The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

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Please try again later. As somebody who has been familiar with Amazon since they began tech in Seattle is a small world , Amazon has always been in my peripherals so I was already somewhat familiar with Amazon's stigma, especially in this city, as well as what a lot of people have had to say about Amazon. This book only really scratches the surface of the mindset of Jeff and his executive team throughout the course of Amazon's history, but if you can take an objective viewpoint and read between the lines of the book you can get a pretty revealing idea of how Amazon operates and their philosophy behind a lot of what they do.

There is a lot to get out of this book that other things are severely lacking looking at you, New York Times. Like other people have mentioned, this book paints Jeff in a little bit of a strange light, only focusing on his ruthless approach to business and e-commerce and spending little time talking about the fact that he is indeed human and has a wide range of emotions and isn't actually Darth Vader incarnate.

All in all, I enjoyed the book thoroughly. The pacing is quick, but not thin, and the author spends just enough time explaining situations to provide context without risking crafting a dense editorial. The language is smart, but not aloof, and the progression of the writing makes it easy to continue reading for long stretches of time unlike a lot of other books like this one. I wasn't really planning on reviewing this book, because I was mentioned in it several times and it didn't seem appropriate.

The Everything Store - Wikipedia

But several other people who were also mentioned in the book have already posted reviews, and in fact, MacKenzie Bezos, in her well known 1-star review, suggested that other "characters" might "step out of books" and "speak for themselves". I was at Amazon for the first 5 years of its existence, so I also have firsthand experience of those times at the company, and I have been a fairly close observer since I left. By and large I found Mr. Stone's treatment of that which I know firsthand to be accurate -- at least as accurate as it is possible to be at this great a remove, and with no contemporaneous documentation of the early chaotic days or access to certain of the principals.

Relying on people's memories of nearly twenty-year-old events is of necessity somewhat perilous. Of course there are a few minor errors here and there, but I don't have firsthand knowledge of important mistakes much less anything that appears to be intentionally misleading. But there are a few minor glitches. It was a publisher and seller of books and other things, not a lending library. It was in a storefront and was no longer a mobile service operating out of a truck by the time I worked there p. But I do not think this is a reason to disregard the entire book; it's just some not terribly relevant detail the author got a bit wrong in a way that doesn't change the story materially.

MacKenzie listed one error, which didn't seem especially awful or material to me, and then referred only vaguely to "way too many inaccuracies". Without a more explicit list of mistakes it is hard to know what to make of that. Stone did not have access to Jeff Bezos for this book, but had to rely on previous interviews and the accounts of others, it would be surprising if there weren't a few mistakes regarding his thought processes.

As part of my agreement to be interviewed for this book, I was allowed to read a draft of the chapter which covered the time I was there, and I offered a number of corrections, some of which Mr. Stone was able to verify and incorporate. To the extent I am quoted, my quotes are, while not complete, fair and in context. I don't love or agree with everything that Mr.

Stone wrote about me -- especially his broader conclusions regarding the circumstances of my departure from the company -- but I do think it was fair and reasonable. I am aware of at least one other interviewee who was also given a chance to check over the chapter in which his story was discussed. I obviously can't know this, but I suspect that if Mr. Stone had been granted access to Jeff Bezos, that he would have extended a similar courtesy.

I have a pretty high degree of confidence that Mr. Stone made a significant effort, and did what was in his power, to make the book accurate. The irony is, of course, that by reviewing the book as MacKenzie Bezos did, she has brought an immense amount more attention to it -- there are dozens of articles referring to her review via Google News this morning -- and its sales rank has shot up considerably.

The book is not a fawning hagiography, but it is also hardly a completely negative account either. It describes not only Amazon's ultra-hardball business practices, but the better aspects of their services and products as well. To the extent of my knowledge it is a pretty realistic account, though necessarily incomplete. For those of us not looking for work, what about the book?

My guess is if you have a day job filled with meetings, sales reports, executives, and the latest from Wall Street, the last thing you want to unwind with after a hard day's work is a book about meetings, sales reports, executives, and the latest from Wall Street. Decent read, but I just couldn't handle it. In my defense, I'd like to state that I downloaded my copy of the book from Amazon, I've followed the new rules regarding book reviews, and I'm still totally open to seducing Bezos in exchange for an Amazon log-in.

View all 11 comments. Nov 20, Mal Warwick rated it really liked it Shelves: I read this book on my Kindle — my eighth Kindle, no less! Not so much because of the low prices, though I hardly object to them, as because of One-Click ordering, Amazon Prime, and the exceptionally good customer service So, why do I carry with me like a massive weight on my shoulders a festering hatred for the company and for the pile-driving founder who has built it into the behemoth it is today? Not only does Jeff Bezos have a long history of verbal abuse directed at his employees — including senior executives who work closely with him — but he treats as a matter of principle denying them such modest benefits as free snacks and full reimbursement for using public transportation that are common in so many other large companies.

Somehow, though, his personal wealth keeps climbing. Then there are the suppliers. You know about book publishers, of course. Stone includes an eye-opening account of the troubled relationship between Amazon and the prestigious German knife manufacturer, Wusthof. Apparently because Jeff Bezos acts as though his libertarian creed requires him to defy not just any government-imposed limitations but rules or customs adopted by anyone else at all.

No doubt Jeff Bezos loves his wife and kids and is affectionate toward furry little animals as well. Maybe his close friends even like him. Brad Stone follows the leading technology companies for Bloomberg Businessweek. The Everything Store is his second book. View all 6 comments. Nov 22, Suzanne rated it really liked it Shelves: I placed my first book order at Amazon in I was living in Ann Arbor at the time, within walking distance of the flagship Borders store. Because new books were expensive, I mostly shopped at a used book store down the street instead.

The selection was unpredictable, but I loved browsing their overflowing shelves and finding titles that were harder to track down, either because they were old or out of print. Amazon's selection certainly wowed me, and there were times that I did want a new bo I placed my first book order at Amazon in Amazon's selection certainly wowed me, and there were times that I did want a new book instead of one with a faded cover and cracked spine.

Their prices on new books were significantly cheaper than Borders, ordering was easy, and shipping was reliable. Back then, putting your credit card info into a website still felt risky. Would you ever get what you paid for? There wasn't a strong precedence yet. I remember a friend describing Netflix to me and actually saying something like, "I wouldn't trust that. Sounds like a rip-off. But, Amazon always delivered.

Although I still bought quite a few used books, whenever I needed new ones, Amazon became my go-to source. Some of my other early transactions with Amazon which I can still view on the site! This remains a staple in my family's gift-giving even today. In fact, if money is passed along for anything, an Amazon gift certificate is preferable to a personal check, because we all spend money at Amazon so regularly.

We are Kindle users and Prime members. In shopping online, Amazon's prices, selection, and convenience are unbeatable. So, given my long history with Amazon, I really loved the first half of this book. It was fascinating to learn how all their services came about, what inspired them, and how Bezos's insistence that the customer experience always came first even if it meant temporary company losses informed all his decisions. Amazon molded my expectations when it comes to dealing with internet retail.

Seriously, I recently bought some gift cards for a family member from another site and was so surprised that I couldn't choose the date of delivery of an e-mail gift card! Of course even in those early days of Amazon, when they were the underdogs working tirelessly in the name of the consumer experience, there was some ugliness. Amazon has never sounded like a pleasant place to work, whether you were in the boardroom or the warehouse.

The stories of Bezos's strategies for dealing with other businesses were eye-opening, as well. The more successful Amazon became and the more capital it had to play with, the more aggressive its tactics. In recent years, it has been tantamount to bullying.

These tactics are not unique to Amazon. We all like small businesses until they become big businesses, and it's partly because we know what it takes to get there and stay there. Low prices at high volume are simply not sustainable for mom-and-pop brick and mortar stores. And then there's the issue of keeping up with the changing times and desires of the customers. This was the nail in Borders' coffin, and in a way, Amazon did to Borders what Borders did to a lot of the smaller booksellers. Happily, my favorite used book store still remains in business right down the street from the now defunct Borders flagship store.

I do miss Borders as a presence, though I admit I bought from them rarely. Amazon has tried hard to seem cool in all this, but as they work toward Bezos's dream of becoming the one-stop shop for absolutely everything, dipping their finger into every pot, it gets more difficult to root for them. With everyone, it seems they'll eventually hit a sore spot. For me, it was the acquisition of Goodreads. At first, I assumed they'd done so because books were the core of Amazon from the beginning, yet the reviews over there are pretty much a joke. I don't trust them, I don't read them.

After reading this book, however, I get the impression the Goodreads acquisition was less about the reviews themselves and more about the data, which can be applied directly to their recommendation algorithms. Those algorithms are Amazon's bread and butter. They're using your book ratings right now to make those "if you bought X, maybe you'd like Y" recommendations, promoting impulse buys and offering gift suggestions. Such algorithms also based on past purchases and searches at Amazon are incredibly powerful, and Amazon has even tweaked them artificially to leverage deals with suppliers.

Of course Amazon lost some money, too, but they weren't losing their shirts the way the suppliers were. Ultimately, in that game, Amazon always wins. I know I'm contributing to the problem. Low prices, convenience, and the perception of a personal touch due to their targeted marketing All the money I've ever given them helped them buy GoodReads, and now my reviews are helping them, too.

For some reason, I don't hate them enough to stop. And, at what cost to the retail world, book publishing, and everything else that Amazon takes on? In considering that, this book made me feel a bit dirty, but I do think it's better to know. If you're a diehard fan of Amazon, you may not enjoy the last third of this book very much.

If you're already on the fence, you may never shop there again. But, that's not why I docked it a star. It's a minor point, but this book did something I dislike in nonfic when authors are trying to generate suspense. They offer a tantalizing teaser at the beginning of a chapter, followed by tangentially connected thing that I don't care about, and then finally conclude with the good stuff I really wanted to read. I don't think this narrative manipulation is necessary, but I see it often in books like this.

Despite those lulls, I thought this was an interesting and evenhanded look at Amazon's history, from inception to today. I honestly didn't think I could find a book about business so interesting. I can't wait until he gets home so I can tell him I finished it. View all 7 comments. Oct 15, Jennifer aka EM marked it as to-read.

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I really want to read this. I'm not kidding; this is not a protest review, or a thinly veiled taunt for deletion so as to provide fodder for the Hydra. That ship has sailed for me, and I find myself today starting to contemplate my own next steps vis-a-vis my increasingly tenuous participation on this site. And yet here I still am. I want to understand what is happening, and why, to the goodreads that I love.

There are not too many are there? Understanding amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos, would appear to be a good place to start; a thought reinforced in this review from LinkedIn, which prompted my putting this on the TBR pile. Frankly, he sounds like every other tech start-up entrepreneur: This is not an attack - read the review for yourself; I'm just paraphrasing. I'm sick of people like him being described as visionary geniuses. Maybe they are - but I think all that vision and genius turned to the single goal of making money for the founder and the shareholders, while running roughshod over everyone - and everything - that gets in the way is ultimately destructive.

It's unethical, it's repugnant, it betrays a fundamental devotion to greed and power that trumps human decency. And it's being played out in the current situation on goodreads as its community is being dismantled in favour of commercial, over social, goals. View all 8 comments. Jun 26, Bob Mayer rated it it was amazing. Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. That to me sums this book up. I think Amazon customers should also read it. Also, I suggest reading the reviews written by some of the people mentioned in the book, including Mr.

But only after reading the book. It lays out a business template of someone driven to success. I was recently able to publish a free Sneak Peak containing excerpts and author notes from 42 of my books and make it live on Amazon and other platforms. What bookstore or publisher would do that? They view authors as customers too, which is key. That said, after reading this book, I also cast a leery eye at the future and make plans in case Bezos winning comes at the cost to me and my career. View all 12 comments. Sep 19, Suzanne rated it really liked it.

The cover of this book is actually a pretty good visual summary of what you find inside: While Jeff Bezos gave his support to the book, he didn't participate in the way that Steve Jobs did with Walter Isaacson's book. So, for that reason, the book doesn't accomplish its goal of being "the definitive book" of Amazon. Also, I found the book jumped around a lot so I'd sometimes won The cover of this book is actually a pretty good visual summary of what you find inside: Also, I found the book jumped around a lot so I'd sometimes wonder which year I was in as I read a story and would have to flip back to figure it out.

I didn't help with this as I would get to bits where the story was moving more slowly and I would start jumping ahead looking for more interesting details. With that said, it's still a fascinating read. Thanks to the fact that Brad Stone has covered Amazon as a reporter for fifteen years, he not only has long-term knowledge but also clearly a huge network of contacts. The anecdotes and personal comments really bring the story alive. I also really loved learning about how so many of the company values and traditions came about. Reading about the huge goals the Amazon team set themselves and how they failed and overcame failure or learned from it to succeed elsewhere reminded you of how far the company has come.

And if the content of the book is not enough then there's a handy list of books in the Appendix called "Jeff's Reading List. He then lists a dozen books "widely read by executives and employees that are integral to understanding the company" including The Remains of the Day , The Innovator's Dilemma and The Black Swan. Nov 11, Grumpus rated it really liked it Shelves: If you are an employee or competitor, watch out. If you are a customer, you can count on an advocate with an obsession for customer service and getting the lowest prices anywhere.

I have noticed little middle ground opinions. I like the low prices and I respect their passion for customer service. I know how difficult customer service can be and with so few companies doing it right these days, I admire those that do it well. This has forced companies to become more efficient and cost conscious.

In turn, has resulted in the outsourcing of jobs to countries with lower labor costs. People claim to want to buy American or local but nobody wants to pay more for it. As a result, it becomes a vicious cycle with Amazon essentially incorporating the Borg mentality that all competitors will be assimilated—two of my favorite companies among them, Audible and Goodreads.

As a former Audible and Amazon investor, I have benefited both financially and from a customer service perspective from these companies. View all 3 comments. May 08, Andrej Karpathy rated it really liked it. This is the story of Amazon. The book is fun and engaging to read. The chapters focus on painting a picture of Jeff Bezos and his philosophy, and the various adversities that the company has faced over its 20 years of existence.

My favorite parts included: Would recommend to anyone interested in the history of internet and the dot com bubble and general high-level business strategy grounded in the examples from Amazon's history. Nov 13, Kwame Carlor rated it it was amazing. If you enjoy business books, the Everything Store is perfect. An online bookstore headquartered in a Washington garage in is now considered by many to be the most innovative company in the world.

The Everything Store perfectly encapsulates the culture that Jeff Bezos wanted and the journey through some of the brightest innovations all derived from the Amazon Mission: As much as this book gives a historical overview it also informs, by highlighting the key principles that guide the entire organization and these principles can also be applied to other organizations. For example, a relentless focus on the Customer by all employees drives the mission forward and that in parallel with long-term thinking at the crossroads of all decision-making fosters BIG thinking that delights the customer and that is one of the foundational elements to how Amazon became the "Everything Store" - this is also what will inspire future selection that many can't imagine possible.

Brad Stone could not have been more precise in painting the picture of Amazon's journey and guiding light while giving readers a framework for what the future holds for Bezos and the entire Amazon ecosystem. Jun 03, Brendan Monroe rated it liked it Shelves: Jeff Bezos is one of the most controversial figures in modern-day America because he's both - both a self-made billionaire and a scourge to independent retailers everywhere.

The man who founded the empire that is Amazon Inc. It's pretty insane, really, how obsessed Bezos is with making sure his customers are happy. The things that Bezos, the founder of the world's largest internet company, does to ensure his customers get the best selection, price, and support when making a transaction on Amazon. My big issue with "The Everything Store" is that Brad Stone often seems reluctant to delve too deeply into the clearly deserved criticism Amazon gets for the way it treats its employees. Perhaps this is to avoid upsetting Bezos, whose participation in this book is evident, but it seems irresponsible not to go into greater detail about the poor factory conditions in Amazon's fulfillment centers and to avoid highlighting the loss of jobs caused by the closure of any number of small and sometimes large retailers that Amazon has basically forced out of the marketplace.

Sure, this has been well documented elsewhere, but any authoritative biography on Bezos that fails to mention these things feels a little too closely allied with Amazon. That's not to say that those things don't get passing references here, they do, but they're overshadowed by the positive things Stone has to say about Bezos' company. For the most part, though, Stone has set out to write a very stat-based account of Amazon's rise, and he's not overly interested in dealing with the consequences Bezos' decisions have wrought. You do at times wonder when reading this thing why anyone in their right mind would work for a man like Jeff Bezos.

The guy sounds like an absolute tyrant at times, one who enforces draconian policies regarding employee time off he's against it and overtime hours he demands them. Employees quitting because they want to spend more time with their families is a common refrain, as is employees being forced to endure Bezos' outbursts and belittling. We don't want to do that! It costs money and means employees will want to leave before midnight to catch the last bus! The comparison of Amazon to a cult is made here and has been made elsewhere so many times as to render it completely unoriginal by this point, but enough current and former employees cite their fear of Bezos' being "disappointed" in them if they left Amazon that you do start to wonder if there is something in the water over there.

The way a company treats its employees tells you a lot about that company. Regardless of how low their prices are, I have already made the decision to stop shopping at Amazon. I'd rather pay a few bucks extra for my books but know I'm supporting an independent seller who, hopefully , treats his or her employees like individuals with feelings. The problem in is that we're very much living in Amazon's world. I love audiobooks, and I got this one from Audible which is - surprise surprise - an Amazon company. Is resistance futile then?

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What each and every one of us can do is protest the way Amazon treats its employees and how it fails to pay many of those that work in its fulfillment centers a living wage. Jeff Bezos and Amazon may be an American success story, but there's absolutely nothing American about threatening your rivals and forcing them out of business. There's nothing American about treating your employees like cattle.

Or is Amazon what America has become? Oct 15, Jonathan Leblang rated it really liked it. I found the book interesting and informative, to see how an outsider views both Jeff and Amazon. Of course, as with any book where the subject is not an active participant, the book is slanted toward those episodes where Stone can find someone to talk about them.

And of course, he includes that which supports his thesis. I found the discussion about his biological father to be sensationalistic -- and unnecessarily intrusive to Jeff's family both his real family and his biological father's family I found the book interesting and informative, to see how an outsider views both Jeff and Amazon. I found the discussion about his biological father to be sensationalistic -- and unnecessarily intrusive to Jeff's family both his real family and his biological father's family.

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Its also much easier to be in meetings and recollect the times where someone gets angry and not the times where praise is given. That said, I would still recommend the book and especially the picture of Jeff in High School! Nov 08, Jorrit Van der Meulen rated it liked it. Oct 22, Nathan rated it really liked it Shelves: There's an art to writing the business biography.

This one couldn't figure out whether it was the Bezos story or the Amazon story, even though the two are intertwined, and didn't do an entirely perfect job of either. Amazon's very early startup days were short on detail, whereas the more proximal later ultra-competitive years were well described. Bezos's personality is explored but not charted. A book that opens as many questions as it answers. What it does paint, though, is fascinating. Jeff Bez There's an art to writing the business biography. Jeff Bezos as driven over-achiever. Amazon as dysfunctional incarnation of Jeff's own personality.

Sony Electronics explored the possibility of using Amazon to bring its Sony Style chain online. As part of the discussions, Howard Stringer, chief of Sony Corporation of America, toured the Amazon fulfillment center in Fernley and, in a memorable moment, encountered on the warehouse floor a pile of Sony merchandise, which Amazon was technically not supposed to be selling. Stringer and his colleagues started examining the labels and writing down product numbers in an attempt to determine where the merchandise had come from. On the Amazon values and culture: They agreed on five core values and wrote them down on a whiteboard in a conference room: Later Amazon would add a sixth value, innovation.

Instead of Get Big Fast, the company adopted a new operating mantra: Get Our House in Order. The watchwords were discipline, efficiency, and eliminating waste. That, it turned out, was the central insight that not only turned Amazon into a thriving platform for small online merchants but powers a good deal of its success today.

Scott also talked about how Walmart viewed advertising and pricing as two ends on the same spectrum. The rest of our marketing dollars we pour into reducing prices. Our marketing strategy is our pricing strategy, which is everyday low pricing. I gotta be stupid. They are a great form of distribution. We deliver on that value constantly. There are no annuities in this business.

They would likely compete with one another for resources and sometimes duplicate their efforts, replicating the Darwinian realities of surviving in nature. Freed from the constraints of intracompany communication, Bezos hoped, these loosely coupled teams could move faster and get features to customers quicker. For example, a two-pizza team in charge of sending advertising e-mails to customers might choose for its fitness function the rate at which these messages were opened multiplied by the average order size those e-mails generated.

Bezos wanted to personally approve each equation and track the results over time. The result was somewhat disappointing. The two-pizza-team concept took root first in engineering, where it was backed by Rick Dalzell, and over the course of several years, it was somewhat inconsistently applied through the rest of the company. There was just no reason to organize some departments, such as legal and finance, in this way. As part of his ongoing quest for a better allocation of his own time, he decreed that he would no longer have one-on-one meetings with his subordinates.

These meetings tended to be filled with trivial updates and political distractions, rather than problem solving and brainstorming. Even today, Bezos rarely meets alone with an individual colleague. Shaw colleague, who by that point had joined the S Team. You are never forced to express your thoughts completely. He wanted people thinking deeply and taking the time to express their thoughts cogently. Japanese consultants occasionally came to work with Amazon, and they were so unimpressed and derogatory that Amazon employees gave them a nickname: Perhaps the best story stems from the busy holiday season of A temporary employee in the Coffeyville, Kansas, fulfillment center showed up at the start of his shift and left at the end of it, but strangely, he was not logging any actual work in the hours in between.

Finally someone uncovered the scheme. The worker had surreptitiously tunneled out a cavern inside an eight-foot-tall pile of empty wooden pallets in a far corner of the fulfillment center. Inside, completely blocked from view, he had created a cozy den. But it's not all smiling HBR quotables. During one memorable meeting, a female employee pointedly asked Bezos when Amazon was going to establish a better work-life balance. He would love it to distraction. Naturally, he had to pay for the shirts himself. Bezos never despaired over the mass exodus. One of his gifts, his colleagues said, was being able to drive and motivate his employees without getting overly attached to them personally.

Bezos did not explicitly favor one group over the other, but he looked at the results of tests. Employees typically get 5 percent of their shares at the end of their first year, 15 percent their second year, and then 20 percent every six months over the final two years. Ensuing grants vest over two years and are also backloaded, to ensure that employees keep working hard and are never inclined to coast.

As a result of this ongoing examination, many Amazon employees live in perpetual fear. A common experience among Amazon workers is a feeling of genuine surprise when one receives a good performance review. The junior executives recommended a variety of different techniques to foster cross-group dialogue and afterward seemed proud of their own ingenuity. Then Jeff Bezos, his face red and the blood vessel in his forehead pulsing, spoke up. We should be trying to figure out a way for teams to communicate less with each other, not more.

Or, as Neil Roseman also put it: Things to manage working units are bad. Wilke started his negotiations with UPS that summer in Louisville, ahead of a September 1 contract deadline. When UPS was predictably obstinate about deviating from its standard rate card, Wilke threatened to walk. UPS officials thought he was bluffing. The standoff lasted seventy-two hours and went unnoticed by customers and other outsiders.

The Amazon jewelry executives decided on an approach similar to the one the company had recently used for its cautious first foray into apparel. Meanwhile, the company could watch and learn. Even strong companies, he said, tended to reflexively push back against moves in unusual directions.

See a Problem?

At quarterly board meetings, he asked each director to share an example of the institutional no from his or her own past. Bezos was preparing his overseers to approve what would be a series of improbable, expensive, and risky bets. As Bezos proclaimed at the time, according to numerous employees: Storage, bandwidth, messaging, payments, and processing all made the list. Profit margin is finite. Better financial terms with suppliers translate directly into a healthier bottom line—and create the foundation on which everyday low prices become possible.

The next few months were tense. But they can decide which retailers to sell to, and one way they wield that power is by setting price floors with a tool called MAP, or minimum advertised price. MAP requires offline retailers like Walmart to stay above a certain price threshold in their circulars and newspaper ads. Online retailers have a higher burden. Amazon executives view MAPs and similar techniques as the last vestiges of an old way of doing business, gimmicks that inefficient companies use to protect their bloated margins. Amazon has come up with countless workarounds, including a technique called hide the price.

A customer can see the low price only when he places the item in his shopping cart. Some of the retailers who sell via the Amazon Marketplace seem to have a schizophrenic relationship with the company, particularly if they have no unique and sustainable selling point, such as an exclusive on a particular product. Amazon closely monitors what they sell, notices any briskly selling items, and often starts selling those products itself.

But Amazon included the books of many mid-tier publishers in its lending catalog without asking for permission, reasoning that it had purchased those books at wholesale and thus believed it could set any retail price it wished including, in this case, zero. Defeating tiny guys is not cool. Close-following is not cool. Risk taking is cool.

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Defeating bigger, unsympathetic guys is cool. Conquerors are not cool. Obsessing over competitors is not cool. Empowering others is cool. Capturing all the value only for the company is not cool. Pandering to the crowd is not cool. Hypocrisy is not cool. Thinking big is cool. The unexpected is cool. Mercenaries are not cool.

Buy for others

The answer to almost every conceivable question is yes. Jan 27, Denis Vasilev rated it liked it. Dec 24, Riku Sayuj rated it really liked it Shelves: Reading about start-ups and founders is part of the cultural education of our era. Even if you are not interested in the business side of things, these books are still required reading since you have to study the idols and the paragons of society to understand the aspirations and the class definitions.

Jeff Bezos is right up there with the other founder-luminaries as an aspirational, charismatic goalpost to reach towards. Starting something of your own is easily the most self-fulfilling goal all Reading about start-ups and founders is part of the cultural education of our era. Starting something of your own is easily the most self-fulfilling goal allowed today. Forget the find-yourself goals of a few decades back, it is the start-something goal that is the best option today Is it a compromise? Does it make a real difference in the quality of life? No founder is ever going to burst that bubble, at least not yet.

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Anyway, coming to the genre itself, it is part of the reading of this genre that along with the more esoteric reading of such books to understand society, culture, etc.