TIP716: The Power of Customer Obsession: Amazon’s Secret Weapon w/ Kyle Grieve

We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network

Stig Brodersen

Education, Investing, Business

4.6 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2025

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today’s episode, Kyle Grieve explores the DNA of Amazon by tracing Jeff Bezos’s early influences, strategic decisions, and relentless focus on customer experience, revealing how a bold vision and founder-led culture built one of the most dominant businesses in history. IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN: 00:00 - Intro 02:12 - How Bezos’s childhood brilliance helped forged Amazon’s DNA. 03:22 - Why self-reliance helped Bezos repeatedly invent out of failure. 06:02 - How DE Shaw inspired Amazon’s hiring bar and secretive innovations. 14:18 - Why founder-led companies tripled returns vs peers from 1990–2014. 17:07 - How Amazon used user reviews to build trust and boost Amazon’s moat. 24:20 - How one-click ordering deepened customer loyalty and competitive defensibility. 41:05 - The importance of Amazon Prime and how it affected customer churn and loyalty. 51:51 - How AWS was born. 54:27 - How Amazon has used its scale and competitive positioning to acquire competitors. And so much more! Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Join Clay and a select group of passionate value investors for a retreat in Big Sky, Montana. Learn more here. Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, Kyle, and the other community members. Read The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon here. Read Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos here. Read Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose here. Follow Kyle on X and LinkedIn. Check out all the books mentioned and discussed in our podcast episodes here. Enjoy ad-free episodes when you subscribe to our Premium Feed. NEW TO THE SHOW? Get smarter about valuing businesses in just a few minutes each week through our newsletter, The Intrinsic Value Newsletter. Check out our We Study Billionaires Starter Packs. Follow our official social media accounts: X (Twitter) | LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | TikTok. Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here. Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance Tool. Enjoy exclusive perks from our favorite Apps and Services. Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the best business podcasts. SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors: SimpleMining Hardblock Found AnchorWatch Fundrise DeleteMe CFI Education The Bitcoin Way Vanta Shopify Indeed Onramp HELP US OUT! Help us reach new listeners by leaving us a rating and review on Spotify! It takes less than 30 seconds, and really helps our show grow, which allows us to bring on even better guests for you all! Thank you – we really appreciate it! Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to TIP.
0:03.0	Jeff Bezos has fascinated me for a really long time.
0:06.7	Not just because he built one of the world's most dominant businesses in Amazon,
0:10.2	but because of how he approached problems that didn't even really seem like problems to most people at the time.
0:16.1	So today, I'm excited to dive into Amazon's early story.
0:20.1	Not just how the company came to be, but what really
0:22.4	made a tick, what Bezos embedded in its DNA, and how those early decisions still shape its
0:27.8	moat today.
0:29.0	We'll examine the early influences that shaped Bezos's mindset, from Summers spent building
0:33.9	machines with his grandfather, to his experiences at D.E. Shaw, where he learned the
0:38.1	value of secrecy, raising the bar during the hiring process, and surrounding himself with
0:43.0	generalist problem solvers. We'll also examine what I believe makes founder-led company so compelling,
0:48.9	and how Bezos's willingness to take bold swings, embrace failure, and continually reinvent,
0:53.9	helped Amazon build a
0:55.1	durable, customer-obsessed business that could take pain in the short term for a long-term game.
1:00.3	Along the way, we'll explore how small things, such as user reviews and one-click ordering
1:04.5	have turned into just a massive competitive advantage. We'll also walk through why Amazon Prime
1:10.0	was made specifically to be irresponsible
1:12.7	not to be a member and how internal efficiencies gave rise to Amazon Web Services, one of
1:17.8	Amazon's biggest success stories of all time. This episode is for anyone who's curious about what it
1:23.1	really takes to build something great, how enduring advantages are created, and what we as investors can learn
1:28.3	from the early Amazon Playbook. So, whether you're just running your home portfolio, or just
	...

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