In 2003, Jeff Bezos invited his former chief-of-staff to a corporate retreat at his home.
One 30min meeting on the schedule ended up going on for hours...
That former chief-of-staff is now worth $400M. Oh, and he’s Amazon's new CEO.
Here’s what happened in that meeting 🧶👇
1) Andy Jassy joined Amazon just before the dot-com boom and became Jeff Bezos’ “shadow.”
He literally followed Bezos around everywhere he went, taking notes in all his meetings and learning directly from the boss himself.
2) Around the same time, Amazon was working on merchant.com
Merchant was aimed at helping stores like Target setup their online shopping portals, without dealing with any of the technical infrastructure.
Technology wasn’t Target’s specialty, but it was Amazon’s.
3) Target (and others) didn’t have to worry about the rapid pace of technological improvements either, as Amazon promised they’d handle all future requirements as well.
That’s when the struggles started.
4) Amazon had built an amazing API-based infrastructure for other companies to use, and even started using it themselves.
As their offering got more complex, they needed to move faster.
They started hiring more software engineers, but it didn’t seem to help.
5) They were spending a lot of $$$ attracting the absolute best and brightest. Something was wrong.
Bezos asked Jassy to go fix it.
Jassy started digging and found a lot more than he expected.
6) The executive team would routinely scope out a project and set a deadline of 3 months.
After 3 months, they’d get a report back that it wasn’t ready.
For each new project, engineers were building the backend from scratch. It was taking forever.
Jassy got to work.
7) In the summer of 2003, Bezos gathered his executive team at his house to align on Amazon’s future strategy.
Among the many meetings on the itinerary, Bezos carved out 30 minutes to discuss Amazon’s strengths.
8) Most of the team elaborated on Amazon’s excellence in ecommerce.
Fulfilling. Shipping. Pricing. They were the absolute best.
But Andy thought Amazon had started to become great at something else too.
9) From working with the infrastructure services team, he explained how they’d standardized backend requirements.
Now, each new project that came down the pipeline was completed ahead of schedule.
Database, compute, and storage no longer took months to develop.
10) Engineers were using off-the-shelf components and churning out projects faster than ever.
Jassy posed, could they expand this even further?
Every new project, or perhaps even company, didn’t have to re-invent the wheel.
11) Bezos and the Amazon team could have left that retreat and just doubled down on their e-commerce prowess.
But they didn’t.
They took a bet on Andy and his idea.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) was born.
12) Once opened up, the worldclass infrastructure services they had built for themselves was used by millions of developers, all building their own things.
Profits from AWS allowed their ecommerce biz to grow, and catapulted Amazon to the top spot.
The world’s largest retailer.
13) 26 years after founding Amazon, and 15 years after launching AWS, Bezos had decided it was time for a change.
Yesterday, after reporting Amazon's first $100B sales quarter, Jeff Bezos announced that he’d be stepping down as CEO.
Andy Jassy will be taking over the reigns.
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After the global success of the iPod, Steve Jobs wasn’t used to hearing the word “no.”
But when looking for the iPhone launch partner, that’s all he heard.
He had one last meeting with the only company who hadn't rejected him yet.
Here’s how he negotiated in that meeting 🧶👇
1) First, a bit of context:
Before the iPhone, the wireless phone industry could not have been more different than what it is today.
Wireless network providers (carriers) had pretty much all the control.
2) AT&T (then Cingular), Verizon, and others set the rules. They told phone makers how to spec the phones. They owned the distribution. They even controlled the phone’s software.
Phone manufacturers had little autonomy to do what they wanted.
In 1959, a Swedish engineer at Volvo patented what would become one of the greatest inventions of all time
Volvo stood to make billions
But after a meeting with Volvo's President, he decided to give it away for free - and it changed the world
Here’s how that meeting went 🧶👇
1) After receiving his mechanical engineering degree from a University in his hometown of Härnösand, Sweden, Nils Bohlin joined aircraft maker Saab to work on ejector seats.
For 16 years, he continued to focus on safety and was eventually designing complete pilot rescue systems.
2) Nils was anchored to the idea of safety above all else, and brought this same mentality to a welcoming team at Volvo.
There, he focused his attention on all the driver and passenger safety systems, starting with seatbelts.
After bombing the LSAT twice, a young college grad started selling fax machines door-to-door to pay her bills.
15 years later, she became the youngest self-made female billionaire ($1.1B)
One meeting with the right person helped turn her life around, and here's how it went 🧶👇
1) Born in Clearwater, FL, Sara Blakely was raised quite differently than most.
Her father taught her that failure was not only expected, but should be embraced.
At the dinner table he'd ask: “What'd you fail at this week?” If she didn’t have an answer, he’d be disappointed.
2) So when law school didn’t work out, Sara took it in stride and devoted herself to becoming the best fax machine salesman in the greater Atlanta area. And she did.
But after 7 long years, she couldn’t help but think, is this all she was going to do with her life?
1) After growing his auto-parts empire for 20 years, Shahid Khan turned to something else he loved. Football. A sport he was introduced to by his friends in college.
He'd always dreamed of owning his own sports team.
2) In Jan 2008, Georgia Frontiere, majority owner of the St. Louis Rams, passed away. This was Shahid's chance.
Prospective buyers who wanted to take Georgia’s slot wasted no time, immediately calling her children the same day her passing was announced.