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>So he called up Amazon and said, “Hey, this is Steve Jobs,” ... And "Amazon" replied: "Hello, Steve, my name is Adrian, I will be happy to help you." Seriou

• blihp 8y ago
  Actually Jobs may very well have called Bezos in the moment. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a verbal/handshake deal up front between Steve and Jeff with any meetings/legal review involving the relevant staff to formalize and finalize coming after they had already reached an agreement in principle. That's often how deals get done at the executive level esp. if the parties know each other.
  • jaclaz 8y ago
    >Actually Jobs may very well have called Bezos in the moment. Sure, though the article literally says that Jobs "called up Amazon", not Bezos. Besides the (hopefully) quick laugh, what I was trying to say was that the private/direct phone number of Jeff Bezos is unlikely to have been on a public directory and that the (untold) before is that the two already knew each other personally and had most probably already done business together, the telephone call is only a tiny part of how the deal matured. There are a lot of these articles that somehow push the concept that some people (geniuses/leaders/etc.) made quick decisions/deals/whatever game changing innovations on the spur of the moment and were successful at that only because of serendipity or intuition. While this may happen, I doubt that - even if the initial sparkle came "by chance" and "suddenly" - the merit of the success of this or that deal is to be attributed to that moment alone (as opposed to the before and the after). More like T. Edison: Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.
    • DonaldPShimoda 8y ago
      > Sure, though the article literally says that Jobs "called up Amazon", not Bezos. Just metonymy --- when we use an inanimate thing to stand in place of a person (like "North Korea agreed to a cease-fire", which is metonymy because the abstract concept of a country doesn't "agree to" anything). > what I was trying to say was that the private/direct phone number of Jeff Bezos is unlikely to have been on a public directory Doesn't need to be public. These high-level people (CEOs, famous musicians, etc.) have easy ways to contact one another. They might have only met once and exchanged numbers "just in case", or maybe the story was a shorthand way of saying "Steve had his secretary call Bezos's secretary right then" (which is entirely possible to do spur-of-the-moment if Apple had ever had contact with Amazon at all). I think the spirit of the story --- that the call took a very short time, maybe a couple minutes --- is totally reasonable. Tim Cook told a story once that he was unsure what to do at some point with regard to shareholders or something, so he called up Warren Buffett. Apparently they had exchanged numbers once in the past when they had been at some event together or something like that. It was a spur-of-the-moment call without any phone tag, at least as Cook tells the story.
      • jaclaz 8y ago
        >Just metonymy --- I know, but you cannot use it "asymmetrically" in a case such as this. Apple may metonymically call Amazon, but if the call (and the deal) is initiated by Steve Jobs, the call (and deal) is received by Jeff Bezos or by one of his top executives. BTW there is an evident need for symmetry also for the "merit" of the fast decision/acceptance by the receiving party, you cannot incense the one making the fast, direct and serendipitous proposal and then hide the one (person) on the other side that so quickly accepted it (for 1M $) under the metonymy. >Tim Cook told a story once that he was unsure what to do at some point with regard to shareholders or something, so he called up Warren Buffett. Yep, he didn't call up Berkshire Hathaway.
        • DonaldPShimoda 8y ago
          > but you cannot use it "asimmetrically" in a case such as this. You absolutely can. Setting: a restaurant. Steve is another employee. "Hey, did Steve take the bill to the ham sandwich?" This is 100% acceptable. Just because you don't use it doesn't mean it's unacceptable. For more on metonymy and examples of it, check out the book "Metaphors We Live By". There are a few chapters devoted to real-world uses of metonymy, and this is absolutely common among native English speakers. Also, do you have something against using the letter y for the "kit" vowel? I've never seen spellings like "simmetry" or "metonimy" before in any dialect. (Honest question.) > Yep, he didn't call up Berkshire Hathaway. Is it so unbelievable that wealthy people might have met once and exchange phone numbers? What use would Berkshire Hathaway be for him? He wanted advice from Buffett directly, not some other person, nor the company as an entity. Also, your argument doesn't make any sense anymore. Why is it that you feel Tim Cook has to call Berkshire Hathaway (company) and not Warren Buffet (person), but you think that Steve Jobs called Jeff Bezos (person) and not Amazon (company)?
• corobo 8y ago
  From what I have picked up somewhere the PAs to the big players all have their own network so that they can get stuff done If Steve Jobs wants to get in touch with Bezos (lets assume no prior contact) he would ask his PA to "get me a call with Bezos" - The PA then reaches out to Bezos' PA and they arrange the call between them