HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

> 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: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWRbTnE1PEM

> 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): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMKNUylmanQ

> 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): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhnDvvNS8zQ

> 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: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nKfFHuouzA 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.

⬐ petters

> Jeff's pitch at the time (1997); so on point, so precise:

Agreed! He knew exactly what he was doing.

Interesting that he talks about attention being a scarce resource. Things did not improve from that point....

⬐ twobitshifter

Thank you for sharing the video. I liked seeing Bezos on startup phase. I had not heard the story, so I learned that he started as a quant on Wall St and left that job to start Amazon later in life. Many people expect tech startups to happen in your college dorm room, but Bezos took a completely different route.

⬐ travbrack

He sounds like a time traveler from the future. He talks like it's a given that the Internet is going to take over the world but back then it really wasn't.

⬐ TaylorAlexander

Ostensibly it was going to take over the world? I think you mean to say it was non obvious. But unless we’ve split timelines that is exactly what was going to happen.

⬐ hooande

I was at that Startup School lecture in 2008. I still have strong memories of his body language and affect. He wasn't at all what I was expecting

⬐ hn2fast

In what way, if you don't mind? I always have the impression that he is practical to a fault, and consistent in his prescription for engineering above all.

⬐ efwfwef

"this is day 1".

I'm wondering for what else it is day 1, right now.

I know cryptocurrencies have been booming, it's not clear exactly if they will continue to boom but the space is already so big that one has to really read a lot to catch up.

What else seems like a promising field that one could go 100% into right now to bet on?

⬐ julesFromPulp

Yes cryptocurrencies are one thing but look at the possibilities afforded with having a decentralized, distributed ledger in all areas of life. Having a source of truth in things like law or politics. This would be a fundamental shift for society as a whole not just finance.

⬐ grogenaut

Quibble: to me "This is day one" is less about "what market can we get in on the ground floor of and ride a wave". It is more to underscore we are driving the innovation or market and that we are always starting from zero, never too late to change / pivot and we're still aggressively growing everything, or that is the goalline.

That isn't meant to take away from your question. As a developer I'm often focused on leaf concerns. Your question is more about broad strokes and I have to remind myself to think about fundamental changes.

⬐ TaylorAlexander

I am in robotics and it seems well poised to grow. There’s a lot of big problems left to solve at the research level but deep learning seems to be slowly knocking down big problems left and right.

⬐ throwaway568

I think cryptocurrency is more akin to personal computer. DeFi- the internet.

⬐ nitrogen

What else seems like a promising field that one could go 100% into right now to bet on?

Biotech/bioinformatics/bioengineering.

⬐ draw_down

Good grief.

⬐ techlatest_net

And here is the video from 1999 [1] showing his obsession with customer which is why customer support is in the DNA of Amazon

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxwjzVW7z5o

⬐ ACow_Adonis

Do people do any analysis anymore or do they just repeat memes? i.e. "we put the customer first".

For reference, I'm someone who hadn't used amazon (i'm in Australia, and I've just had no need). These holidays was my first real experience with the amazon brand and the amazon website.

What I saw was an incredibly user hostile site: reviews mashed together from all over the world, and you can't even be sure whether they're reviewing the right product or the seller. Search that doesn't work and you're never really sure what you're getting and from whom. I was searching for keyboard trays and it quickly became apparent various products were all the same but just re-labelled cheap chinese output.

When I went to check out, i had at least 3 dark patterns encountered where Amazon was directly trying to screw me: trying to trick me to sign up for prime, promising free shipping on the click but then default you out of it when you check out until you go searching for it, and continually spamming me with offers for whatever their streaming service is.

They weren't "customer first", they were actively customer hostile. I don't understand how this keeps getting repeated, unless their tech side is completely different from their consumer side...

⬐ prepend

This is the “new amazon.” Old Amazon was really customer focused. Back when prime was a good value ($80/year for 2 shipping) everything just worked. You could find products easily, order, automate reorders.

In the past five years, every visit to Amazon involved wading through ads for bad products (eg, search for Iphone7, see sponsored ads for Samsung phones). There are more sponsored line items than actual results.

Prime’s price has almost doubled and I had 6/25 packages take longer than 2 days in the last year I had prime (compared to 99-100% for the previous 15 years).

One click doesn’t work because if I try it, I get charged for shipping even though free is available. I have to manually go into every over and uncheck 1-day shipping for $5.99 (or whatever) and select free 2-day. Every time. And I have to click through a screen to manually say I don’t want to buy prime.

Amazon sucks now. They abandoned their customers.

Comically, Walmart has a better (easier, faster, less bullshit, cheaper) experience than Amazon. I never would have guessed.

⬐ blabitty

My experience with Walmart is poorly packed boxes handled roughly by FedEx leading to a bunch of damaged orders. At this point Amazon's delivery service itself is a differentiator for me, and I don't love the company or paying for prime.

⬐ prepend

That was mine with Walmart for a long time. In 2020, I tried using them and find that they seemed to have improved. Normally packed boxes, speedily shipped. For me, I usually get UPS.

But I think the biggest thing for Walmart is the site as shopping for hard drives shows you hard drives instead of whatever people pay for ads. I was able to find the product I wanted more easily.

⬐ dingaling

> and you can't even be sure whether they're reviewing the right product or the seller

I distinctly remember the point when I lost trust in Amazon, after being a customer since 1997.

There were reviews for two books on the same topic, but different authors, mixed together under one title. I emailed Amazon to point this out and... they did nothing.

Nowadays the review section is a dark pattern itself, you have to keep your wits about you. What used to be a great public resource in the Internet has been lost.

⬐ astrange

The customer friendliness is 1. free fast shipping 2. they will cancel and refund things 3. if you make multiple orders they'll combine them 4. the website loads really fast.

Competitors have gotten better at many of these, but it's still hard to impossible to cancel orders many other places, and if I have to chat to Amazon they still refund and replace things very easily.

I have used amazon.com.au and noticed the selection is pretty bad there. amazon.jp is great though, and worldwide shipping is amazingly fast. The customer service is even more important there because Japanese companies hate cancelling things or special requests (omotenashi/"Japanese customer service" means you do what they tell you, not the other way round.)

⬐ swalsh

The last experience I had with Amazon customer service was so bad I decided to stop using them as much as is physically possible. If your situation does not fit in a simple bucket, they will force it into one even if its bad for them and you at the same time.

⬐ ciupicri

Amazon's customer support is mediocre at best. I tried to buy something from them and the card transaction failed because I had some protections in place. Instead of them trying again, they asked for all kinds of documents to prove the ownership. I sent them a receipt from a local store, but it wasn't good enough for them. I guess they don't want my money :-)

⬐ jdmichal

I would never take a receipt as proof of card ownership. If I were to find a wallet, what's the chance that there's a random receipt stuffed in there along with the card?

⬐ ciupicri

The receipt wasn't old. It was for shopping done after they asked me for proof.

⬐ FpUser

I think Amazon's search quality going down the drain lately. Too much's been taken by promotions.

⬐ astrange

Amazon's search and recommendations were never any good, though. You've always had to search a page or three, and buying a TV recommends you more TVs.

⬐ victor106

That video is pure gold. Lots of lessons you can use even today for any business.

⬐ sn41

Nope. Customer service of Amazon is quite bad. When I tried Flipkart in India in 2011, it was amazing and friendly - when orders were erroneous, they refunded promptly, you could email customer service and got a mail back, etc. In contrast, I still am owed a refund of $140 by Amazon from around 2009. Unfortunately, Flipkart became much more aggressively expansionist around 2014, and I haven't been there more than once or twice in the last 4 years.

⬐ afavour

I'd argue that the customer experience of Amazon has declined dramatically in the last few years. Maybe there should be more internal viewings of that video.

⬐ codeulike

Practically have to do backflips to avoid accidentally signing up to Amazon Prime. Dark patterns deployed front and centre.

⬐ matttb

And canceling Amazon Prime requires you to click a button saying you want to cancel four times.

⬐ ROARosen

The "customer" is at the heart of everything, not the ex-customer (or wanna-be ex, according to Amazon).

⬐ codeulike

I'm still a customer, I just don't want to buy their bundle-of-services-I-dont-need. The tricks they pull with tiny hard to find 'continue without signing up to Prime' links are disgusting

⬐ laurent92

I contacted support twice in 2 years for Prime subscription I didn’t want. Each time: “Are you sure you didn— Yes I’m sure, I knew intended to avoid it, so it’s clearly not me.” Both times they correctly cancelled it.

⬐ jacobwilliamroy

The system is mostly designed to prey upon inattentive seniors with disposable incomes.

⬐ codeulike

If Prime is any good it should be sold on its own merits, tricking people into signing up is despicable

⬐ billti

Anecdote for what it’s worth:

I’ve been a heavy customer for many years. While I bemoan the rampant knock off products and fraudulent reviews, by shopping carefully I’ve actually never had a bad product delivered, and the very few times I’ve needed to call support, they’ve been super responsive and remedied the issue quickly. (Mostly refunds for digital content purchased incorrectly).

They may not be perfect, but that have that “Macdonalds” aspect now; you know what you’re getting and it’s consistently pretty good. Which is often more reassuring than trying something new.

⬐ codeulike

I used to trust them, in the last few years the dark patterns have been deployed with gradually increasing intensity and it leaves a bad taste

⬐ telltruth

"declined" is a major understatement. Too many practices at Amazon is now decisively anti-customer:

- Fake reviews have been happening for years but almost no progress from Amazon

- Huge number of fake products and/or misleading specs

- Sponsored products trumps organic results every time

- Sellers use whatever brand they wish instead of their real names giving appearance that they are "official" vendors of that brand

⬐ ChrisIsTaken

I stopped buying much there around ~2010. The sheer amount of Chinese counterfeit garbage and lack of proper categorization makes it impossible to browse the site. The clothing category in particular is just 100,000 dumpsters full of unlabeled trash heaped into a pile.

If you didn't discover a product name somewhere else, you won't find it on Amazon. Amazon doesn't do merchandising for shit.

⬐ mlindner

I disagree. Amazon has many times refunded my order in full with a simple call, and for orders internationally they do it entirely faith-based and will send you another version without having to even return the original.

⬐ kypro

They're great for this. I once ordered the wrong tablet which was totally my mistake and I even ended up unboxing it, but they still allowed me to return it. It's one of the main reasons I use them because I know there's no hassle if anything goes wrong with my order.

Unfortunetly I know a few people who have been abusing Amazon's refund policy recently. I don't come from the best background so I know a few people who have ordered phones and other electrics from Amazon just because they know if they complain they were stolen from their doorstep they might get a free phone. From my experience working at ecomerce and insurance companies it's hard to have a relaxed returns policy when you also have to accept that the majority of the claims will be fraudulent.

⬐ wildfire

I disagree.

I have had orders where they have refused to refund. When I have later, internally, escalated, they have relented and issued a refund.

There is even a dedicated section (can't recall if on inside.amazon.com or the wiki ) to explain the process of how to internally escalate a bad customer support experience on behalf of your friends and family.

If Amazon (retail) is as customer focused as they claim to be this should not be necessary.

I've been a customer since 2000 and an employee for a while now.

Disclaimer: I hear in the US it is totally different and support is a lot better.

⬐ mvanbaak

I had bought a product on amazon.de, it arrived with some cosmetic damage (product worked, little scratch). To be honest, it was one of the best customer support experiences I had seen. Select order, select product, click button 'problem', describe what the problem was, get return info, DHL picked up the next day, two days later I had a replacement product.

⬐ Corrado

I don't know, I just returned a faulty smart light bulb and the process was beyond easy. Just select it from my previous orders, submit a request to return it, and choose how to send it back. Pretty easy.

As a "bonus" I was able to send it back through a Kohl's store so my wife got a 25% off coupon that she used to purchase some masks and socks (and stuff). Yes, I know, they got us to purchase more stuff, but she really likes shopping there and it was a "we're going there anyway" kind of thing. Plus I didn't have to box up the return or print a label or anything. Just show the clerk the QRCode and hand them the bare light bulb.

⬐ ImaCake

My anecdata counterfactual to this is that I recieved an empty package and couldn't even figure out how to make a complaint to Amazon let alone return it. It was a cheap item so maybe they care more if it passes some threshold value?

⬐ Cro_on

My $2 book purchase anecdata from last summer runs counterfactual to yours. The product never arrived and within 48hours of complaint the cash had been returned.

⬐ brazzledazzle

I had the same issue. I had to use the chat option. It took a little bit but wasn’t too long and they gave me a refund without requiring I send back an empty package. I would have eaten the cost (<$12) if I hadn’t been able to work it out though. Wasn’t worth getting flagged as a potential scammer.

⬐ ValentineC

I agree. Amazon's upper management should really do a mystery shopping exercise themselves to see how dysfunctional their (both Amazon.com's and AWS's) support has become.

⬐ hinkley

A/B testing is awesome for first order problems with your web site design. By the time you’re down to third order problems it’s reductive and cynical.

Immoral techniques always find support from amoral tools. Dark patterns are justified by A/B testing. And shitty people.

⬐ BrandoElFollito

One of the main reasons I use Amazon in France is their service.

I never ever had any issues, our biggest fight was about the 2€ they charged me once to send back a 100€ item. They gave up after the 2nd email.

I will pay 10% more for the Amazon price, for the peace of mind.

⬐ tootie

I recall reaching out to the customer service more than once pre-2010 or so and they were incredibly responsive and helpful. I guess they just couldn't scale human interactions past a certain point.

⬐ billti

They still are. I had to contact support for some purchases I didn’t recognize a couple weeks back. I was dreading the usual “support call” experience, but they were super friendly and within 5 mins I was refunded and they deactivated an old device from my account for safety.

⬐ ekianjo

oh yeah? have you ever returned products on other online stores?

⬐ Scoundreller

Might be hard to change anything when you have a core metric that looks like this:

https://www.google.ca/search?q=amazon&tbm=fin

⬐ judge2020

Link is broken.

⬐ pseudalopex

It's supposed to be the stock chart.

⬐ judge2020

looks like https://www.google.com/finance/quote/AMZN:NASDAQ works for me, based in the US.

⬐ smhg

Anecdotally, I disagree. I recently contacted their support when I didn't understand why final ordering prices slightly differed from the listings on Amazon EU websites.

The reply was very on-topic, ridiculously customized and clear for an otherwise complicated topic (reason: VAT is calculated on the shipping location within EU). Almost as if someone with real EU accounting knowledge had taken the time to investigate and reply (which I can't imagine?). And this was from a non-business account. It was easily one of the top-3 customer service experiences I ever had.

⬐ afavour

I don't deny that Amazon are capable of good customer service. But the site is full of fake products and fake reviews. Returning a product is a breeze but I'd really rather not have to be returning them in the first place. And Amazon knows about the problems. A few times I've reported receiving an offer for a gift voucher in return for a positive review of an item I bought and they've taken zero action on it.

⬐ cowmix

Bezos quotes an article about AWS, "..in fact Amazon's real business down the line will be its cloud services. Amazon will be like a bookstore that sells cocaine out the back door. Book will just be a front."

⬐ rasmi

Source article here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/amazons-cloud-computing-will-s...

⬐ collinf

Another point I recently heard, and I can't recall the exact quote off my head but it was along the lines of: "Amazon at this point is really just a cloud company that is using it's cloud earnings to subsidize its other business arms to grow to a big enough scale where it can choke out all other competitors."

⬐ brianm

I was lucky enough to be in the audience for this, and have long wondered (and generally believed) if the questions at https://youtu.be/6nKfFHuouzA?t=2025 lead to reserved instances. The timing was right (reserved instances appeared in early 2009 https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/announcing-ec2-reserved-ins...).

Jeff ruminates on the problem a bit, and you can all but see the model come out by the time Jeff finishes answering the followup question :-)

That he thinks it would be interesting to a "subset of users" is kind of amusing :-)

⬐ theWheez

Wow, you're right! Definitely sounds like something that Bezos hadn't given much thought to (or enough to have had a response), this is a cool observation.

⬐ rexreed

Side note, why don't these videos show the slide content? That's just as useful, if not moreso, than seeing a video of the person speaking. You can hear the person without seeing them, but you can't hear the slides without seeing them, even if they're being described. A simple split screen with slides on one side and video on the other would work. Or even a picture-in-picture with the speaker. The top comment on the YouTube video has some real snark in reference to what I thought was a legitimate criticism of what would make this video much better.

⬐ aboutruby

Seems to be on purpose to not share sensitive data.

⬐ wodenokoto

You usually have picture in picture solution in mind when recording. One view of the speaker and a second view of the slides.

Maybe the slides was meant to be shared along with the video, or they were shared, b ut only with YC attendants.

⬐ notthingnill

In Messy: How to Be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World, Tim Harford describe the strategy of the initial period of Amazon, and compare Bezos with Erwin Rommel, the desert Fox.

⬐ simonebrunozzi

Wow, the memories. I joined AWS in 2008 as a tech evangelist (left in 2014), and many of these metrics I still remember to this day.

⬐ justicezyx

I am actually curious if what AWS does, to show relatively clear numbers on the business, is a common practice.

⬐ None

None

⬐ hn_throwaway_99

One thing I think is so extraordinary about Jeff Bezos is his uncanny technical prescience despite not really being a technologist. For example, the famous Steve Yegge "platforms rant" blog post [1] about how Bezos basically made a company-wide edict for microservices was very much ahead of its time. Similarly, the vision of cloud computing was much more advanced and early than any of its competitors. Considering this came from a company that already had a huge business of selling things, I think this technical foresight is pretty remarkable.

[1] https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX

⬐ collinf

This is anecdotal, but I used to work at a large (Fortune 500) financial company. The CEO had no engineering experience, but every year they would do an annual summit of the goals of the company. Over 50% of the talk every year, they would drill down pretty deep into technical topics, I was always amazed that at that level he actually knew enough to be able to describe complex data engineering topics and machine learning models. Even if it was rehearsed, I always came off the talks super impressed with their ability to talk at that detail.

Also, Bezos was a Computer Science major and a developer for 4 years after graduation.

⬐ jeffbarr

Jeff's original request for S3 was, as I recall, along the lines of "We need malloc() for the Internet."

⬐ vkaku

What was the malloc's original usecase? Storing logs?

⬐ SlyShy

Manual memory allocation in the C programming language.

⬐ None

None

⬐ vkaku

Sigh, seriously, though. Some people tell me they used to store the Clickstream logs on S3 initially, because FTP was so unreliable.

Anyway, I don't expect Jeff Barr to answer that question, although I'd be happy if he did.

⬐ tsunamifury

When you start to get an executive-height perspective, you begin to see jam-ups that normal people don't see for several years. You can conceptually articulate the fix/need and let the real engineers hammer out the implementation. The same applies for tech, financial and social trend-lines.

⬐ whoisjuan

I believe the cloud computing vision came from Andy Jassy. In fact he wrote the original six pager for AWS.

Equally impressive since Jassy isn't really a technologist either.

⬐ onetimemanytime

>>"I believe the cloud computing vision came from Andy Jassy...Equally impressive since Jassy isn't really a technologist either."

And it shows that he's not a technologist. No plan B for when it rains https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC2AZAxBQAo

(to be fair 51% of US people https://www.businessinsider.com/people-think-stormy-weather-... believe that too)

;)

⬐ neom

Interesting, Sean O Sullivan who coined the phrase cloud, was a business analyst at compaq.

⬐ josh2600

I hate this language of “so and so isn’t a technologist”. You don’t need to understand how a compiler works or grok segfaults to see the future.

It’s obvious if you’re running a big data center yourself that you’d rather pay someone else to do that, it’s just that no one wanted to take on that operational burden because it’s a pain. It doesn’t take a technologist to realize that arbitraging pain is where you make money. Everything after that is execution.

There are plenty of people who see the future who aren’t coders, they just usually can’t execute.

⬐ scottlocklin

Yeah, but it's hard to identify those people until their useful business lifespan is half over. Technologists are at least assumed to have some idea of the possibilities; plenty of "visionaries" come up with unworkable visions that we conveniently forget about in hindsight, because they were bad visions of the future.

⬐ whoisjuan

I disagree with this. The vision wasn't a simple economic statement on why "we should rent out our unused server capacity". It was vastly more complex than that. It included technical details on how it should be approached and how to leverage and scale their existing infrastructure. It also laid down the ground for EC2 and S3 as foundational services.

Perhaps my error was saying that Jassy isn't a technologist. He is 100% a technologist and has an incredible ability to absorb and understand very complex technical topics. He just isn't a technologist by training or by trade. He simply has an innate technical ability to such extent that his first job at Amazon was being a technical liaison to Jeff Bezos.

⬐ bobl

I think the confusion is largely between computer science, information systems, system sciences and management. Which are overlapping fields, but not necessarily practiced as such.

⬐ None

None

⬐ StreamBright

Also VPC networking + patents show how advanced these guys are.

⬐ sonnyblarney

I feel that AWS suites Jeff more so than selling and shipping material goods.

Jeff speaks with deep comprehension and enthusiasm regarding AWS, I've never heard him do such a thing for customer experience, and the more abstract and nuance issues of strategic marketing, branding, mindshare yada yada.

I'm not at all surprised to hear him say in retrospect that they will eventually be an 'AWS company'.

⬐ joshe

This is off a bit, he's pretty technical, BS in Electrical Engineering and CS from Princeton. And his pre Amazon jobs were managing technical projects at D.E. Shaw and Bankers Trust.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos

⬐ breck

+summa cum laude

⬐ theWheez

So the opposite of "not really a technologist"?

⬐ leesec

Not sure where some of these ideas even come from. I constantly see some version of "Musk isn't really engineer" on here as well. I guess having credible degree's and starting billion dollar++ tech companies doesn't quite cut it for the harsh critiques on Hackernews.

Totally.

At the time, I was deeply inspired by his talk at Startup School 08: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nKfFHuouzA