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Accelerate revenue and growth using your data like Amazon.com did
Category: Blogs | Monday, October 18th, 2010
Original Article written by Vadim Kotelnikov, Inventor & Founder, The first-ever BUSINESS e-COACH, 1000ventures.com. It was titled: New Business Model and Venture Financing Chronology
Breaking the Rules
Amazon.com is a company that is closely tied with the e-commerce phenomenon. Jeff Bezos, the founder of the company, broke the rules of the book business by using the Internet rather than conventional distribution channels. Based in Seattle, USA, the company has grown from a book seller to a virtual Wall Mart of the Web selling products as diverse as music CDs, software, office products, electronics, toys, games, cookware, hardware, food, and health products. The company has also grown at a tremendous rate with revenue rising from about US$150 million in 1997 to US$5.2 billion in 2003.
Entrepreneurial Spirit of Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon.com
Amazon.com was founded by Jeff Bezos, a computer science and electrical engineering graduate from Princeton University. Bezos had moved to Seattle after resigning as a Senior Vice-President at D.E.Shaw, a Wall Street investment bank. He didn’t know much about the Internet. But he came across a statistic that the Internet was growing at 2300%, which convinced him that it was a large growth opportunity. Not knowing much more, he plunged into the world of e-commerce with no prior retailing experience.
He chose to locate the company in Seattle because it had a large pool of technical talent and since it was close to one of the largest book wholesalers located in Rosenburg, Oregon. He was thinking of the company as a bookseller at the beginning. Moreover, the sales tax laws for online retailers state that one has to charge sales tax in the state in which one is incorporated. Therefore it was logical to locate in a small state.
The company went online in July 1995. In May 1997, Amazon.com went public. As a symbol of the company’s frugality, Jeff and the first team built desks out of doors and four-by-fours. The company was started in a garage. Initial business meetings were conducted at a local Barnes and Noble store. Bezos picked the name Amazon for his company because it started with the letter A, signified something big, and it was easy to spell.1
For his contribution, Jeff Bezos was picked as the 1999 Time person of the year at the age of 35 making him the fourth-youngest person of the year. Describing why it choose Bezos, Time magazine said, “Bezos’ vision of the online retailing universe was so complete, his Amazon.com site so elegant and appealing that it became from Day One the point of reference for anyone who had anything to sell online.”
