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Not ≈5 years. Three years and 9 months. Amazon's retail division was broken by Covid and will probably never fix itself. I have no inside knowledge, but I susp

by blagie 3y ago

Not ≈5 years. Three years and 9 months. Amazon's retail division was broken by Covid and will probably never fix itself. I have no inside knowledge, but I suspect what happened is a bunch of crooks were hired during the massive hiring spree to keep up with Covid demand, and there wasn't capacity to investigate every fraud, theft, and scam. Internal fraud went from zero to prolific almost overnight. Prime also stopped being able to deliver in two days, and never recovered. It's been three years, and it seems a permanent culture change at this point. The only CEOs I've seen recover a business from this sort of shitshow were Steve Jobs and Satya Nadella. Most businesses can't recover from this. I hope Amazon can, but realistically, I'm very sceptical. On the upside, there's a huge opening for a competitor, if anyone wants to do a startup :)

eastbound 3y ago
I was despairing that those big internet companies were settled for 80 years, but I see that there might be movement. However, it takes 25 years and unprecedented investment to build Amazon, warehouses, delivery schemes… Unless Amazon sells some of them with the automation, it’s extremely hard to enter the field.
- blagie 3y ago
  I actually don't think so. A few points: (1) We are in an era of massive investments, much more so than when Amazon started. The billion dollar plus fundraising round is increasingly common over time. (2) An entrant does not need to operate the same as Amazon. The sharing economy provides a lot of alternative models. To give a fictitious example, connecting with existing rideshare vendors for delivery and a network of local stores for fulfilment could give a lot of the same product without the same investment. Ditto for existing logistics players like FedEx (who do a lot more than delivery). (3) It's possible to start in different markets, and especially foreign markets. A company which could do this play easily might be something like Aliexpress which already has a leg in. There are many more models possible too, but the point is that building Amazon today does not need to the same as building Amazon in the nineties. Even building the same Amazon would be cheaper today, since we can learn the lessons of the existing Amazon.

by blagie 3y ago

eastbound 3y ago

I was despairing that those big internet companies were settled for 80 years, but I see that there might be movement. However, it takes 25 years and unprecedented investment to build Amazon, warehouses, delivery schemes… Unless Amazon sells some of them with the automation, it’s extremely hard to enter the field.

blagie 3y ago
I actually don't think so. A few points: (1) We are in an era of massive investments, much more so than when Amazon started. The billion dollar plus fundraising round is increasingly common over time. (2) An entrant does not need to operate the same as Amazon. The sharing economy provides a lot of alternative models. To give a fictitious example, connecting with existing rideshare vendors for delivery and a network of local stores for fulfilment could give a lot of the same product without the same investment. Ditto for existing logistics players like FedEx (who do a lot more than delivery). (3) It's possible to start in different markets, and especially foreign markets. A company which could do this play easily might be something like Aliexpress which already has a leg in. There are many more models possible too, but the point is that building Amazon today does not need to the same as building Amazon in the nineties. Even building the same Amazon would be cheaper today, since we can learn the lessons of the existing Amazon.