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Published · transcript-backed

Speaker unverified: belief

31 Dec 2016 Acquired The Amazon IPO with original Amazon Board Member Tom Alberg

“I think looking back it’s a little hard but I don’t think he stood out as the only great entrepreneur I ever met, but certainly in the top 20 or 10 percent.”

— Speaker unverified

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Everything needed to verify it.

Speaker
Speaker unverified
Attribution
Not verified from this transcript
Claim type
belief
Recorded
31 Dec 2016
Publisher
Acquired

Transcript context

…So Tom, you've seen thousands of startup pitches and met with countless entrepreneurs over the years. Was Jeff like head and shoulders above any other pitch? Or was his super different? Or was it like, “Yeah, you know, I meet with a lot of really talented people with great ideas, and some work and some don’t.” I think looking back it’s a little hard but I don’t think he stood out as the only great entrepreneur I ever met, but certainly in the top 20 or 10 percent. But it was a combination. You know like a lot of venture, we tend to think the person is very important. But also, kind of what they’re doing. I mean, it’s not always exactly the business plan and the financial model, although that’s important. It’s often are they in the right kind of technology and the right growth area. Because you could come up with lots of reasons why this was not going to succeed. But the internet was growing, some commerce was probably going to work. At 2300% a year apparently, right? You know, it strikes me, one of the things – we talk about this a lot on this show about the importance of the market and targeting large markets. It struck me reading Jeff’s early writing about Amazon and particularly which we’ll get to later, the first letter to shareholders after they went public. He really focuses on the market and illustrates how large the market is even for just books but then everything Amazon expanded into is. When you’re operating in a large market, a lot can still go wrong and can go wrong, and you’ll still be successful. So, that was 1995 and when the website finally launched in the summer – it’s funny, you know, we work at Madrona with Tom and many, many startups, and Ben and me several as well, it actually was an overnight success when by the – this is actually, Tom, a quote from you in that same Wired article. “By the second or third week, there was $6,000 or $10,000 in sales, and by the end of September,” they just launched in July, Amazon was doing $20,000 in revenue a week. And this is Tom. “It was clear there was a trend here.”…

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