David Rosenthal: evaluation

Transcript context

…As a lot of folks know, we're talking about Joy in the past tense, because she sadly passed away in 2013 in a bicycle accident. A car hit her, so absolutely tragic. A brilliant, kind person who the world lost too early. Just to keep going on Joy a little bit, we're going to talk about the Amazon letter, which many of you have read, that original 1997 letter to shareholders, which she wrote with Jeff. Of course, as we talk about Amazon, really the playbook of how they got big, we'll talk a lot about them reinvesting every single dollar of profit they had to plow it back in to grow the business. That is, of course, attributable to Jeff, but is in large part of Joy Covey invention, too. She was really the co-architect of that strategy. She spent a lot of time with Brad as he was writing The Everything Store. She wrote him this email right before she had the accident and tragically passed away. Brad publishes the whole thing at the end of the book, and I'll just quote from it here. Joyce telling Brad, "I think about the early days and the level of clarity, vision, potential, and values that Jeff brought. Then I look at Amazon today," this was in 2013, "and reflect on some conversations I have had with him in the intervening years. It is easy to draw a straight line from the vision he had back then to the Amazon of today. There were a few little wobbles and detours in places, but really I don't know any other company that has created such a juggernaut that is so consistent with the original ideas of the founder. It's almost like he fired an arrow and then followed that arc. I think Jeff is one of the most capable and effective founders ever, and I think the Amazon Juggernaut is still in its early stages." Which she would have been right about in 2013.…

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