A book review of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone
Stars: *****
Back Bay Books (2014)
Business
416 pages
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Summary: The definitive story of Amazon.com, one of the most successful companies in the world, and of its driven, brilliant founder, Jeff Bezos.
Amazon.com started off delivering books through the mail. But its visionary founder, Jeff Bezos, wasn’t content with being a bookseller. He wanted Amazon to become the everything store, offering limitless selection and seductive convenience at disruptively low prices. To do so, he developed a corporate culture of relentless ambition and secrecy that’s never been cracked. Until now. Brad Stone enjoyed unprecedented access to current and former Amazon employees and Bezos family members, giving readers the first in-depth, fly-on-the-wall account of life at Amazon. Compared to tech’s other elite innovators — Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg — Bezos is a private man. But he stands out for his restless pursuit of new markets, leading Amazon into risky new ventures like the Kindle and cloud computing, and transforming retail in the same way Henry Ford revolutionized manufacturing.
The Everything Store will be the revealing, definitive biography of the company that placed one of the first and largest bets on the Internet and forever changed the way we shop and read.
The Everything Store
Jeff Bezos and Amazon get a bad rap but the fact is he created what he originally dreamed of. He was successful. He created The Everything Store. Jeff Bezos dreamed of this before e-commerce was a regular thing. He had a vision and he made it come true. That has to be recognized and appreciated I think.
This book shows the good, bad and the ugly. It was well researched and a product of a few years of interviews, digging and putting together information. The only downside (for me) was that I didn’t understand some of the business or financial talk. But I understood enough to enjoy the book.
You will see how Bezos built his empire from the ground up. You will also learn about all the people who helped make it a reality. The book doesn’t just make it seem like it was all Bezos. It properly credits the other people who worked at Amazon, even if they aren’t there today.
This book reminded me of That Will Never Work which was the story of Netflix. In fact The Everything Store mentions Google, Netflix, Walmart and Apple.
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