Amazon is shutting down popular camera review site DPReview.com, ending a 25-year run.
DPReview.com established itself as the destination for in-depth reviews of cameras and various photography equipment. Amazon ultimately acquired the company in 2007, roughly nine years after its launch.
“Dpreview.com is by far the most authoritative source anywhere for straight talk about new digital cameras,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and then-CEO of Amazon said at the time. “We at Amazon.com have been their fans for a long time, and we extend a big welcome to the dpreview.com team.”
After nearly 25 years of operation, DPReview will be closing in the near future. This difficult decision is part of the annual operating plan review that our parent company shared earlier this year.
The site will remain active until April 10, and the editorial team is still working on reviews and looking forward to delivering some of our best-ever content.
Everyone on our staff was a reader and fan of DPReview before working here, and we’re grateful for the communities that formed around the site.
Thank you for your support over the years, and we hope you’ll join us in the coming weeks as we celebrate this journey.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is already making his mark on the company, including by focusing less on Jeff Bezos’ top priority.
Jeff Bezos founded and led Amazon from a tiny startup to one of the biggest, most valuable companies in the world. Throughout that journey, his top priority was always the customer. In fact, according to Forbes’ Bill Murphy, Jr., in the 23 shareholder letters Bezos wrote, the word “customer” appears 443 times, more than any other keyword he normally talked about. In contrast, “Amazon” only appears 340 times.
There’s no doubt that Bezos’ almost obsessive focus on the customer is much of the reason Amazon has been the success it has. Whatever other missteps the company has taken along its journey, whatever other issues it may have, Amazon became the behemoth it is by delivering what the customer wants at a price they want it.
Interestingly, at the company’s most recent quarterly call, Jassy appeared to be shifting focus away from the customer somewhat. As Murphy writes, Jassy outlined his priorities as follows:
“[P]robably the No. 1 priority that I spen[d] time with the team on is reducing our cost to serve in our operations network …”
“The second thing, priority-wise, I would talk about is just speed. We believe they’re continuing to get products to customers faster, makes customers happier, and they also converted a higher rate when they can see promises of deliveries that are faster …”
“I think pricing being sharp is always important. But particularly in this type of uncertain economy, where customers are very conscious about how much they’re spending … we’ll continue to work really hard on being sharp on pricing … “
“And then just the customer experience improvements that we’re working all the time … we will continue to work very hard on those customer experiences, and we have a lot more planned …”
Putting aside that Jassy has four priorities — which Murphy argues is broad enough to count as not having any real priorities — Jassy lists the “customer experience” as the fourth and last priority.
It is true that Jassy mentions ‘making customers happier’ in his second priority, but that’s not the focus of Number Two. The focus is having faster logistics…which will result in the customers being happier.
While Jassy is clearly concerned with happy customers, it appears he does not have the same focus on that metric as Bezos did. Whether this works for Amazon, or undermines what has made the company great, remains to be seen.
Blue Origin has been dealt a major blow, with a federal judge ruling against its suit aimed at forcing NASA to reconsider its bid.
NASA solicited bids from multiple companies to build its next lunar lander. Despite initially signaling that it preferred to use multiple vendors, the agency ultimately decided on an exclusive contract with SpaceX due to cost concerns. SpaceX’s proposal scored higher and cost roughly half of Blue Origin’s.
Blue Origin challenged the decision with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and then sued when the GAO refused to overturn NASA’s decision. Subsequent documents revealed that Blue Origin made a risky gamble, counting on NASA accepting its bid and then renegotiating a better price, or getting more funding from Congress.
According to The Washington Post, a federal judge has ruled against Blue Origin’s suit, paving the way for NASA to move forward with SpaceX’s proposal. Despite the repeated setbacks, Blue Origin said in a statement that it will continue to press the case.
At this juncture, it’s once again worth pointing out Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos’ previous comments about how fast and efficiently procurement worked for the original Apollo missions, and how different it is now.
“Today there would be three protests and the losers would sue the federal government because they didn’t win…the thing that slows things down is procurement…it’s become the bigger bottleneck than the technology.”
Blue Origin, along with Sierra Space, has announced plans for a commercial space station called Orbital Reef.
The space race is heating up, with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic some of the leading commercial companies involved. Blue Origin was recently in the headlines for a flight that included William Shatner, the oldest person to go to space.
The company, along with Sierra Space, is now setting its sights on launching a commercial space station, one that will be “mixed use business park” in space.
Designed to open multiple new markets in space, Orbital Reef will provide anyone with the opportunity to establish their own address on orbit. This unique destination will offer research, industrial, international, and commercial customers the cost competitive end-to-end services they need including space transportation and logistics, space habitation, equipment accommodation, and operations including onboard crew. The station will start operating in the second half of this decade.
The project already has the backing of Boeing, Redwire Space, Genesis Engineering Solutions, and Arizona State University.
“For over sixty years, NASA and other space agencies have developed orbital space flight and space habitation, setting us up for commercial business to take off in this decade,” said Brent Sherwood, Senior Vice President of Advanced Development Programs for Blue Origin. “We will expand access, lower the cost, and provide all the services and amenities needed to normalize space flight. A vibrant business ecosystem will grow in low Earth orbit, generating new discoveries, new products, new entertainments, and global awareness.”
“Sierra Space is thrilled to partner with Blue Origin and provide the Dream Chaser spaceplane, the LIFE module and additional space technologies to open up space for commercial research, manufacturing, and tourism. As a former NASA astronaut, I’ve been waiting for the moment where working and living in space is accessible to more people worldwide, and that moment has arrived,” said Dr. Janet Kavandi, former three time NASA astronaut and Sierra Space president.
Microsoft and Amazon have come to an agreement over Charlie Bell, paving the way for the former Amazon exec to begin his duties at Microsoft.
Charlie Bell surprised the industry when he announced he was taking a job at Microsoft. Bell was considered a leading candidate to replace Andy Jassy as AWS CEO when Jassy replaced Jeff Bezos. Despite being with Amazon for 23 years, Bell left the company, only to join Microsoft just two weeks later.
Initially it looked like there was question about when Bell would be able to start in his new role as lead of the newly formed Security, Compliance, Identity, and Management team, especially since Amazon is notoriously aggressive about holding employees to non-compete agreements.
According to The Seattle Times, the two companies have come to an arrangement that will allow Bell to move forward, after establishing terms regarding the limits of his new role.
“After constructive discussions with Amazon, Charlie Bell started his new role on Oct. 11, focused on advancing cybersecurity capabilities that will benefit the tech sector and the broader economy,” a Microsoft spokesperson said.
More details are emerging about Blue Origin’s losing bid for NASA’s lunar lander, and it appears the company made a risky gamble that backfired.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin were two of the companies bidding for a contract to provide NASA’s new lunar lander. SpaceX ultimately won the contract, coming in substantially cheaper than Blue Origin’s bid. Blue Origin appealed NASA’s decision to the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), and then sued the government when the GAO upheld NASA’s decision.
More details have emerged, and it appears Blue Origin shot for the moon (pun intended), basing their bid on the belief that NASA would accept the higher bid and then negotiate a lower price after the fact.
The company “made an assumption about the Agency’s HLS budget, built its proposal with this figure in mind, and also separately made a calculated bet that if NASA could not afford Blue Origin’s initially-proposed price, the Agency would select Blue Origin for award and engage in post-selection negotiations to allow Blue Origin to lower its price. All of these assumptions were incorrect,” the four NASA attorneys wrote in the Agency Report, according to The Verge. “Realizing now that it gambled and lost, Blue Origin seeks to use GAO’s procurement oversight function to improperly compel NASA to suffer the consequences of Blue Origin’s ill-conceived choices.”
Because that’s totally how bidding usually works: Accept an overpriced bid, that didn’t score as high as the competitor’s, and then negotiate with the winning bidder in the hopes they’ll offer a lower price after they’ve already won. Or at least that appears to be how Blue Origin thinks bidding should work.
This isn’t the first time one of Jeff Bezos’ companies has overbid, lost a contract and they cried foul. Microsoft accused Amazon of doing the same thing when it sued after losing out on the Pentagon’s JEDI contract, saying Amazon used the litigation process to see the particulars of Microsoft’s sealed bid and then lowered its own to be more competitive.
Interestingly, Bezos’ companies seem to be aware of the reputation they’re building — as sore losers that resort to litigation to compensate for overpriced bids — as Amazon “sent The Verge an unsolicited 13-page list” of legal actions it says SpaceX has taken over the years, in what appears to be an effort to prove it’s no more litigious than the next company.
Ultimately, NASA said it best: “Blue Origin made a bet and it lost.”
AWS is making changes to its executive roster as Charlie Bell, a long-time company veteran, departs.
Amazon has been in a state of transition following company founder and CEO Jeff Bezos stepping down in July, on the company’s 27th anniversary. Andy Jassy, the former head of AWS, took over as CEO, while Adam Selipsky took over as CEO of AWS, the company’s cloud business.
According to an internal email send by Business Insider, Selipsky informed AWS VPs of Bell’s plans. In the meantime, AWS director Ryan Mackle, AWS support vice president Justin Brindley-Koonce and AWS managed services vice president John Brigden will report to AWS sales chief Matt Garman, who has been acting as the company’s COO.
The email also indicated Peter DeSantis, part of Amazon’s “S-team,” will take over utility computing and Prasad Kalyanaraman will take over Infrastructure and Network Services. DeSantis and Kalyanaraman will both report directly to Selipsky.
The reshuffle is one of the largest in recent years at AWS, and not unexpected when there’s such a major leadership change at the top.
Jeff Bezos, and his brother Mark, will be among those on the first crewed Blue Origin flight.
Blue Origin’s flight is scheduled for July 20, and will use the New Shepard vehicle. The New Shepard is made up of reusable rocket and capsule, and has undergone 11 unmanned test flights in preparation.
One of the other seats is currently being auctioned off, with bids already reaching $2.8 million, with nearly 6,000 individuals bidding from 143 countries.
Bill and Melinda Gates have announced their divorce, putting into question the fourth largest personal fortune.
The iconic founder and former CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates has been married to his wife, Melinda, for 27 years. The two originally met in 1987, while working at Microsoft. In addition to three children, the two founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, “a nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world.”
Bill Gates released a statement on Twitter:
After a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage. Over the last 27 years, we have raised three incredible children and built a foundation that works all over the world to enable all people to lead healthy, productive lives. We continue to share a belief in that mission and will continue our work together at the foundation, but we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives. We ask for space and privacy for our family as we begin to navigate this new life.
– Melinda Gates and Bill Gates
Divorces are difficult under the best of circumstances but, add in a vast fortune, and things can become complicated very quickly. Despite being the richest man alive, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos would be substantially wealthier had the divorce settlement not cost him $36.8 billion.
It remains to be seen how the Gates’ divorce will unfold, but it could have significant ramifications for the foundation they run.
Jeff Bezos has come out in favor of increased corporate taxes to help pay for Biden’s infrastructure plan.
Few things are more unpopular topics than raising taxes. With the administration’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan, however, raising taxes on the rich and corporations is one of the proposed ways of paying for it.
Jeff Bezos, as one of the most influential CEOs, has lent his support to the idea of raising corporate taxes, in a statement on Amazon’s website.
We support the Biden Administration’s focus on making bold investments in American infrastructure. Both Democrats and Republicans have supported infrastructure in the past, and it’s the right time to work together to make this happen. We recognize this investment will require concessions from all sides—both on the specifics of what’s included as well as how it gets paid for (we’re supportive of a rise in the corporate tax rate). We look forward to Congress and the Administration coming together to find the right, balanced solution that maintains or enhances U.S. competitiveness.
It remains to be seen if the infrastructure plan will pass, but it appears it is already gaining support from powerful allies.
In a surprise announcement, Amazon has said CEO Jeff Bezos is stepping down and transitioning to the role of Executive Chair in Q3 ‘21.
Jeff Bezos is the founder of Amazon and has been inextricably linked with the company ever since. He’s guided it from an online bookstore to the e-commerce and cloud computing behemoth it currently is. In turn, the company has helped drive Bezos’ personal worth, making him one of the richest people in the world, only eclipsed by Tesla’s Elon Musk in January 2021.
After nearly three decades at the helm of Amazon, Bezos is taking a step back.
“Amazon is what it is because of invention. We do crazy things together and then make them normal. We pioneered customer reviews, 1-Click, personalized recommendations, Prime’s insanely-fast shipping, Just Walk Out shopping, the Climate Pledge, Kindle, Alexa, marketplace, infrastructure cloud computing, Career Choice, and much more,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “If you do it right, a few years after a surprising invention, the new thing has become normal. People yawn. That yawn is the greatest compliment an inventor can receive. When you look at our financial results, what you’re actually seeing are the long-run cumulative results of invention. Right now I see Amazon at its most inventive ever, making it an optimal time for this transition.”
The company says Andy Jassy will become the new Chief Executive Officer.
Given that Bezos owns aerospace company Blue Origin, as well as The Washington Post, he certainly has enough to keep him busy outside of Amazon. However, given his statement’s emphasis on surprising inventions, one can’t help but wonder if he will focus on his other businesses, or if he plans on a second act.
Forbes created a cool two-minute video timeline of the richest billionaires in America over the last ten years. The current wealthiest American, of course, is Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos who is worth $179 billion. He is followed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates who is only worth $111 billion. Interestingly, both of these billionaires would be even richer had Bezos not divorced and Gates didn’t give away a huge chunk of his fortune to his family foundation.
Bezos’s divorce cost him $38 billion in stock at 2019 prices. If he had stayed married and held onto his shares he would be $57 billion richer and be worth an astounding $236 billion. Bill Gates has reportedly given away over $50 billion to charitable causes over the years. If he had held on to his Microsoft shares who knows, he might even be richer than Jeff Bezos!
Rounding out the current Top Ten Richest American Billionaires are Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg at $85 billion, investor Warren Buffett at $73.5 billion, Oracle founder Larry Ellison and current potential TikTok investor at $72 billion, former long-time Microsoft CEO and current Clippers owner Steve Ballmer at $69 billion, PayPal-Tesla-SpaceX entrepreneur Elon Musk at $68 billion, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at $67.5 and 65.7 billion, and last but not least Sam Walton daughter and Walmart heiress Alice Walton at $62.3 billion. Notably, Alice Walton is the richest woman in the world.
Video Timeline: Richest Billionaires Over The Last 10 Years
Amazon has announced a new initiative, Climate Pledge Friendly, to help customers shop for sustainable products.
Amazon has increasingly been under fire from its own employees for a perceived lack of effort toward addressing climate change. This included a “climate strike” in 2019, when hundreds of employees walked out. The efforts appear to have made an impact, as Jeff Bezos pledged $10 billion to fight climate change in early 2020, and now Amazon has unveiled its new initiative.
Climate Pledge Friendly labels will appear on some 25,000 different products across a host of categories, including grocery, household, personal electronics, fashion and beauty, to name just a few. In order to receive the label, a product will need to have at least one of 19 sustainability certifications. A number of brands have gotten onboard, including Seventh Generation, Burt’s Bees Baby, Mrs. Meyer’s and HP.
“Climate Pledge Friendly is a simple way for customers to discover more sustainable products that help preserve the natural world,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “With 18 external certification programs and our own Compact by Design certification, we’re incentivizing selling partners to create sustainable products that help protect the planet for future generations.”
Amazon released its first quarter results, beating analysts revenue estimates while falling short of their earnings-per-share estimates.
Amazon has been at the center of the coronavirus pandemic, as the e-commerce giant has become a lifeline for many consumers sheltering in place. At the same time, Amazon has struggled to keep up with demand, initially hiring 100,000 extra warehouse workers, only to announce they would hire another 75,000 after that. The company also cut back fulfillment on non-essential items in an effort to keep up.
“From online shopping to AWS to Prime Video and Fire TV, the current crisis is demonstrating the adaptability and durability of Amazon’s business as never “before, but it’s also the hardest time we’ve ever faced,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO.
With their earnings report, the dichotomy of Amazon’s position was made clear. The company reported $75.5 billion in revenue, up from analysts’ expectations of $73.61 billion. However, earnings-per-share were only $5.01, instead of the $6.25 analysts expected.
Even more significantly, the company expects to spend all of the operating profit it will earn next quarter in an effort to deal with the challenges it’s facing as a result of the pandemic.
“Under normal circumstances, in this coming Q2, we’d expect to make some $4 billion or more in operating profit,” Bezos continued. “But these aren’t normal circumstances. Instead, we expect to spend the entirety of that $4 billion, and perhaps a bit more, on COVID-related expenses getting products to customers and keeping employees safe. This includes investments in personal protective equipment, enhanced cleaning of our facilities, less efficient process paths that better allow for effective social distancing, higher wages for hourly teams, and hundreds of millions to develop our own COVID-19 testing capabilities.”
Many tech companies have expressed concern about the next quarter, in spite of doing reasonably well this quarter, and it appears Amazon is no exception, despite how important it has become during these times.
In a letter to shareholders, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said regular testing may be a critical component in protecting Amazonians.
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to take its toll, Amazon has become a critical lifeline for many individuals and organizations. The company recently hired an additional 100,000 warehouse workers, only to announce it would hire an additional 75,000 more to help keep up with demand.
At the same time, the company is facing challenges keeping its workers safe. As workers become infected, there is an ever increasing threat of the virus spreading and shutting down entire warehouses and distribution centers, threatening the entire supply chain. To help reduce the risk, Amazon already has a team working on building out incremental testing capacity.
“A next step in protecting our employees might be regular testing of all Amazonians, including those showing no symptoms,” writes Bezos. “Regular testing on a global scale, across all industries, would both help keep people safe and help get the economy back up and running. For this to work, we as a society would need vastly more testing capacity than is currently available. If every person could be tested regularly, it would make a huge difference in how we fight this virus. Those who test positive could be quarantined and cared for, and everyone who tests negative could re-enter the economy with confidence.
“We’ve begun the work of building incremental testing capacity. A team of Amazonians—from research scientists and program managers to procurement specialists and software engineers—moved from their normal day jobs onto a dedicated team to work on this initiative. We have begun assembling the equipment we need to build our first lab and hope to start testing small numbers of our frontline employees soon. We are not sure how far we will get in the relevant timeframe, but we think it’s worth trying, and we stand ready to share anything we learn.”
Bezos’ announcement is good news and will hopefully help ensure Amazon is able to keep its employees safe, and keep the supply chain running.
The Washington Post is reporting that Amazon has warned at least two employees for speaking out against its climate policies.
In September, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (who owns the Washington Post) announced The Climate Pledge, the company’s commitment to meet the Paris Agreement 10 years early. In spite of that, some employees have been critical of the company’s climate efforts, two of whom were quoted in a previous Washington Post article.
Evidently, Amazon did not take kindly to two of its employees criticizing the company.
According to the Washington Post, “a lawyer in the e-commerce giant’s employee-relations group sent a letter to two workers quoted in an October Washington Post report, accusing them of violating the company’s external communications policy. An email sent to Maren Costa, a principal user-experience designer at the company, and reviewed by The Post warned that future infractions could ‘result in formal corrective action, up to and including termination of your employment with Amazon.’”
The company defended its external communication policy as “similar to other large companies,” according to a spokeswoman. In spite of that, Costa vowed to continue speaking up and fighting the company’s censorship.
This is just the latest in what has been termed “employee activism,” where employees hold the companies they work for responsible for their actions. With this trend on the rise, companies have had to be far more careful to take their employees’ values into consideration when making decisions.
“No company today is completely immune to these types of risks, so the issue is how to minimise their potential and recover quickly if damaging events occur,” Leslie Gaines-Ross, Chief Reputation Strategist at PR firm Weber Shandwick, told CEO Magazine.
Amazon may find itself in a sticky situation if it fails to deliver on its Climate Pledge, or engages in other things that undermine it.
Few technologies are more controversial and divisive as facial recognition. Customers have come to rely on it to log into their phones and tablets, police and government agencies are increasingly using it to identify suspects and privacy advocates decry it as an unconstitutional invasion of people’s rights.
Amazon has established itself as a leader in the field of facial recognition with its Rekognition software. While the software is widely used by police, as well as government agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), it has not escaped controversy. The ACLU has twice used Rekognition on photos of politicians, each time with dozens of false matches. In both instances, however, Amazon responded by pointing out that the ACLU left the confidence setting at the default 80 percent threshold, instead of the 99 percent threshold Amazon recommends for law enforcement.
Nonetheless, Amazon can see the writing on the wall and knows it’s only a matter of time before facial recognition is regulated. Needless to say, it’s in Amazon’s best interests for those regulations to favor companies who profit off of the technology. To that end, Vox is reporting that Amazon is drafting laws to regulate facial recognition, which they plan on pitching to lawmakers.
According to Vox, CEO Jeff Bezos told reporters that the company’s “public policy team is actually working on facial recognition regulations; it makes a lot of sense to regulate that.
“It’s a perfect example of something that has really positive uses, so you don’t want to put the brakes on it. But, at the same time, there’s also potential for abuses of that kind of technology, so you do want regulations. It’s a classic dual-use kind of technology.”
While skeptics are understandably concerned that Amazon’s foray into legislation may do little to nothing to protect the rights of everyday citizens, only time will tell if Amazon’s efforts are sincere or just another step toward a more Orwellian outcome.
“At Amazon, we still take risks all the time,” says Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. “We encourage it. We talk about failure. We should be failing. Our failures have to grow with the company. We need big failures if we are going to be moving the needle. We need to have billion dollar scale failures. If we are not, we are not swinging hard enough.”
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, discusses how to be a successful entrepreneur by being customer obsessed in a conversation at the Amazon re:MARS conference in Las Vegas:
The Most Important Thing Is To Be Customer Obsessed
If you want to be an entrepreneur, the most important thing is to be customer obsessed. Don’t satisfy your customers, figure out how to absolutely delight them. That is the number one thing whoever your customers are. Passion. You have got to have some passion for the arena that you are going to develop and work in. Otherwise, you are going to be competing against people who do have compassion for that. They are going to build better products and services.
You can’t be a mercenary. You have to be a missionary. Missionaries build better products and services. They always win. The mercenaries are just trying to make money. Paradoxically, the missionaries always end up making more money.
We Need To Have Billion Dollar Scale Failures
You have to pick something that you actually have a genuine passion for. You have to take risks. You have to be willing to take risks. If you aren’t going to take risks, if you come up with a business idea where there are no risks there, those ideas are probably already being done. There being done well by many many people. So have to have something that might not work. You have to accept that your business is going to be in many ways an experiment. It might fail. That’s okay. That’s what risk is.
At Amazon, we still take risks all the time. We encourage it. We talk about failure. We should be failing. Our failures have to grow with the company. We need big failures if we are going to be moving the needle. We need to have billion dollar scale failures. If we are not, we are not swinging hard enough.
Disagree and Commit
If I have a new idea and I want to see it pursued I do have to build support for it. You need very smart people to embrace the idea and move it forward. We have a framework at Amazon, it’s one of our leadership principals, it’s called disagree and commit. That is extremely useful. After you discussed an idea, you do need to make a decision and move forward. The whole team needs to really commit to that. When I really feel strongly about something and the team disagrees with me I have a helpful phrase that I look to use which is, “I want you to gamble with me on this.”
The truth is when you are in a position like that nobody knows what the right answer is. You’re not saying I’m right on this. Go do this. You’re saying I want you to gamble with me on this because I don’t know if it is right either. I disagree and commit all the time. I promise the people when I do it, I’m very clear in saying, “I don’t agree with this. I think it is probably not going to work. But I will never say I told you so and I’m going to be on your team. I will do everything I can to make it work.”
Broadband Access Is Going To Be a Fundamental Human Need
A recent big bet (we’ve taken at Amazon) would be Project Kuiper. This is our LEO satellite constellation. The goal here is broadband everywhere. One of the things this does, it’s just the way the systems work, you have equal broadband all over the surfaces of the earth. Not exactly equal, it tends to be a little bit more concentrated toward the poles, unfortunately. You end up servicing the whole world.
It’s really good because by definition you end up accessing people who are under bandwidth including rural and remote areas. I think you can see going forward that access to broadband is going to be very close to being a fundamental human need as we move forward.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos: We Need To Have Billion Dollar Scale Failures
Amazon will fail. That is the surprising admission that Jeff Bezos made to his employees last week during an all-hands meeting. However, Amazon’s CEO isn’t ready to see that happening anytime soon.
In a recording that CNBC was privy too, 54-year-old business mogul Bezos said that “Amazon is not too big to fail.” He even made a prediction that hiscompany will inevitably fail after an employee asked about his thoughts on the Sears bankruptcy.
“Amazon will go bankrupt,” Bezos said. “If you look at large companies, their lifespans tend to be 30-plus years, not a hundred-plus years.”
It’s a little hard to imagine Amazon going under, especially when you consider that it’s valued at almost $3 trillion. However, retail history is against the company. One investor posited that all retailers wouldeventually go bankrupt. And while certain companies become popular, they would eventually fail to adapt, causing the business to decline and fold. Retailers that have been able to adjust and change with the times are considered exceptions.
Amazon has so far shown its adaptability. It has given consumers what they wanted by effectively utilizing logistics and technology. But as it exceeds its revenue threshold, it will have a harder time finding alternative profit sources. At this point, there aren’t enough people or subscribers left to double their Prime membership. It has to find other avenues that it can bring online instead, like grocery or banking.
Jeff Bezos to employees: ‘One day, Amazon will fail’ but our job is to delay it as long as possible https://t.co/kWicq59UBA
Don’t expect Bezos to throw in the towel anytime soon, though. The investor said that Amazon’s goal now is to put off that failure for as long as possible by focusing on the consumers. According to Bezos, if the company starts to “focus on ourselves, instead of focusing on our customers, that will be the beginning of the end.”
But customer focus is the least of Amazon’s worries, as the company is renowned for their obsession with keeping their clients happy. However, possible antitrust violations and government regulations are fast becoming a concern for Amazon.
Bezos understands this but acknowledges that with Amazon’s size, it’s reasonable to expect that it will be closely scrutinized.
Despite the scrutiny, Amazon’s expansion still continues. The company recently announced the two new locations it has chosen for secondary headquarters. The new “H2s,” as people have dubbed it, will be built in Queens, NY, and in Arlington, VA, with Amazon expected to hire about 50,000 employees.
Liberty Media Chairman and legendary entrepreneur and investor John Malone says that although Disney has a great brand, what they don’t have is a massive number of direct consumer relationships.
Disney Doesn’t Have Massive Direct Consumer Relationships
Disney has a great brand, there’s no question, and they really know the entertainment business. What they don’t have is a massive number of global credit cards. They don’t have massive direct consumer relationships at this point, and those are not easy to come by. If you look at the other people in the space, Amazon because of their retailing businesses and the creation of Prime has been able to tie into consumer interest pretty globally. It’s very easy for Amazon to sell an incremental service.
Apple Has 650 to 700 Million Direct Consumer Relationships
You have Apple wanting to be in this space. Apple is the big gorilla. Apple is wanting to develop a direct consumer entertainment relationship beyond music. Let’s call it into video. We’re estimating that Apple has probably 650 to 700 million direct consumer relationships in which Apple has a credit card, a lot of information about the consumer. They’ve started to put money into original content and they’re certainly having lots of discussions in and around the content industry to figure this out. They want to drive their consumer interface technology, their ecosystem, into the video space in the living room more heavily than Apple TV has so far.
Jeff Bezos is on a Roll with his Fire Stick, Prime, and Content
Jeff (Bezos) is on a roll with his Fire Stick and his Prime and his content, so he’s in the living room and Alexa is a is a voice-activated interface that works well, is well thought-through, well-engineered, interfaces with Netflix. I mean well engineered. So the technology side, if Disney has a problem I believe it’s going to be those two things. It’s going to be the technology platform and it’s going to be establishing those one-to-one consumer relationships.
You’ve all heard the story of Jamie Siminoff, creator of Doorbot, later renamed Ring, who was famously rejected on national TV on SharkTank, but then went on to create a wildly successful business. Earlier this year Amazon paid a reported $1 billion in cash for the business.
Here are the key highlights of how Jamie and his small startup hit it big:
From a SharkTank Reject to an Amazon Success
If you can get acquired by Amazon your about as lucky as you get because they really do let you just keep going. Five years ago I was very much on the other side. I was on Shark Tank looking for money trying to get an investment. I did not get one on the show and now it’s funny because everyone says to me, well you were so smart not to take that money. I’m like no, I was driving back from there to my garage almost in tears broke. I actually needed the money.
I think Shark Tank has been a great show for families. Families watch the show, people watch it with their kids, it’s aspirational, and it shows that people can do things. It obviously has to be entertaining because it is TV so you need people to watch it but I think it has been good for overall for startups in general.
For Ring, we were Doorbot at the time, it gave us awareness and credibility that we never would have had that sort of jumped us up. It was a great platform for us to launch off of and we really used it. We turned out to be the largest company ever to be on SharkTank and it was it was a great experience.
We Were the Consummate Hustlers
We were the consummate hustlers. Looking back at those days, you work the booth at TC, you go to CES, you just grind. You wear your shirt everywhere, you just grind and embarrass yourself. I think that level of a start-up at the beginning you almost have no shame. You have to just put yourself out there, get the stories out there, and get the name out there. You have to focus on the business, but you have to hustle.
I always get asked by people that have a startup, what worked? What they really want is the one thing. They want me to tell them we did X, and then I can just go do X and be successful. The truth is it’s like 5,000 things that you have to do to make a successful company. The first thing though is you have to have a reason to be a business.
A Company Should Start With a Core
At Amazon, they call it thinking from the customer. That’s starting with the customer and working backward. We called our customer’s neighbors, so we always start with the neighbors and it’s always around a mission to reduce crime in neighborhoods. As a company you should start with some core that says why am I hustling, why am I trying to track you down at CES to get you to write a freaking article? You have to have that reason.
There are a thousand things you have to do and wearing the shirt yeah, it’s all these little things. Wearing the Ring shirt, for example, creates a conversation on an airplane with someone who asks a question and then that leads to something. My family’s laughed at me because I literally wore the Ring t-shirt almost non-stop for seven years!
Why Did I Sell Ring to Amazon?
Why Did I sell Ring to Amazon? You hear all this stuff like this did you sell out? The company was started with a mission to reduce crime in neighborhoods. From day one that’s been our mission. We’re going to reduce crime in neighborhoods by delivering effective and affordable products and services. We were working with Amazon on some integrations and other things and when Amazon came to us they had bought into the idea that the mission to reduce crime in neighborhoods made sense for Amazon on a strategic level. For Ring that became the best possible outcome, the fastest and most scalable with the best foundation. Amazon has enabled us to accelerate our business.
The Truth of Business is Luck
It’s cool when you get inside Amazon. They really do start, and this is from Jeff down, with customer backwards and infinite truths. Are people going to want to have a safer home and neighborhood in 50 or 100 years? Yes. They look at these like bigger truths around things. When they’re making these big decisions it’s really about an infinite truth of something that can make a customer’s journey or life better.
The truth of business is luck, luck, luck, luck, luck. I worked hard, I focused, I did everything right, but the amount of luck that happened along the way, getting on Shark Tank and having the right investors come when they did, having a house where if the freaking doorbell had reached to the garage I’d probably be here trying to pitch some other hardware thing in the roundup group.
Especially at this scale, to build a business to the size that we have so far and to have that success I think luck is a huge part of it. Timing is not in your control, you don’t know what’s gonna happen next year or the year after and all of these things went our way. You know, luck.
