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Jeff Bezos at YC Startup School 2008 [video]

171 points by theCricketer 8y ago

simonebrunozzi 8y ago
Wow, the memories. I joined AWS in 2008 as a tech evangelist (left in 2014), and many of these metrics I still remember to this day.
- justicezyx 8y ago
  I am actually curious if what AWS does, to show relatively clear numbers on the business, is a common practice.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
cowmix 8y ago
Bezos quotes an article about AWS, "..in fact Amazon's real business down the line will be its cloud services. Amazon will be like a bookstore that sells cocaine out the back door. Book will just be a front."
- rasmi 8y ago
  Source article here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/amazons-cloud-computing-will-surpass-its-retailing-business/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/amazons-cloud-computing-will-s...
- collinf 8y ago
  Another point I recently heard, and I can't recall the exact quote off my head but it was along the lines of: "Amazon at this point is really just a cloud company that is using it's cloud earnings to subsidize its other business arms to grow to a big enough scale where it can choke out all other competitors."
hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
One thing I think is so extraordinary about Jeff Bezos is his uncanny technical prescience despite not really being a technologist. For example, the famous Steve Yegge "platforms rant" blog post [1] about how Bezos basically made a company-wide edict for microservices was very much ahead of its time. Similarly, the vision of cloud computing was much more advanced and early than any of its competitors. Considering this came from a company that already had a huge business of selling things, I think this technical foresight is pretty remarkable. [1] https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX
- whoisjuan 8y ago
  I believe the cloud computing vision came from Andy Jassy. In fact he wrote the original six pager for AWS. Equally impressive since Jassy isn't really a technologist either.
  - josh2600 8y ago
    I hate this language of “so and so isn’t a technologist”. You don’t need to understand how a compiler works or grok segfaults to see the future. It’s obvious if you’re running a big data center yourself that you’d rather pay someone else to do that, it’s just that no one wanted to take on that operational burden because it’s a pain. It doesn’t take a technologist to realize that arbitraging pain is where you make money. Everything after that is execution. There are plenty of people who see the future who aren’t coders, they just usually can’t execute.
    - scottlocklin 8y ago
      Yeah, but it's hard to identify those people until their useful business lifespan is half over. Technologists are at least assumed to have some idea of the possibilities; plenty of "visionaries" come up with unworkable visions that we conveniently forget about in hindsight, because they were bad visions of the future.
    - whoisjuan 8y ago
rexreed 8y ago
Side note, why don't these videos show the slide content? That's just as useful, if not moreso, than seeing a video of the person speaking. You can hear the person without seeing them, but you can't hear the slides without seeing them, even if they're being described. A simple split screen with slides on one side and video on the other would work. Or even a picture-in-picture with the speaker. The top comment on the YouTube video has some real snark in reference to what I thought was a legitimate criticism of what would make this video much better.
- wodenokoto 8y ago
  You usually have picture in picture solution in mind when recording. One view of the speaker and a second view of the slides. Maybe the slides was meant to be shared along with the video, or they were shared, b ut only with YC attendants.
- aboutruby 8y ago
  Seems to be on purpose to not share sensitive data.
brianm 8y ago
I was lucky enough to be in the audience for this, and have long wondered (and generally believed) if the questions at https://youtu.be/6nKfFHuouzA?t=2025 https://youtu.be/6nKfFHuouzA?t=2025 lead to reserved instances. The timing was right (reserved instances appeared in early 2009 https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/announcing-ec2-reserved-instances/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/announcing-ec2-reserved-ins...). Jeff ruminates on the problem a bit, and you can all but see the model come out by the time Jeff finishes answering the followup question :-) That he thinks it would be interesting to a "subset of users" is kind of amusing :-)
- theWheez 8y ago
  Wow, you're right! Definitely sounds like something that Bezos hadn't given much thought to (or enough to have had a response), this is a cool observation.
notthingnill 8y ago
In Messy: How to Be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World, Tim Harford describe the strategy of the initial period of Amazon, and compare Bezos with Erwin Rommel, the desert Fox.

171 points by theCricketer 8y ago

Wow, the memories. I joined AWS in 2008 as a tech evangelist (left in 2014), and many of these metrics I still remember to this day.

justicezyx 8y ago
I am actually curious if what AWS does, to show relatively clear numbers on the business, is a common practice.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

cowmix 8y ago

Bezos quotes an article about AWS, "..in fact Amazon's real business down the line will be its cloud services. Amazon will be like a bookstore that sells cocaine out the back door. Book will just be a front."

rasmi 8y ago
Source article here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/amazons-cloud-computing-will-surpass-its-retailing-business/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/amazons-cloud-computing-will-s...
collinf 8y ago
Another point I recently heard, and I can't recall the exact quote off my head but it was along the lines of: "Amazon at this point is really just a cloud company that is using it's cloud earnings to subsidize its other business arms to grow to a big enough scale where it can choke out all other competitors."

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago

One thing I think is so extraordinary about Jeff Bezos is his uncanny technical prescience despite not really being a technologist. For example, the famous Steve Yegge "platforms rant" blog post [1] about how Bezos basically made a company-wide edict for microservices was very much ahead of its time. Similarly, the vision of cloud computing was much more advanced and early than any of its competitors. Considering this came from a company that already had a huge business of selling things, I think this technical foresight is pretty remarkable. [1] https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX

whoisjuan 8y ago
I believe the cloud computing vision came from Andy Jassy. In fact he wrote the original six pager for AWS. Equally impressive since Jassy isn't really a technologist either.
- josh2600 8y ago
  I hate this language of “so and so isn’t a technologist”. You don’t need to understand how a compiler works or grok segfaults to see the future. It’s obvious if you’re running a big data center yourself that you’d rather pay someone else to do that, it’s just that no one wanted to take on that operational burden because it’s a pain. It doesn’t take a technologist to realize that arbitraging pain is where you make money. Everything after that is execution. There are plenty of people who see the future who aren’t coders, they just usually can’t execute.
  - scottlocklin 8y ago
    Yeah, but it's hard to identify those people until their useful business lifespan is half over. Technologists are at least assumed to have some idea of the possibilities; plenty of "visionaries" come up with unworkable visions that we conveniently forget about in hindsight, because they were bad visions of the future.
  - whoisjuan 8y ago

rexreed 8y ago

Side note, why don't these videos show the slide content? That's just as useful, if not moreso, than seeing a video of the person speaking. You can hear the person without seeing them, but you can't hear the slides without seeing them, even if they're being described. A simple split screen with slides on one side and video on the other would work. Or even a picture-in-picture with the speaker. The top comment on the YouTube video has some real snark in reference to what I thought was a legitimate criticism of what would make this video much better.

wodenokoto 8y ago
You usually have picture in picture solution in mind when recording. One view of the speaker and a second view of the slides. Maybe the slides was meant to be shared along with the video, or they were shared, b ut only with YC attendants.
aboutruby 8y ago
Seems to be on purpose to not share sensitive data.

brianm 8y ago

I was lucky enough to be in the audience for this, and have long wondered (and generally believed) if the questions at https://youtu.be/6nKfFHuouzA?t=2025 https://youtu.be/6nKfFHuouzA?t=2025 lead to reserved instances. The timing was right (reserved instances appeared in early 2009 https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/announcing-ec2-reserved-instances/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/announcing-ec2-reserved-ins...). Jeff ruminates on the problem a bit, and you can all but see the model come out by the time Jeff finishes answering the followup question :-) That he thinks it would be interesting to a "subset of users" is kind of amusing :-)

theWheez 8y ago
Wow, you're right! Definitely sounds like something that Bezos hadn't given much thought to (or enough to have had a response), this is a cool observation.

notthingnill 8y ago

In Messy: How to Be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World, Tim Harford describe the strategy of the initial period of Amazon, and compare Bezos with Erwin Rommel, the desert Fox.