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Why The Everything Store needed a sequel
Stone started interviewing for the second book in 2017, before HQ2, the tabloid saga, the antitrust wave and the pandemic. The trigger was that Alexa had changed the company, the transportation business had started, and the market cap had run from roughly $120bn to $800bn while he was still on the road talking about the old book. Amazon has added over a trillion and a half dollars of market cap since 2013.
- Reporting began in 2017, before HQ2 and the tabloid story broke
- Market cap ran from about $120bn at the first book to roughly $800bn
- Alexa, logistics and a global marketplace were all new since 2013
- AWS was a cipher in 2013; financials were only revealed in 2015
- The pandemic became the ending that encapsulated the whole thesis
“So a 120 billion dollar market cap was at the end of 2017, probably around an 800 billion dollar market cap.”
“and that I was still on the road doing talks about Amazon about the everything store, but the story had changed”
#amazon#book writing#market cap#journalism
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Reporting a book on Amazon without ever getting Bezos
Amazon was receptive when approached in 2017-18, assigned a PR person, and eventually offered access to anyone at the company while deferring on Bezos until the end. He never got the interview. Stone argues the book did not suffer: Bezos is so disciplined that his stories are polished stones Stone could recite himself, and the trade-off bought unusual access to the S-team instead.
- Amazon seemed to be anticipating that someone would update the first book
- Access to any executive was granted; Bezos was deferred and never delivered
- Bezos has avoided substantive journalist interviews for years
- His anecdotes are rehearsed to the point of being predictable
- S-team access, including Dave Clark, was the compensating gain
“they would give me access to anyone I wanted to talk to at the company, and they would see about Bezos toward the end”
“He's incredibly disciplined. He tells the same stories. They're like polished little stones that he's crafted over the years.”
#access journalism#amazon#bezos#pr
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Dave Clark had Amazon sue the best man at his wedding
Clark rose through operations and fulfilment, built Amazon Logistics, and became CEO of the retail business. One of his first bosses became his closest friend and the best man at his wedding; Clark was later promoted over him, and when the man left for Target, Clark had Amazon sue him. They never spoke again. Stone reads it as Bezos's ideals reproduced in an executive who never founded anything.
- Clark built Amazon Logistics and now runs the retail business
- His mentor and best man left for Target and was sued
- The two never spoke again
- Stone frames it as company-over-everything with little empathy
- Consensus building is subjugated to the customer and the right answer
“And then he gets promoted over that guy.”
“And right there, encapsulated perfectly is Amazon's ruthless, relentless, business focused, competitive mindset where relationships and empathy don't really factor into it.”
#amazon#culture#leadership#dave clark
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Campfire: the secret conference Amazon quietly paid for
Since 2010 Bezos hosted a private annual gathering, first in Santa Fe among the literary elite and later in Santa Barbara among Hollywood. Guests are flown in on private jets with families, given swag and hotel rooms, children get individual counsellors, and a whole hotel and beach club is rented. Stone assumed Bezos paid personally because it is so unfrugal; his reporting found Amazon pays for it.
- Started 2010 in Santa Fe, migrated to Santa Barbara and Hollywood
- Described as Sun Valley crossed with TED plus a beach club
- Guests flown privately, families invited, kids given counsellors
- Amazon, not Bezos personally, funds it
- Bezos called it the best part of his year
“It's like Sun Valley, the Allen and Company conference.”
“But in fact, as I looked into it, Amazon pays for it.”
#amazon#bezos#hollywood#networking
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Copperfield: Amazon's failed attempt to clone Instacart
Part of the original Prime Now effort, codenamed Copperfield, tried to syndicate offline grocers and use their shelves as fulfilment centres with contract delivery — Instacart's model. No grocer would work with Amazon, partly because Amazon Fresh was already running in Seattle and looked like a mortal threat. Whole Foods said no in 2015, which shaped the relationship that later produced the acquisition.
- Copperfield aimed to use third-party grocery shelves as fulfilment
- No grocery chain would partner with Amazon
- Amazon Fresh made Amazon a threat and a suitor simultaneously
- Instacart's advantage was being a neutral technology platform
- Whole Foods declined in 2015, before the later deal
“And what they found when they tried to emulate Instacart was that no grocery store was going to work with Amazon.”
“they even went to Whole Foods back in 2015 and got told no”
#grocery#instacart#prime now#partnerships
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India and Mexico: two very different expansion stories
Stone thinks Amazon built a big but probably still unprofitable business in India against a nationalist political climate that restricted it to a pure marketplace, quoting Bezos that the future is the US, China and India and Amazon must win two of three. In Mexico, Amazon launched deliberately without Google search advertising, found its acquisition numbers upside down using billboards, and turned Google back on.
- India is a large business, likely still loss-making, politically constrained
- Flipkart selling to Walmart forfeited the homegrown-champion position
- Bezos: succeed in two of the US, China and India
- Mexico launched without search advertising and the economics broke
- The experiment exposed how dependent Amazon was on Google
“the future of the world is the United States, China, and India, we need to succeed in two out of three”
“And so they launch in Mexico without uh search advertising, and it doesn't work.”
#india#mexico#international#google
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The explicit photo at the centre of the saga never existed
Stone's newest finding in the tabloid chapter is that the photograph everyone was fighting over was not real. What the tabloid had was an image Michael Sanchez had taken from an escort website and passed off as an explicit photo of the richest man in the world. Court filings showed the actual leak came from the brother, while the question of a Saudi phone hack remains genuinely unresolved.
- All parties were battling over a photograph that did not exist
- The image came from an escort website, not from Bezos
- Court evidence pointed to the brother as the leak source
- The alleged Saudi hack is separate from the tabloid story
- Cybersecurity experts remain sceptical of the hacking study
“And the fact that they never had it, what they had was a photograph that Michael Sanchez had taken from an escort website and passed…”
“In retrospect, all of these parties were battling over a photograph that actually didn't exist.”
#bezos#tabloid#investigation#media