Amazon Unbound
by Brad Stone, Pete Larkin · first published 2021
6mentions
1recommended by
6HN commenters
2021–2022first – last mentioned
17% recommend83% neutral
"In Amazon Unbound, Brad Stone presents a deeply reported, vividly drawn portrait of how a retail upstart became one of the most powerful and feared entities in the global economy. Stone also probes the evolution of Bezos himself--who started as a geeky technologist totally devoted to building Amazon, but who transformed to become a fit, disciplined billionaire with global ambitions; who ruled Amazon with an iron fist, even as he found his personal life splashed over the tabloids." -- Amazon.com. 'Amazon Unbound' is an unvarnished picture of Amazon's unprecedented growth and its billionaire f
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A great deal of Amazon's store has moved from the old "customer obsession" principle of the early years to a new principle of "revenue obsession." Brad Stone's second book about Amazon ("Amazon Unbound") does a refreshingly candid and detailed job of explaining how this switch happened. It's tucked away in Chapter 10, I believe, and it never got as much media pickup as I would have expected. For me,…
on “Tell HN: Amazon's book search is gamed, keyword-stuffed, and inaccurate” ↗From https://stratechery.com/2021/distribution-and-demand/: `I do get the argument that Prime Video is a waste of money for Amazon; Brad Stone notes in his new book Amazon Unbound that “there was little evidence of a connection between viewing and purchasing behavior” and that “any correlation was also obfuscated by the fact that Prime was growing rapidly on its own.”` Is that…
on “Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B” ↗That's the feel I get from reading Brad Stone's "Amazon Unbound" .There were multiple instances where Bezos appear devoid of kindness towards employees. E.g '...In 2009, Onetto’s human resources deputy, David Niekerk, wrote a paper titled “Respect for People,” and…
on “Fierce Nerds” ↗I started reading "Amazon Unbound" by Brad Stone, and in the part where he discusses the development of Alexa, my laymen self had never considered how difficult it would be to train that thing. I think the term was "far-field" speech…
on “A man spent a year in jail on murder charge that hinged on disputed AI evidence” ↗Also described in Brad Stone's book series "The Everything Store" and "Amazon Unbound"
on “Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale” ↗I am not sure this is actually true. I've been listening to the audiobook Amazon Unbound and there's a chapter on how Amazon's retail business was not profitable and was subsidized by other ventures.
on “Current value of the top 30 YC companies is about $575B” ↗