It’s far more than “the everything store”How does a company get to be as big as Amazon in just twenty-seven years? And how does a man become as rich as Jeff Bezos? After all, as of this writing Amazon employs nearly 1.3 million people and is valued by the stock market at $1.7 trillion. That’s trillion, with a T. And Jeff Bezos, with a fortune estimated today at about $195 billion, is the second-richest person on Earth. In Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, journalis...

.... does Bezos really think people adore him? ..and seemingly there are people who admire him - the mind boggles.

I really enjoyed reading Brad Stone's predecessor book on Amazon, The Everything Store, so I had to pick up the sequel. Amazon Unbound basically picks up where The Everything Store left off, discussing some of the more recent innovations and flops among Amazon's product lines, including Alexa, Amazon Go, Fire Phones, AWS, and Prime Video. It also traces Jeff Bezos' evolution as CEO, transitioning from an obsessive product micromanager to a strategic leader more reliant on his "S-Team." The book

Riveting. Enthralling. Difficult to put down. I promised myself that I won’t finish this book within a day and I embarrassingly broke that promise by a couple of hours.I am a huge admirer of Jeff Bezos. Amazon has been a pioneer in an array of fields, AI, retail, e-commerce, Cloud Computing, a list of fields which is frankly too long to list here. But my key takeaway from this book is that Jeff Bezos has pioneered the culture of invention. He is an innovator at innovating itself. The book goes i...

Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire by Brad Stone is more of the same on the subject of Amazon, the company we love to hate yet cannot seem to live without: as if we don’t already have too much information. What made this book interesting is the author’s research on Jeff Bezos himself, even as he shuns personal publicity and is somewhat of an enigma. It is difficult not to admire a man who created a colossal empire from so little. There is all the usual Amazon stuff b...

This book completely describes the people and the initiatives that were underway or started during my years at Amazon as a VP, and correctly. This is not surprising; Stone's previous book, "The Everything Store" is what influenced me to take the offer Amazon made to me. He is a great writer.This book also describes why I only regret that I did not go to Amazon earlier in my career, rather than just before retirement. When, after my first 6 months, Jeff Wilke asked me what I thought of Amazon, I

Again, doing a review of this for The American Prospect, so cannot say a whole lot here. But a better title would have been "Amazon: Ain't Nothing You Can Do About It Now." That's what the conclusions mostly came down to.

My key take away from this book was Jeff. Bezos words, "don't waste too much time on precision, keep trying stuff."The book is detailed and well narrated. There's a lot to learn from the innovative incentive culture of Jeff. The world is still in day 1. I'm optimistic that entrepreneurs will invent new models to give power back to small businesses in the nearest future.

Everything Store -> Everything Platform It's easy to get caught up in the impact that Amazon as a company has had on American politics. Lina Khan is now the FTC advisor, candidates like Bernie Sanders use Amazon as a punching bag for all that is wrong with tech and American inequality. Yet in the last 5 years, the impact of Amazon as a business has been far greater. Perhaps unique among FAANG businesses, Amazon has reinvented itself, growing by leaps and bounds in the process. Stone describes

Unparalleled inside look at Amazon the company and Bezos the CEO. Discusses wide swathes of Amazon's rise as an e-commerce powerhouse during the past two decades. Must read for anyone interested in tech, startups, innovation, and business.The only negative thing about the book is Brad does not discuss the acquisitions of IMDB and Goodreads. How do acquisitions perform at Amazon? Are they a success or failures? What happened to the IMDB and Goodreads acquisitions and why are these sites left negl...

Jeff Bezos is a terrifying dude, and so is Amazon. The absolute drive for efficiency in everything they do is awe-inspiring. This book is a good look into all the various projects and scandals that happened since _The Everything Store_. Even though Amazon is so huge, it seems like they could grow to be 5x as large even still.

Remember when Amazon first came online in 1995, they would discount books by 33-40%. This pricing lasted for a good 10-15 years then the discounts were reduced under the theory that once they conditioned you as a customer, they could slowly increase their profit margins. After a year of Covid-19 restrictions Amazon’s popularity and bottom line boomed as people were sequestered at home. Today the discount on books is usually 10-15%, and sometimes less, reflecting Amazon’s commitment to the bottom...

Douche chills.Bezos is a dork. This shitty book pretends to not be directly sanctioned by the beez, but his dorky smell is all over it. The author is right up his ass.The guy is the richest feller on earth. Congratulations. I've read a few biographies of these ultra-rich ppl - they suck, they're boring. They're essentially ultra-high functioning psychopaths.Some of this ilk are inspirational, they're creative and interesting, they do interesting things, things that make you go "oh cool, that's a...

4.25 Stars (Rnd Down⬇️) — Unsure of what exactly this was, I knew it a book I’d maintain interest in. Jeff Bezos is nothing if not an utterly intriguing, fascinating character of modern history. But was it a memoir? A biography? An expose? The title —I guess—does give away the overall thematic angle I suppose.Post reading, I am still unsure what ‘Unbound’ is, perhaps it’s an -eye-of-the-beholder type deal. What I can say, is that this is an expertly composed, exquisitely researched & sparkle-fre...

Praise Boss When morning Work bells chime,Praise Boss, for bits of Overtime.Praise Boss, whose Wars we love to fight,Praise Boss, the leech and parasite. AhBoss. - IWW Doxology Interested to read if Brad Stone just fawns over “the richest and therefore must be the smartest” Bossy boots gazillionaite Bezos or dares look at Amazon’s ‘lies, deception and illegal activities’(Probably not! Like 2021 Academy award winning film Nomadland skip through the exploitation @Amazon described in the original

This book is unique for covering contemporary content and collecting a lot of good anecdotes, but it focused too much attention on flashy projects that didn’t alter Amazon’s trajectory and on Jeff Bezos’ personal life.Amazon Fresh, Amazon Go, Alexa, and HQ2 are all interesting initiatives — but they weren’t meaningful drivers of Amazon’s growth or competitive moat.I would have liked to learn more about AWS, international expansion, fulfillment center efficiency, and the growth of 3rd party fulfi...

I do have a soft spot for Amazon. In its early days, at the end of the nineties, when I was relatively new in Sweden and English books over here were far too few and far too expensive, the internet bookshop with unlimited access to an unlimited number of books was nothing short of a miracle. True, that you had to wait for a delivery for an ungodly amount of weeks, but what joy it was to browse! Or how great was the possibility of drifting from one book to another through what others have bought?...

Couldn't put it down

Engaging for tech crowds interested in the sausage making behind many of Amazon’s products, businesses and company culture. I really enjoyed the non-Amazon chapters on Blue Origin as well as Washington Post. I wish the author covered more of AWS and competitive pressures in the Cloud infrastructure space. Despite the many flaws of Jeff Bezos, it is amazing to watch how he’s been able to instil and sustain a corporate culture so deeply based on his personal values. Also fascinating to learn about...

This could be called a sequel to the author's 2013 release, The Everything Store. The previous book is not required reading and from what I can remember they don't have much overlap. While the first focused on the beginnings of Amazon, this one is primarily about 2010 to 2021.A few days before reading this book, I read this article about how Amazon should become a member of the United Nations. As a note, the author of the book is also employed by Bloomberg. At the time I read I was confused why