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> 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 succ

> 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.

tester756 4y ago
>but this is not because he is so different from other business people. What makes you think so?
- nitwit005 4y ago
  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.
- TapWaterBandit 4y ago
  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.
criley2 4y ago
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.
- jabbany 4y ago
  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.
  - AussieWog93 4y ago
    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).
    - jabbany 4y ago
      > 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.
      - AussieWog93 4y ago
        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.

tester756 4y ago

>but this is not because he is so different from other business people. What makes you think so?

nitwit005 4y ago
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.
TapWaterBandit 4y ago
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.

criley2 4y ago

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.

jabbany 4y ago
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.
- AussieWog93 4y ago
  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).
  - jabbany 4y ago
    > 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.
    - AussieWog93 4y ago
      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.