Amazon.com

Acquired

Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal

Venturecapital, Ma, Investing, Acquisitions, Startups, Vc, Investment, Business, Technology

4.8 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 16 August 2022

⏱️ 257 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Amazon. No company has impacted the internet — and all of modern life — more than this one. We’ve waited seven years to do this episode, and are so, so excited to finally dive into every nook and cranny of this legendary company. And of course because we’re Acquired and this is Amazon, we couldn’t contain it all to just one episode… even a 4+ hour one! So today we focus on Amazon.com the retail business, and we’ll have another full episode on AWS coming soon. And because all great series are trilogies, to fully understand Amazon we highly recommend starting first with our previous episode on Walmart, which truly is the giant’s shoulder that Jeff Bezos stood upon. Let’s go!!

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‍Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, acquired listeners. In the time between when we recorded this episode and now when we're releasing it
0:06.6	long time Amazon board member and
0:09.5	Madron Adventure Group founder Tom Alberg sadly passed away and we wanted to
0:15.3	Instead of our usual funny cold opener here take a moment and dedicate this episode to Tom
0:22.0	Tom had such a huge impact on David and my careers
0:26.0	Tom also had such a huge impact on Seattle and really the whole technology ecosystem helping to build the law firm Perkins
0:32.7	Kui and the telecommunications firms Western wireless and Makau cellular that
0:37.7	Really make up a large part of the infrastructure we all use for our phones today
0:43.1	We also were lucky enough to have Tom on acquired and it was really wonderful getting to spend the time in person with him
0:49.5	Gosh four or five years ago now David. Yeah, Tom was the longest serving Amazon board member other than
0:57.2	Jeff himself I believe 23 years was the lead independent director of the net a huge impact on the company and of course on us
1:05.5	Well, I'll remember Tom. He gave back in so many wonderful ways and this episode is dedicated to you Tom Alberg. Thank you
1:19.7	Now
1:30.4	Welcome to season 11 episode two of acquired the podcast about great technology companies and the stories and playbooks behind them
1:38.0	I'm Ben Gilbert and I am the co-founder and managing director of Seattle based pioneer square labs and our venture fund PSL ventures
1:44.9	And I'm David Rosenthal and I'm an angel investor based in San Francisco and we are your hosts
1:51.9	Our story today is probably the single most interesting business of the past 30 years
1:58.1	For the longest time David and I resisted doing an Amazon episode because it almost felt like a trope or that we needed to do something
2:06.0	Maybe more unexpected
2:07.8	We've tackled bits and pieces like our interview with former board member Tom Alberg in the Amazon IPO episode
2:14.4	Our episode with Alfred Lynn on Zappos and of course by referencing Bezos's famous
2:20.1	2009 speech about outsourcing anything that does not make your beer taste better over and over and over again and over
	...

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