledgeable staff with a smile that remembered you and your family. I wish it was the case but I’m afraid it wasn’t.

So, not all shops are gone. How do we reconcile that? Is it that the ones that could not be replaced and/or provided more value than amazon have remained?

Mom and pop shops selling everyday goods don’t belong in the future. A 2 day delivery window (same day where I am) for goods, with reviews, and accessible customer support is amazing. It’s every item you can want. A mom and pop shop never offered that.

I believe his original vision was to be the worlds largest book store offering. Something brick and mortar book stores couldn't do because of shelf space limitations.

Books weren't the end goal. He named it Amazon because he wanted something generic to expand into. I don't think third party sellers were in the initial vision but selling other items was

> named it Amazon because

... it was "a river of one million books".

That was the slogan when it came out to steamroll books.com (the first mover), an outfit from Ohio that sold books on the Internet and shipped without plastic packaging in 1991.

Why should mom and pop get rich on the backs of local poor people?

Jeff Bezos (and Sam Walton) did more to materially improve the lives of poor people than any politician or “advocate”.

Mom and Pop shops aren't all that reliable compared to Amazon. I've seen some with wires hanging out of the ceiling.

Bezos didn’t destroy mom and pop shops. Consumers did when they chose Amazon over those stores.

What a load of politically-charged bollocks. "If he didn't, somebody else would have" - citation?

Less than 25% of millionaires were born into money. Your defeatist world-view is entirely wrong.

You can have a middle class salary, save well, and become a millionaire in time for retirement. In fact, at retirement age you really need millions nowadays. Not that most people have that. And most of those retirement age millionaires wouldn't have hundreds of thousands to lend.

I'm talking about billionaires, and what I contend is most billionaires had parents or family members who were rich which helped them.

- Elon Musk's parents owned an emerald mine in S. Africa

- Bill Gates not only got seed money from his millionaire parents but one of his parents was on the board of IBM and helped him land early Microsoft deals

- Bezos got 300k seed money from his parents

- Zuckerberg, is maybe an exception? His parents were only upper middle class. Enough money for good schools and private CS tutors. Seems plausible that if he was lower middle class he wouldn't have made it to Harvard.

Only armchair socialists would take a guy coming from a broken home in one of the poorest regions of the world as a golden spoon to push their agenda lol

Just because it's a poor region doesn't mean you yourself are poor...

Anything to absolve people of personal responsibility.

> - Elon Musk's parents owned an emerald mine in S. Africa

Elon disputes this.

He disputed his way into becoming a co-founder of Tesla so I'm not surprised.

https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-musks-family-came...

TL;DR: In the 80s, Elon’s father sold a plane for $80k, half in cash, and the rest for 50% of a Zambian emerald mine. He had it for six years and made some good money off it, but probably not a ludicrous amount. One can imagine there being exploitative working conditions in that mine, given the time and place, but I don’t have any real knowledge on the matter.

The source is musks father, and Elon disputes what he claims.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1375214071809642496

https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/i-talked-to-elon-mus...

This is what I could find with a quick search regarding what Elon himself claims. I had a skim and it doesn’t seem to necessarily contradict the article I linked or my summary (perhaps depending on your definition of ”good money”). There probably was an emerald mine, and yeah it probably didn’t yield enough for Musk’s father to have the family set for life or anything like that.

Here's a tweet from Elon: "... There’s no evidence whatsoever of an “emerald mine”"

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1375212880790913025

and more detailed article: https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/i-talked-to-elon-mus...

Bezos made a company who is really good at scaling to any scale at all functions. He created a ton of process at Amazon to facilitate this. I spent a number of years there as a senior leader. I was profoundly impressed with how his influence is pervasive in how things are done, and they’re generally insightful and work well for operating a highly scaled distributed organization that can try many risky things, fail fast, and succeed fast. He didn’t do it alone, but he did create the environment for it to happen and held pretty tight control over the tenants and way things are done. There are many humanistic ways in which Amazon is a profound failure but I think it’s naive to underestimate how much direct and indirect influence bezos had on what Amazon has achieved and become. I think if Bezos had applied some energy to creating an environment that fosters the humanity of its people it would be a much better company in most respects, but it’s undeniable to my experience that one man did instigate the changes we’ve seen Amazon bring to our world.

(N.b., I don’t say these things out of some worship for Bezos or Amazon, you can respect and appreciate something without liking it)

Give me a break. A guy that turns a couple of hundred thousand (something a LOT of people qualify for in loans) into hundreds of billions is amazing.

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