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Amazon.com: Get Big Fast (Paperback)
by Robert Spector
| Category:
Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Business success, Corporate history |
| Market price: ¥ 168.00
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Author: Robert Spector
Publisher: Collins; 1st edition
Pub. in: January, 2002
ISBN: 0066620422
Pages:
Measurements: 7.7 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA01174
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0066620428
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- MSL Picks -
This is an unauthorized account of an e-commerce leviathan's rise from obscurity. So, if one is looking for a detailed business module or a blue print of its technology, look elsewhere, as this is not the book for you. What this book offers is a very interesting, well-organized narrative on the early, heady days of Amazon.com. when it was just an upstart internet bookseller looking to make its mark big time, as well as a look at its founder, Jeff Bezos, painting a flattering and intriguing portrait of this now multi-billionaire.
For its founder, Jeff Bezos, it was not, however, just about the money. If that were the case, he would never have left his seven figure Wall Street job. For him, it was about the opportunity to be on the ground floor of a business that would change the retailing community forever. Jeff Bezos, a true visionary, chose to take that challenge, and in doing so, he would forever change the dot.com world and the retailing community. The author, a business reporter for various publications, delineates just how it was that Jeff Bezos did so.
This book offers up an interesting summary on how Jeff Bezos was able to take the online community by storm and upset the status quo. The author provides a biographical narrative on who Jeff Bezos is. It is grounded in the context of where he grew up, his schooling, as well as his early interests. It segues from his Ivy League educational underpinnings to his foray into the upper echelons of Wall Street, deriving the experience that he needed in order to take on the risky proposition of starting up his own dot.com company. It is clearly the story of a visionary and decision maker with heart.
The book succinctly details the rise of Amazon.com as an e-commerce force with which to be reckoned. It tracks its growth and change from an upstart, fledging, by- the-seat-of-its-pants-company to one that is now a staple of the popular lexicon. It superficially explores the philosophy of Jeff Bezos in terms of having his business "get big fast" and the technological, financial, and logistical hurdles that the business needed to overcome in order to do so. The author also keys in on the ability of Jeff Bezos to think out of the box, when so many business pundits said that what he sought to do could not be done.
The overall texture of this book is enhanced by Information provided by those with some insider knowledge, such as those who knew Jeff Bezos, those who worked with him in those early halcyon days, rival "brick and mortar" executives, business analysts, and financiers, among others. This book, which is a look at a visionary and his company, details how that visionary was able to transform his company into a veritable cultural phenomenon unto itself. Those who are devotees of Amazon will find this well-written book heady stuff, indeed, as it makes for absorbing reading.
(From quoting Lawyeraau, USA)
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- Better with -
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Robert Spector has reported on business for USA Today, UPI International, NASDAQ Magazine, and Women's Wear Daily and appears frequently on television and radio. He is the author of the national bestseller The Nordstrom Way.
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From Publisher
In Amazon.com Jeff Bezos built something the world had never seen. He created the most recognized brand name on the Internet, became for a time one of the richest men in the world, and was crowned "the king of cyber-commerce."
Yet for all the media exposure, the inside story of Amazon.com has never really been told. In this revealing, unauthorized account, Robert Spector, journalist and best-selling author, gives us this up-to-date, fast-paced, behind-the-scenes story of the company's creation and rise, its tumultuous present, and its uncertain future.
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Amazon.com (MSL quote), USA
<2008-02-26 00:00>
The tale of Amazon.com is well known to anyone who follows the stock market, the book business, the Internet explosion-heck, it's hard to imagine not knowing at least a piece of this extraordinary story. But few, it would seem, know the entire story, and it's these gaps that Robert Spector's Amazon.com: Get Big Fast attempts to fill (or at least the information available in early 2000, when the book was published). For example, those who know about Amazon.com's paradigm-shifting influence on the book business may not know it wasn't even the first online book retailer, or the second or the third. (It was preceded by clbooks.com, books.com, and wordsworth.com, the last of which beat Amazon.com to the Internet by almost two years.) Those who've heard quirky stories about Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos-for example, that he built his own desk out of a door, and that his mother bought the desk at an online charity auction in 1999 for $30,100-may not know that he was a studious overachiever from an early age. As a 12-year-old in Houston, he was even profiled in a book on gifted education in Texas. And those who marvel at the company's multibillion-dollar stock valuation may not know that it was broke and nearly out of business in the summer of '95.
Put it all together and you have a book that should be interesting to many different readers. As a pure business read, it certainly provides a blow-by-blow account of an important company's critical decisions. And anyone looking for a brief history of e-commerce will see how one idea-Bezos's realization in 1994 that Web usage was growing 2,300 percent a year-set the entire online retailing phenomenon in motion. If nothing else, that last fact should propel parents to pay very careful attention to their kids' math scores. Had Bezos, a summa cum laude Princeton grad in computer science, not realized the implications of exponential growth ... well, let's just say you wouldn't be reading this review right now. -Lou Schuler |
Publishers Weekly (MSL quote), USA
<2008-02-26 00:00>
Put it all together and you have a book that should be interesting to many different readers. As a pure business read, it certainly provides a blow-by-blow account of an important company's critical decisions. And anyone looking for a brief history of e-commerce will see how one idea - Bezos's realization in 1994 that Web usage was growing 2,300 percent a year - set the entire online retailing phenomenon in motion. If nothing else, that last fact should propel parents to pay very careful attention to their kids' math scores. Had Bezos, a summa cum laude Princeton grad in computer science, not realized the implications of exponential growth ... well, let's just say you wouldn't be reading this review right now. --Lou Schuler |
The Industry Standard (MSL quote), USA
<2008-02-26 00:00>
It's a shame Andy Warhol isn't around to do Jeff Bezos' portrait.
One can easily imagine his friendly, vacant grin and bright, harmless eyes done up in Warhol's candy colors. Like many of the artist's celebrity subjects, Bezos is a true icon, not only of his company but of the Internet Economy in general.
This, apparently, is no accident. Toward the end of Amazon.com: Get Big Fast, Robert Spector quotes early Amazon employee Nicholas Hanauer: "From the day he opened the doors, Jeff knew what [the company] had to become: the poster child for Internet commerce." So Bezos promoted a story of himself and his company that was just so - a road trip West, a business plan written on a laptop, a desk made of an old door, three guys in a garage - and bolstered his image with stunts like personally delivering the company's 1 millionth order to a customer in Japan or making televised deliveries for HomeGrocer.com after Amazon invested in the company.
What exactly is it that has made Amazon a lightning rod for Internet Economy true believers and skeptics alike? Is it Bezos? Is it the stock? Is it the fact that the company was a "first mover"?
It's astonishing to think that it's been less than three years since the company went public, and only a little more than five since it began. What can explain how the company became so thoroughly inescapable as not only a business phenomenon but also as a cultural one - and so quickly?
Although Bezos himself did not play along on this book, Spector produced a slight volume that could have come directly from Amazon's PR department. A hash of material culled from previously published reports, plus some interviews with largely uncritical former insiders like Hanauer, the book doesn't need more criticism of its subject, but rather more serious critical thinking about it. Spector never makes it clear why it's worth writing a book about a company that is so young - even though with this particular company it would have been an easy case to make.
Instead, what he seems most taken with about Amazon is the "get big fast" idea. "Amazon.com's was a business that was going to be built on the altar of scale," he writes at one point. Elsewhere he reports that Bezos handed out T-shirts at the first company picnic, in 1996, that read "Get big fast."
This is not particularly new stuff, and in fact you could almost argue that lately it has gone out of fashion - plenty of Web companies now spend millions of dollars on brand-building campaigns, although "get bought fast" seems like a better summary of the current crop's endgame.
It's certainly true that it was crucial for Amazon to reach a certain critical mass before the company's most obvious competitors got their act together. But here Spector ignores how the reality of the Amazon story contradicts the conventional wisdom about how such companies succeed.
For example, Amazon did not advertise until well after its Web site was up and running. And while it's now considered reasonable for a company to pay seven-figure fees to acquire a no-brainer URL, Bezos picked a word that had nothing to do with retailing, let alone books, and turned that word into one of the most recognizable and definable brands on the Web.
How did he do it? Getting big fast is only part of the story, and the easier part at that. For answers, look to Warhol. In the same way that Warhol's apparently simple ideas radically redefined what could qualify as fine art, Amazon has gradually redefined what qualifies as a business success: In the absence of earnings, seeming successful is what matters. Get within the Bezos aura and you, too, can be a superstar. (Think Henry Blodget.)
Like Warhol's creations, Bezos' company seems to have the same power to infuriate skeptics: Amazon has never earned a penny, and what's so special about a soup can? And as with Warhol, Bezos' most impressive creation may well be his own guileless public persona.
Maybe my favorite thing in this book is a quote from another early employee, who recounts that Bezos "just continually reinforced [the idea] that we weren't going to spend money where we didn't need to, where it didn't ultimately benefit the customer. Sometimes, that meant spending a little bit more to reinforce the idea that we weren't wasting money. Jeff would say, if [a piece of furniture] looks cheap - even though it's a bit more expensive - we should buy it, because it reinforces our culture of being cheap and not wasting money."
Spector seems to miss the significance of this statement entirely, following it up with a bland quote from Bezos about customer-focused spending, and making one of his chapter-ending "take-away" lessons to "keep overhead low."
But think about what this ex-employee is actually saying: Sometimes we spent more to reinforce the idea that we weren't wasting money. Now that's a sentiment that would make even Warhol grin.
Rob Walker is a writer in New Orleans. |
Patricia Seybold, bestselling author of Customers.com; founder and CEO, Patricia Seybold Group , USA
<2008-02-26 00:00>
A wonderful opportunity to look behind the scenes at what makes Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com tick! This is a must-read for any serious player in the Internet economy. Bezo's fanatical focus on the total customer experience is the key takeaway! |
View all 8 comments |
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