The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

There is a lot of customer obsession behind Amazon’s nature. And what a turbulent story!

Found as a recommendation in the reviews of The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work, this one also has mixed reviews. It might be heavy to read since it talks about meetings and business, but it should be well written, with anecdotes.

I have to say it is an excellent book, meticulous, balanced, and detailed. It lays out who Bezos is, how he grew up, and the intense story of Amazon, which went through many turbulent years, led by a CEO truly obsessed with the customer. I do not like its culture, but I have a lot of admiration for a company like this, and I am a happy customer. What an entrepreneur. And Stone is an excellent writer; he really gave a complete picture.

Notes

• Amazon is deeply customer-centric
• Jeff always had a fixation with the “everything store.” A store that contains EVERYTHING. Many thought he was unrealistic
• He started on Wall Street, but then, to follow his idea, he founded Amazon.com in the middle of the Web frenzy so he would not regret it later in life
• Initial name Cadabra, but the team did not like it. Amazon was the largest river, by far compared to the “competitors”
• He lacks empathy. This is stark in the book. Example of bus passes refused, or when he replaced the first managers who had followed him into the new venture
• Mistakes around 2000: they acquired several startups that failed badly. Now they are much more cautious
• 5 core values: customer obsession, frugality, bias for action, ownership, and high bar for talent + innovation
• Fascinating challenges in the warehouses, with orders getting lost and incredible chaos to manage. Without an orderly system, it was impossible
• Bezos dislikes when customers need to speak up; he wants problems to resolve themselves. Handle issues quickly and effectively
• The brilliant idea was to open Amazon to any seller, who can sell their goods in the marketplace. This way you can truly offer “everything”
• Working for Bezos can be very demanding
• Two-pizza teams, the famous saying. He reorganized groups into small, agile teams, even if it worked only in a few cases. But it remains a legend
• Wilke was the star who fixed Amazon’s fulfillment centers. Eliminate bottlenecks. And with various systems he solved the problem (e.g., procedures, classifications, batches)
• No presentations, everything goes in prose, another of Bezos’s ideas
• Many ideas ended poorly, mainly because it is hard to predict how the market would react
• Great chapter on Blue Origin. I understand Jeff’s fascination, and it is not a whim; he truly wants to explore space
• Leaders at Amazon must have backbone. Bezos likes to make them debate with each other, even if it can be uncomfortable
• Amazon is very frugal in everything. They try to reduce costs in anything, even in equipment for new hires
• Amazon is both missionary and mercenary. This is a very powerful combination
• (not noted) great stories of AWS, Kindle, Prime Video, Prime… All risky and ambitious ideas that changed the trajectory. And the analysis is definitely on point!