The Everything Store

by Brad Stone

Read on August 26, 2024

Rating: ★★★ ☆☆

Summary

“The Everything Store” is a comprehensive look at the founding and rise of Amazon and its enigmatic founder, Jeff Bezos. Bezos, now the second richest person in the world, started Amazon in his garage in the early ’90s and led the company for nearly all of its history, only stepping down in 2021 and handing the reins to Andy Jassy (a long-time “Jeffbot” as they are known internally).

The book chronicles Amazon’s journey from an online bookstore, where it was buying books on demand from other sellers and shipping them around the country, to its current state as an e-commerce and technology infrastructure giant. Bezos has always been relentlessly focused on creating a store where customers could find “everything,” even when it meant losing money for many years. His hyperfocus on customer experience has been a driving factor in Amazon’s success, to the point that he would personally review customer support emails and route them to the necessary S-team (senior leadership) member with only a “?” in the email body.

Stone highlights the culture of innovation, Bezos’ harsh leadership style, and the company’s (sometimes) controversial business practices that contributed to its success. This well-researched book paints a picture of a company that has revolutionized retail and technology infrastructure while batting away criticism for its aggressive tactics and demanding work environment.

Not everything is harsh within Amazon, though. Many ex-employees admit that their time at Amazon was one of significant personal growth, realizing they were capable of producing and accomplishing more than they thought possible. The growth of Amazon Web Services has enabled countless new companies and innovations that would have otherwise been impossible, and much of our modern internet experience is thanks to Amazon’s leap into hosting cloud computing environments for other companies.

Ultimately, Stone’s “The Everything Store” is a fun and insightful story about the early days of the company where many of us buy the majority of our products. Stone doesn’t shy away from the negative impact Amazon has had on many industries, but also highlights the many positive changes we experience now thanks to the innovation and drive of Bezos and Amazon.

Key Takeaways

  1. Long-term thinking and obsession with your customer experience will ultimately drive success. I think this is something that, especially as a Christian, is important to remember – we are building for the kingdom, on the longest time horizon possible: eternity.
  2. Amazon’s strategy around entering new markets isn’t a “land and expand” model. Instead, they focus on growing as fast as possible to become the dominant player in that market before turning their focus to profitability.
  3. Bezos is very similar to Elon Musk in his personality and leadership style. Both of them are incredibly demanding, hard to work for, and have the ability to compartmentalize easily.
  4. Amazon is frugal even beyond what I realized. Even simple things like paying for employee parking or drinks in the office are excluded from the list of perks you get working at Amazon.
  5. Amazon has a very strong “not invented here” culture - only valuing things that have been built in house. They rarely make acquisitions and when they do, they incorporate the purchased company into something Amazon has already built instead of using the newly acquired technology as a foundation.
  6. Amazon has huge market power and influence. And they will wield that power as a weapon when needed to ensure they have every product on their site at a lower price than can be found anywhere else.
  7. The six-page narrative style of working is focused on every project, every feature, every decision. This helps Amazon employees think clearly about every decision they make, and ensures others understand exactly what the plan of attack and future vision for a specific product or decision will be.

Favorite Quotes

“It’s easier to invent the future than to predict it.” -Alan Kay

- Page 30

“If you are planning for more than twenty minutes ahead in this kind of environment, you are wasting your time.” - Jeff Bezos

- Page 90

“Communication is a sign of dysfunction. It means people aren’t working together in a close, organic way. We should be trying to figure out a way for teams to communicate less with each other, not more.” - Jeff Bezos

- Page 167

“I spent most of my time trying to hide from Bezos,” [Chris] Pinkham says. “He was a fun guy to talk to but you did not want to be his pet project. He would love it to distraction.”

- Page 215

Personal Thoughts

How this book changed my perspective

  • The concept of “two pizza teams” at Amazon was something I’d heard of before, but Stone articulated the impact of it in a way I hadn’t considered. Bezos required all projects to be worked on by teams small enough to be fed with just two pizzas, and this approach often led to duplicated work across the organization. It created a kind of Darwinian mentality amongst the teams, with them competing for resources and working on solving the same problems. It seems like this should be detrimental to moral and performance, but I found it interesting that this duplication of efforts would sometimes yield positive results and novel solutions to a problem that wouldn’t have otherwise been identified. It made me reconsider the importance of perfect coordination across all teams versus fostering an environment of execution and allowing the best solutions to naturally emerge.
  • Amazon Prime’s pricing strategy shifted my understanding of customer loyalty programs. The cost of Prime isn’t about immediate profitability through shipping costs or subscription fees. Instead, it’s a psychological play - by giving customers skin in the game, Amazon ensures they’ll shop more on the site to get their money’s worth. This strategy is applicable beyond e-commerce; it’s a lesson for any product competing in a crowded market. Creating a reason for customers to commit and stay loyal can be more powerful than ensuring every line item contributes to the bottom line.
  • Part of me wonders if the hardcore, high-conflict type of personality is required to start and grow a business at the scale of Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Tesla. It seems like every founder of major corporations of this scale got to where they are in part because of their ruthless nature. And if that is the case, what does that mean for people who operate differently? Potentially people who aren’t high-conflict in their personality should aim to create different types of businesses - still successful, but not on the same scale.

Practical applications

  • Experiment with smaller, more autonomous teams in my own work environment.
  • Rethink customer loyalty strategies in my products. Instead of focusing solely on immediate profitability, consider implementing features or pricing models that give users “skin in the game,” encouraging longer-term engagement and loyalty.
  • Write more narratives for myself personally. I don’t need to share them anywhere if it’s not helpful, but they could help me process my own ideas and drive better thinking.
  • Think long-term.

Questions for further exploration

  • How can companies balance the benefits of internal competition (like Amazon’s approach) with the need for collaboration and a positive work culture?
  • Is there a way to achieve the level of innovation and market dominance that Amazon has without the controversial aspects of its work culture and business practices?
  • How can leaders foster the positive aspects of Bezos’s leadership style (like customer obsession and long-term thinking) without adopting the more problematic elements?

Connections

  1. Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson
    • Another biography about a seriously driven and hard to work for leader like Bezos.

Last updated: 2024-08-27