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amazon.com - Get Big Fast : Inside the Revolutionary Business Model That Changed the World, by Robert Spector
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Amazon.com Review
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
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From Publishers Weekly
Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos declined to be interviewed for this book, relates Spector, a journalist who has written for USA Today and UPI. But Bezos had nothing to fear. Spector has taken an extremely benign look at the so-called e-commerce success story, beginning with Bezos's career as an investment banker, passing through Amazon.com's early days in a dingy warehouse, the search for investor dollars, the company's transformation from a virtual to a physical entity, skirmishes in the marketplaces and the courts and, finally, the improbable expansion into other products (besides books) and countries. Sometimes chronological, sometimes topical, this comprehensive overview is filled with interesting trivia (e.g., the company initially protected itself against credit card theft by walking a floppy disk from one PC to another instead of transmitting information over the Net). Unfortunately, Spector writes with a glibness that leaves the reader wondering exactly what he means: "Setting about to run a corporate culture from the ground up, Bezos focused on hiring the absolute best people he could find." In other cases, he starts down a promising road but never brings us to the end; for example, he writes that "in reality, in the quest to get big fast, the seemingly mild-mannered Bezos is a fierce, take-no-prisoners competitor," and proceeds to fuzzily document how Amazon gets closer to the consumer. Those looking for a quick primer on the growth of one of the world's most famous dot-coms will find this useful. Readers looking for a journalistically penetrating account, readers will be better served by the business press. (Apr) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Product details
Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: HarperBusiness; 1st edition (April 5, 2000)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0066620414
ISBN-13: 978-0066620411
Product Dimensions:
6.1 x 1 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
3.4 out of 5 stars
51 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#626,980 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
This is a wonderful chronology of Amazon and all its challenges as a start up. Jeff B. started with a great idea just as the internet was coming to fruition. He actually had to create the software as well as the systems to implement a catalog of over 1.5 million titles. Growing pains, lack of capital and solving problems all on the run became everyday challenges. No one in the organization had ever sold a book, stocked a book, wrapped a book, nor shipped a book. And then what did you do with the damaged books, lost books, stolen books, returned books, etc. And when more money was needed or you would declare bankruptcy in less than 3 months where do you go to get a quick fix? This book is a carnival ride steered by brilliant and dedicated people who had a dream and darn near turned it into a nightmare had it not been for exceptional leadership and management. This is a highly interesting and informative book. Give yourself a treat and read it.
I am an incredibly loyal Amazon.com customer, having purchased over $2000 in merchandize from Amazon.com in the US, the UK and Germany. In fact, I bought my copy of this book on the Amazon website literally 3 days ago (evidence of Amazon's quick turnaround on delivery).As a result, I would like to start out on the positive side. Given my significant interaction with Amazon over the years, I found the book quite insightful as to what customers really want and what matters to making an online shopping experience beneficial. In addition, it was quite enjoyable to understand the inner workings of Amazon.com and the business practices that made these positive online shopping experiences possible.Indeed, the major reason I am a huge Amazon customer today is that, as the book correctly develops, Amazon does a marvelous job in creating a positive and painless shopping environment. Spector illustrates quite well how the intense focus on customer satisfaction from day one was instrumental in creating a corporate culture that is steeped in "Customer is King" mindset today. Further, he gives us a peek of what it is really like building your own business and how this enormous juggernaut started from incredibly humble beginnings. They didn't have a clue about some of the most fundamental concepts about selling books, and relied on sheer will power, hard work and faith to get through.However, I came away feeling that luck was the predominant player in Amazon's early fortunes. Spector does a wholly inadequate job of revealing to what degree Amazon actually benefitted from competitors' missteps, nascent Internet fever, and a raging bull market in Technology stocks and convertible bonds. As I read on, I realized that negative commentary was sparse and the analysis was completely one-sided.I am a believer in Amazon. However, as an Investment Banker I tend to look at Amazon's performance from a financial/cash flow point of view as well as from a customer satisfaction point of view. Certainly, a sustainable business model addresses both short/medium term liquidity concerns as well as long-term business goals. Otherwise, you run out of money. Spector skirts around the net cash flow issue throughout the book.The financial numbers are quite sobering indeed. As a result, I am yet to be convinced of Amazon's business model of "Get Big Fast." Spector's book does little to change this because it is such a biased and one-sided read. Thus far, the plan has worked. If Bezos is eventually successful in achieving profits commensurate with Amazon's valuation, it may well prove that his business model is only viable for first-movers.Nonetheless, it is an enjoyable read and a unique insight into the company. I give it only two stars for being incredibly skewed. Otherwise, it's worth 4.
This 'book' if you can even classify it as that, is absolutely horrible. It is likely that when written, the author had enough material to provide a below the fold article in some sad Canadian paper, and was told, 'Hey, you should make this into a book'. Every chapter uses the exact same boilerplate information, spun in a different order. I gave up reading halfway through, when I realized I could have written a better book myself.
Nothing interesting here .. boring book with no tips :(
As a faithful customer who devotes a substantial part of his purchasing power to buying books online, I thought I should get in more familiar terms with the story of Amazon.com. I had Robert Spector's book in my personal library for quite a while, in a section devoted to management books that I only seldom visit. To speak frankly, I have a grudge against business books. I loathe their poor writing style, their self-assertive cockiness, and their debilitating features like diagrams, bullet points, and end-of-chapter summaries. They take their readers for half-wits, and are usually written by people who are not worth better. The same applies to self-help books and how-to manuals: a famous collection even targets `dummies' as its avowed public, and feels unabashed about it.My personal likings and scholarly upbringing leads me to favor books that are intellectually challenging, as opposed to books written for the intellectually challenged. I find more valuable insights and general lessons in history books or classical novels than in the series that advertise their practical relevance and direct usefulness. But dealing with business and economic issues in my real life, I consider it my duty to expose myself from time to time to recent management thinking, or to learn about business ventures and companies that I am too lazy to read about in the business section of my morning newspaper. I read business books as a reminder that business matters, and that we cannot lead our lives only according to esoteric thinking and other intellectual pursuits.I have to confess that reading Amazon.com was not a life-transforming experience, but it was no drudgery either. For one thing, it contains no management terms or business school gobblespeak that so often obfuscate meaning and go against any notion of proper writing style. It is a who-did-what-when-and-why story of the company founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, as told by a journalist who made serious background information-gathering and fact-checking, and who writes in an engaging style. It ends in the year 2000, and leaves the rest of the story to a book sequel that remains to be written. People interested in establishing an e-commerce company or involved in online retailing may find applicable lessons for their trade, and company executives in general may consider it an inspiring and uplifting story. As for me, I read it as an account of the early years of the Internet age and as a portrait of one of the new economy's most charismatic figures.Jeff Bezos walks through life with a view to the legend. Ever since the beginning of the company, he masterfully played the public relation tune. According to Spector, "the selling of Jeff Bezos was another essential element of the Amazon.com strategic plan." He understood "the value of creating an entrepreneurial mythology that fed into the mystique". Episodes of the golden legend are the cross-country road trip from New York to Seattle, the creation of the company in a downtown garage, the CEO's office desk made of a house's door, etc. These details are mentioned in virtually every media profile, and they are carefully recorded and checked in the book. Youthful anecdotes are made relevant to the rest of the narrative by underscoring the hero's precociousness and technological savvy: dismantling his crib with a screwdriver as a toddler; rigging an electric alarm to keep his younger siblings out of his room; transforming the family garage into a lab for science projects--his mother, who also took part in the building of the myth, comments wryly: "his projects became more complex with age but unfortunately the garage never got any bigger."The journalist gives a rationale for his voyeuristic account into his hero's personal life: "At the risk of reading too much into how the events of Jeff Bezos's youth influenced the creation of Amazon.com, it's obvious that he displayed evidence of success at an early age, and continually added to that evidence as he walked through the door of the corporate world." Similarly, he introduces his first jobs in a tech firm and on Wall Street by underscoring that "Every move Jeff Bezos made in his professional career--every bit of experience and knowledge he gained--was a building block in the eventual creation of Amazon.com."Although the book's hero declined to participate in the project and did not respond to the author's inquiries, we get a fair amount of details about Amazon's early story and the choice that were to determine its future. Robert Spector also spares the reader no detail about Jeff Bezos's favorite books (science books and Sci-fi), his spending patterns (he bought a zero-gravity chess set at a Russian space auction), and his sleeping habits (he needs a full eight-hours sleep). His laid-back, self-deprecating humor is illustrated by many quips. Asked by a journalist if price comparators worry him, he answers that yes, it's a concern, but "it's a concern the way that gravity is a concern for Boeing." Another memorable quote: "The landscape of people who do new things and expect them to be profitable quickly is littered with corpses." Or the following: "When people ask me if our consumers are loyal. I say, `Absolutely, right up to the second that somebody else offers them a better service.'"Also Bezos uses the expression `category-formation time' a lot, meaning that you had better get your act together very fast because the choices we make now will determine our future. He favors science metaphors: he compared the state of the Internet in 1996 to the first 10 seconds after the Big Bang, where there is still "a huge amount to come." Confronted with the exponential growth figures in web usage, he comments: "things don't grow this fast outside of petri dishes." This image of nerdiness also belongs to the Bezos mystique, and is carefully constructed through quotes and anecdotes. We are even introduced to his rare, two-inch-thick Swiss Army knife complete with unusual features such as a fish scaler, mini-screwdriver to repair sunglasses, and a tiny ballpoint pen.Like Immanuel Kant, Jeff Bezos runs his life by the clock, and proceeds everything according to plan. The book describes how he methodically went about figuring out "what business to get into, where he was going to do it, and how he was going to convince others to buy into his vision." His decision to move into e-commerce and sell books on the Internet was a result of a carefully planned combination of market study, investor's acumen, and personal equation. He applies a `regret-minimizing framework' to his most important life choices, meaning that "if you feel you will one day regret not taking a chance, then you take that chance." As a bachelor, he also optimized the dating process by putting in place a `women flow' system, as investment bankers do with `deal flows'.Also the choice of his company name was not made in reference to mythology or to the "A to Z" logo smile: Bezos simply perused the entire "A" section of the dictionary because the company would then be listed on top of the alphabet list (another well-placed if unsuccessful entry was the Dutch "Aard"). What mattered were not only the first letters in the company's name, but also the last characters. Amazon.com was one of the first enterprises to include the "dot-com" suffix into its branding. And a dot-com it certainly was: its share price went skyrocketing during the bubble era, and it was widely considered in a category of its own. "Going on Amazon" became synonymous with buying a book online. Bezos resented his company being referred as "the Wal-Mart of the Web" because, as he told Fortune magazine, "the company is not trying to be the `Anything' of the Web. We're genetically pioneers..." This did not prevent Barnes & Noble to raise legal charges against Amazon.com for falsely claiming in its ads and on its website to be "Earth's Biggest Bookstore," when in fact Amazon.com was "not a bookstore at all, but merely a book broker."Much of what we take for granted in online shopping and web design is the result of carefully planned decisions, technological constraints, or trial-and-error. Bezos and Amazon.com took a systematic approach to every step in the process of buying a book on its website. The company is considered the first Internet retailer to divide the buying procedure into a series of specific steps, to literally number each step, and to guide the customer through it. The online buying process that is commonplace today was revolutionary in its simplicity when it was first introduced in 1995. Even so, people were reluctant to give their credit card number online, and many transactions were set by phone. Amazon even tried to patent its shopping basket and one-click button.The most interesting part in the book was, for me at least, the few excerpts in which the author explains how Amazon.com made a difference in people's lives. As an early editor recalls, "People would email us about how their world had widened through being able to order books through the Internet." I certainly feel that way. More than any other website or computer application, Amazon.com changed my life. It opened worlds of wisdom, created propitious encounters, and made life-long learning a reality. Through book reading and review writing, I taught myself English, or at least I transformed a distant second language used only in the classroom into a familiar medium practiced daily. I kept a log trace of my past readings and couched my impressions or reading notes in an accessible format. I got in touch with other reviewers, and exchanged reading lists or editorial comments. For that, Jeff Bezos and colleagues, I am thankful.
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