I ripped through Brad Stone’s latest Amazon book: “Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire.” It’s the follow up to “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon,” and A LOT has happened since that book was published in 2013.
Stone is uniquely situated to have written these books: He is senior executive editor for technology at Bloomberg News; previously he spent a decade as the technology writer for BusinessWeek and before that a decade writing for Newsweek and the New York Times.
He had “unprecedented access” to Bezos and his senior management when he was researching the company. He describes Amazon as having a huge visible surface area but both retail shoppers and investors know very little as to what is hoping on beneath the surface.
Since he wrote the prior book, Amazon Prime has become dominant: 200 million subscribers worldwide , free next-day shipping, Amazon Video, Music, and numerous other features. We also discuss how Amazon Web Services (AWS) exploded into a $50 billion annual division, how Amazon HQ2 imploded, and how Bezos became the wealthiest person in the world. The National Enquirer discussion is unlike any other CEO discussion you are likely to hear this year.
A list of his favorite books is here; A transcript of our conversation is available here .
You can stream and download our full conversation, including the podcast extras on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google, Bloomberg, and Acast. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Social Psychologist Robert Cialdini, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University. He is the author of the book Influence, which has sold over 5 million copies in 30 languages. The latest revision is out Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion.
