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Absolutely a great company, they did everything right. I think junk bonds got them through the dotcom collapse. When Half.com let people exchange 2nd-hand boo
by zandorg 17y ago
Absolutely a great company, they did everything right.
I think junk bonds got them through the dotcom collapse.
When Half.com let people exchange 2nd-hand books, it was USA only. Then Amazon introduced 3rd-party sellers in about 2003 in the UK, and it was great. Though I still buy some from Abebooks (now owned by Amazon).
They even got the Internet Archive going (Alexia was bought out by Amazon).
- gbookman 17y agoWell, they didn't quite do everything right. For one, Amazon had a really tough time when the first Internet bubble burst back in 2000. All of a sudden they weren't able to raise capital as quickly as they wanted to. This would have severely impeded their growth, if not for some brilliant improvements made to their supply chain efficiency.
- zandorg 17y agoWell, I read they bought high yield bonds (known as junk bonds in the 80s), to get them through a nasty period where the IPO markets had dried up, and VC obviously couldn't fund a late-stage company. So maybe it's both bonds and improvements? As for evidence of the bonds: Book The Warren Buffett way: "In July 2002, only one week after Buffett wrote CEO Jeff Bezos a letter praising him for his decision to account for stock options as an expense, Buffett bought $98.3 million of Amazon's high yield bonds."