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Jeff Bezos 1997 Interview

Chuck Severance · 1.9M views · 2013-12-22 · 5:40

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Overview

A 1997 interview with Jeff Bezos taped at a Special Libraries conference, where he explains why Amazon started with books and why the web made it possible. He calls it the Kitty Hawk stage of electronic commerce.

On Hacker News

HN people share it as a precise, early statement of Amazon's pitch, useful for startup idea reasoning.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2021–2025

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What people said

redredrobot · 2022-06 · Recommendation

Here is a 1997 interview with Jeff Bezos that I like where he talks about why he created Amazon - [VIDEO] . He describes a purely logical explanation of seeing data about internet growth and identifying books as being a uniquely good product to sell on the internet. Which is not to say he wasn't "willing to dedicate [himself] entirely to solving the problem", but I think it agrees with your take about finding market opportunities rather than following a passion.

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ignoramous · 2021-02 · Recommendation

> This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name. Jeff's pitch at the time (1997); so on point, so precise: [VIDEO] > The question I was asked most frequently at that time was, “What’s the internet?” Blessedly, I haven’t had to explain that in a long while. Here's Jeff explaining the Internet (at a TED talk): [LINK] > Invention. Invention is the root of our success. We’ve done crazy things together, and then made them normal... If you get it right, a few years after a surprising invention, the new thing has become normal. People yawn. And that yawn is the greatest compliment an inventor can receive. Jeff speaking about innovation, invention (based on first principles), making data-driven decisions (and also when to not trust data), learned helplessness at Stanford (2005): [LINK] > When times have been good, you’ve been humble. Heh. Reminds me of this 2008 lecture where Jeff is selling AWS to startup school students: [LINK] Classic. > Amazon couldn’t be better positioned for the future. We are firing on all cylinders, just as the world needs us to. Not sure about that last part, Jeff. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

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HenryBemis · 2021-02 · Recommendation

> If Google were a book shop.. On the Amazon-CEO news yesterday, someone posted an interview of JB from 1997 [0]. In the first 2-3 minutes he explained exactly that (but for books). There are X million titles on books, they keep a tiny fraction of that in stock for 'next day delivery'. Kinda what Google does (or many search engines). Usually you find the 'most popular' answers on the first page. But when I have a tech problem, I have usually tried the 'first 5 pages' of solutions before I even try to duck it (DDG) for a solution (dear wikihow, yes I did restart my PC!). I assume HN has the type of readers that already KNOW the first 10 pages of solutions, and thus need that tiny level of detail that one gets after digging deep (stackexchange, forums, etc.) Question if anyone who knows: does Google search engine give preference to websites that display Google ads, or it is agnostic? I assume Google's crawlers can 'read' if a website is using X, Y, or Z advertiser's ads. (I haven't used Google for many many years and I usually block any google search and ads related IPs and URLs)(and ads in general). [0]: [VIDEO] I suggest you spend the 5mins to watch this video. He made it sound so easy..

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Sources

Video by Chuck Severance, played through YouTube.

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