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> This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name. Jeff's pitch at the time (1997); so on point, so precise: https://www.yout

> This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name. Jeff's pitch at the time (1997); so on point, so precise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWRbTnE1PEM 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 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 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 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.

draw_down 6y ago
Good grief.
techlatest_net 6y ago
And here is the video from 1999 [1] showing his obsession with customer which is why customer support is in the DNA of Amazon 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxwjzVW7z5o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxwjzVW7z5o
- afavour 6y ago
  I'd argue that the customer experience of Amazon has declined dramatically in the last few years. Maybe there should be more internal viewings of that video.
  - ValentineC 6y ago
    I agree. Amazon's upper management should really do a mystery shopping exercise themselves to see how dysfunctional their (both Amazon.com's and AWS's) support has become.
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    Might be hard to change anything when you have a core metric that looks like this: https://www.google.ca/search?q=amazon&tbm=fin https://www.google.ca/search?q=amazon&tbm=fin
    - judge2020 6y ago
      Link is broken.
      - pseudalopex 6y ago
        It's supposed to be the stock chart.
        judge2020 6y ago
        looks like https://www.google.com/finance/quote/AMZN:NASDAQ https://www.google.com/finance/quote/AMZN:NASDAQ works for me, based in the US.
  - codeulike 6y ago
    Practically have to do backflips to avoid accidentally signing up to Amazon Prime. Dark patterns deployed front and centre.
    - laurent92 6y ago
      I contacted support twice in 2 years for Prime subscription I didn’t want. Each time: “Are you sure you didn— Yes I’m sure, I knew intended to avoid it, so it’s clearly not me.” Both times they correctly cancelled it.
- ciupicri 6y ago
  Amazon's customer support is mediocre at best. I tried to buy something from them and the card transaction failed because I had some protections in place. Instead of them trying again, they asked for all kinds of documents to prove the ownership. I sent them a receipt from a local store, but it wasn't good enough for them. I guess they don't want my money :-)
  - jdmichal 6y ago
    I would never take a receipt as proof of card ownership. If I were to find a wallet, what's the chance that there's a random receipt stuffed in there along with the card?
    - ciupicri 6y ago
      The receipt wasn't old. It was for shopping done after they asked me for proof.
- victor106 6y ago
  That video is pure gold. Lots of lessons you can use even today for any business.
- ACow_Adonis 6y ago
  Do people do any analysis anymore or do they just repeat memes? i.e. "we put the customer first". 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...
  - dingaling 6y ago
    > and you can't even be sure whether they're reviewing the right product or the seller I distinctly remember the point when I lost trust in Amazon, after being a customer since 1997. There were reviews for two books on the same topic, but different authors, mixed together under one title. I emailed Amazon to point this out and... they did nothing. Nowadays the review section is a dark pattern itself, you have to keep your wits about you. What used to be a great public resource in the Internet has been lost.
  - astrange 6y ago
    The customer friendliness is 1. free fast shipping 2. they will cancel and refund things 3. if you make multiple orders they'll combine them 4. the website loads really fast. Competitors have gotten better at many of these, but it's still hard to impossible to cancel orders many other places, and if I have to chat to Amazon they still refund and replace things very easily. I have used amazon.com.au and noticed the selection is pretty bad there. amazon.jp is great though, and worldwide shipping is amazingly fast. The customer service is even more important there because Japanese companies hate cancelling things or special requests (omotenashi/"Japanese customer service" means you do what they tell you, not the other way round.)
- FpUser 6y ago
  I think Amazon's search quality going down the drain lately. Too much's been taken by promotions.
  - astrange 6y ago
    Amazon's search and recommendations were never any good, though. You've always had to search a page or three, and buying a TV recommends you more TVs.
- swalsh 6y ago
  The last experience I had with Amazon customer service was so bad I decided to stop using them as much as is physically possible. If your situation does not fit in a simple bucket, they will force it into one even if its bad for them and you at the same time.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
petters 6y ago
> Jeff's pitch at the time (1997); so on point, so precise: 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....
twobitshifter 6y ago
Thank you for sharing the video. I liked seeing Bezos on startup phase. I had not heard the story, so I learned that he started as a quant on Wall St and left that job to start Amazon later in life. Many people expect tech startups to happen in your college dorm room, but Bezos took a completely different route.
efwfwef 6y ago
"this is day 1". 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?
- throwaway568 6y ago
  I think cryptocurrency is more akin to personal computer. DeFi- the internet.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  What else seems like a promising field that one could go 100% into right now to bet on? Biotech/bioinformatics/bioengineering.
- TaylorAlexander 6y ago
  I am in robotics and it seems well poised to grow. There’s a lot of big problems left to solve at the research level but deep learning seems to be slowly knocking down big problems left and right.
- julesFromPulp 6y ago
  Yes cryptocurrencies are one thing but look at the possibilities afforded with having a decentralized, distributed ledger in all areas of life. Having a source of truth in things like law or politics. This would be a fundamental shift for society as a whole not just finance.
- grogenaut 6y ago
  Quibble: to me "This is day one" is less about "what market can we get in on the ground floor of and ride a wave". It is more to underscore we are driving the innovation or market and that we are always starting from zero, never too late to change / pivot and we're still aggressively growing everything, or that is the goalline. 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.
hooande 6y ago
I was at that Startup School lecture in 2008. I still have strong memories of his body language and affect. He wasn't at all what I was expecting
- hn2fast 6y ago
  In what way, if you don't mind? I always have the impression that he is practical to a fault, and consistent in his prescription for engineering above all.
travbrack 6y ago
He sounds like a time traveler from the future. He talks like it's a given that the Internet is going to take over the world but back then it really wasn't.
- TaylorAlexander 6y ago
  Ostensibly it was going to take over the world? I think you mean to say it was non obvious. But unless we’ve split timelines that is exactly what was going to happen.

draw_down 6y ago

Good grief.

techlatest_net 6y ago

And here is the video from 1999 [1] showing his obsession with customer which is why customer support is in the DNA of Amazon 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxwjzVW7z5o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxwjzVW7z5o

afavour 6y ago
I'd argue that the customer experience of Amazon has declined dramatically in the last few years. Maybe there should be more internal viewings of that video.
- ValentineC 6y ago
  I agree. Amazon's upper management should really do a mystery shopping exercise themselves to see how dysfunctional their (both Amazon.com's and AWS's) support has become.
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  Might be hard to change anything when you have a core metric that looks like this: https://www.google.ca/search?q=amazon&tbm=fin https://www.google.ca/search?q=amazon&tbm=fin
  - judge2020 6y ago
    Link is broken.
    - pseudalopex 6y ago
      It's supposed to be the stock chart.
      - judge2020 6y ago
        looks like https://www.google.com/finance/quote/AMZN:NASDAQ https://www.google.com/finance/quote/AMZN:NASDAQ works for me, based in the US.
- codeulike 6y ago
  Practically have to do backflips to avoid accidentally signing up to Amazon Prime. Dark patterns deployed front and centre.
  - laurent92 6y ago
    I contacted support twice in 2 years for Prime subscription I didn’t want. Each time: “Are you sure you didn— Yes I’m sure, I knew intended to avoid it, so it’s clearly not me.” Both times they correctly cancelled it.
ciupicri 6y ago
Amazon's customer support is mediocre at best. I tried to buy something from them and the card transaction failed because I had some protections in place. Instead of them trying again, they asked for all kinds of documents to prove the ownership. I sent them a receipt from a local store, but it wasn't good enough for them. I guess they don't want my money :-)
- jdmichal 6y ago
  I would never take a receipt as proof of card ownership. If I were to find a wallet, what's the chance that there's a random receipt stuffed in there along with the card?
  - ciupicri 6y ago
    The receipt wasn't old. It was for shopping done after they asked me for proof.
victor106 6y ago
That video is pure gold. Lots of lessons you can use even today for any business.
ACow_Adonis 6y ago
Do people do any analysis anymore or do they just repeat memes? i.e. "we put the customer first". 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...
- dingaling 6y ago
  > and you can't even be sure whether they're reviewing the right product or the seller I distinctly remember the point when I lost trust in Amazon, after being a customer since 1997. There were reviews for two books on the same topic, but different authors, mixed together under one title. I emailed Amazon to point this out and... they did nothing. Nowadays the review section is a dark pattern itself, you have to keep your wits about you. What used to be a great public resource in the Internet has been lost.
- astrange 6y ago
  The customer friendliness is 1. free fast shipping 2. they will cancel and refund things 3. if you make multiple orders they'll combine them 4. the website loads really fast. Competitors have gotten better at many of these, but it's still hard to impossible to cancel orders many other places, and if I have to chat to Amazon they still refund and replace things very easily. I have used amazon.com.au and noticed the selection is pretty bad there. amazon.jp is great though, and worldwide shipping is amazingly fast. The customer service is even more important there because Japanese companies hate cancelling things or special requests (omotenashi/"Japanese customer service" means you do what they tell you, not the other way round.)
FpUser 6y ago
I think Amazon's search quality going down the drain lately. Too much's been taken by promotions.
- astrange 6y ago
  Amazon's search and recommendations were never any good, though. You've always had to search a page or three, and buying a TV recommends you more TVs.
swalsh 6y ago
The last experience I had with Amazon customer service was so bad I decided to stop using them as much as is physically possible. If your situation does not fit in a simple bucket, they will force it into one even if its bad for them and you at the same time.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

petters 6y ago

> Jeff's pitch at the time (1997); so on point, so precise: 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....

twobitshifter 6y ago

Thank you for sharing the video. I liked seeing Bezos on startup phase. I had not heard the story, so I learned that he started as a quant on Wall St and left that job to start Amazon later in life. Many people expect tech startups to happen in your college dorm room, but Bezos took a completely different route.

efwfwef 6y ago

"this is day 1". 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?

throwaway568 6y ago
I think cryptocurrency is more akin to personal computer. DeFi- the internet.
nitrogen 6y ago
What else seems like a promising field that one could go 100% into right now to bet on? Biotech/bioinformatics/bioengineering.
TaylorAlexander 6y ago
I am in robotics and it seems well poised to grow. There’s a lot of big problems left to solve at the research level but deep learning seems to be slowly knocking down big problems left and right.
julesFromPulp 6y ago
Yes cryptocurrencies are one thing but look at the possibilities afforded with having a decentralized, distributed ledger in all areas of life. Having a source of truth in things like law or politics. This would be a fundamental shift for society as a whole not just finance.
grogenaut 6y ago
Quibble: to me "This is day one" is less about "what market can we get in on the ground floor of and ride a wave". It is more to underscore we are driving the innovation or market and that we are always starting from zero, never too late to change / pivot and we're still aggressively growing everything, or that is the goalline. 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.

hooande 6y ago

I was at that Startup School lecture in 2008. I still have strong memories of his body language and affect. He wasn't at all what I was expecting

hn2fast 6y ago
In what way, if you don't mind? I always have the impression that he is practical to a fault, and consistent in his prescription for engineering above all.

travbrack 6y ago

He sounds like a time traveler from the future. He talks like it's a given that the Internet is going to take over the world but back then it really wasn't.

TaylorAlexander 6y ago
Ostensibly it was going to take over the world? I think you mean to say it was non obvious. But unless we’ve split timelines that is exactly what was going to happen.