Ben Gilbert: evaluation

Transcript context

…Yeah. In some ways, this is tough. I’m thinking of the end, the quote to The Everything Store which is Joy Covey and the email that she wrote to Brad Stone. She was one of the key sources for the book. After having done all the interviews and just reflecting back on her time at Amazon and then the experience of talking about the story, she said, “You know, Jeff and the company, kind of like he knew in the very beginning exactly where he was going.” In so many ways we talk about on this show. So many startup stories and IPO stories and M&A stories, or twists and turns and wild rides. It feels inevitable that the company went public when it did especially just hearing the story now. It was completely rational. It made sense and it gave the company the scale and the capital and the visibility that it needed to grow and outpace competitors. So, in some ways, I think I’d give it an A. I do give it an A. But this might be like the least controversial or thought-provoking decision that we’ve had so far on this show for me. It’s funny. I was just thinking the same thing. There’s actually not a lot of analysis that needs to go into it. I mean, you look at the scale of Amazon today and even the scale in the years shortly after the IPO. The only way that they could have achieved the outcome that they did was by going public. I think that one reason why we had so much trouble in that earlier section of what would have happened otherwise is it just doesn’t seem like there was a lot of choice. It feels like unnatural to think about an alternative history here.…

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