Speaker 1: M. This is Mesters in Business with Very Renaults on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. Here this week on the podcast, I have
Speaker 1: a special guest. Brad Stone is the editor at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: News who covers technology and the author of a number
Speaker 1: of books. The one that just came out, Amazon Unbound,
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire really
Speaker 1: quite fascinating. I had previously read his um his first
Speaker 1: book on Amazon, The Everything Store, and when that had
Speaker 1: come out, I think it was Amazon was still a
Speaker 1: successful company, but not the dominant juggernaut it's become. And
Speaker 1: this book really is, you know, the sequel to that
Speaker 1: that talks about how from the low point in when
Speaker 1: Amazon actually had a pretty substantial negative year in the
Speaker 1: stock market down over all of these new drivers of
Speaker 1: revenue and growth, we're just teeing up. And what ends
Speaker 1: up happening is the company just starts to hit on
Speaker 1: all cylinders. And that's before the pandemic, and then the
Speaker 1: pandemic essentially doubles so many different sectors within Amazon. They
Speaker 1: were a company that was made for a work from
Speaker 1: home lockdown situation, UH, perfectly positioned and took full advantage
Speaker 1: of it. Over the course of those years, Amazon became
Speaker 1: the second largest employer in the country behind Walmart. Bezos
Speaker 1: became the wealthiest man in the world. And Amazon just
Speaker 1: dominates so many areas of our everyday lives, from uh
Speaker 1: supermarkets and and delivery of just about everything to Amazon
Speaker 1: web servers too. You you just go through everything they do,
Speaker 1: Amazon Prime, in Amazon Video, and it's it's just endless.
Speaker 1: They have changed the fabric of our society and our economy,
Speaker 1: and Stone does a fantastic job telling the story of
Speaker 1: how that happened. I really enjoyed the book, and I
Speaker 1: think you'll really enjoy our conversation. So, with no further ado,
Speaker 1: my interview with Amazon Unbound author Brad Stone. This is
Speaker 1: Mesters in Business with Very Results on Bloomberg Radio. My
Speaker 1: special guest this week is Brad Stone. He is the
Speaker 1: senior executive editor for Technology at Bloomberg News. Previously, he
Speaker 1: was the Business Week writer covering tech in Silicon Valley,
Speaker 1: and before that he was the tech correspondent for The
Speaker 1: New York Times and Newsweek. He is the author of
Speaker 1: four books, including The Everything Store, Jeff Bezos, and The
Speaker 1: Age of Amazon From. His most recent book is Amazon Unbound.
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos and the invention of a global empire. Normally,
Speaker 1: at this point I would say, brad Stone, welcome to Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: But since you worked for Bloomberg, let me just say
Speaker 1: welcome to Masters in Business. Thank you very great to
Speaker 1: be here. So I have to start off with the
Speaker 1: simple question, and I know you define this in the
Speaker 1: earlier book, Bezos or Bezos? How do you pronounce his name?
Speaker 1: It is Bezos, yes, and I have encountered uh and
Speaker 1: I'm sure he has as well, numerous alternative pronunciations, but
Speaker 1: indeed it is Bezos. Interesting. So so let's start out
Speaker 1: a little bit with your background. I mentioned you're the
Speaker 1: senior executive editor at Bloomberg News. You were a writer
Speaker 1: at Business Week for ten years, and before that the
Speaker 1: New York Times and and Newsweek. How did you start
Speaker 1: covering technology? What led you into that space? Yeah, well, Verry,
Speaker 1: I was way back before the New York Times. I
Speaker 1: was had a once proud magazine known as Newsweek, and um,
Speaker 1: I was a junior reporter kind of just looking for
Speaker 1: an avenue, um, something that I could you know, write about,
Speaker 1: where my my articles would appear and what was a
Speaker 1: very competitive magazine at the time. For for journalists. And
Speaker 1: this was the nineties and the Internet was becoming more popular.
Speaker 1: And I had, you know, used the Internet and become
Speaker 1: familiar with it while I was in a college and
Speaker 1: I just started writing about it. And then they moved
Speaker 1: me out to Silicon Valley in good timing, just just
Speaker 1: in time for the crash. So I read, I read
Speaker 1: a bunch of your New York time pieces. Um, but
Speaker 1: they were YouTube and iPads and Google Search. How did
Speaker 1: you ultimately you happened on to Amazon as a subject matter.
Speaker 1: I was covering Amazon at the time. Um, it was
Speaker 1: it was a little bit overlooked. If we go back
Speaker 1: to two thousand and six, two seven, you know, the
Speaker 1: eBay market cap was larger than Amazon's at the time.
Speaker 1: It's really remarkable to remember that the Amazon was stopped
Speaker 1: as maybe haven't picked the wrong business model for the
Speaker 1: Internet age. You know, Google was a much more high
Speaker 1: profile and interesting company, it seemed like. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember doing a couple of stories about the introduction of
Speaker 1: prime and fulfillment by Amazon and and and Amazon Web Services.
Speaker 1: And I mean I basically I was I would talk
Speaker 1: to Bezos. Um. When when Amazon got into the fight
Speaker 1: with the book publishers around kindle pricing. He was. He
Speaker 1: was on the phone quite a bit arguing Amazon's case,
Speaker 1: and I was always fascinated by the company. I was
Speaker 1: fascinated by Bezos. And then when I went over to
Speaker 1: Business Week and wrote a couple of stories about Amazon
Speaker 1: there it was it was really just sort of opportunistic
Speaker 1: writing my first book. I felt like nobody had really
Speaker 1: done the great Amazon story, and books had been devoted
Speaker 1: to the other big tech companies. Of course, I had
Speaker 1: no idea what kind of juggernaut it was still to become,
Speaker 1: but it seemed to me that it had been a
Speaker 1: little bit overlooked. And that book really I read it
Speaker 1: on vacation. I think in like it was a good read,
Speaker 1: and you had fairly decent access to Bezos prior to that.
Speaker 1: How cooperative was he for the book Everything Store Right.
Speaker 1: I can't quite remember the timeline, but I went in
Speaker 1: there to meet with him to pitch the book, and
Speaker 1: he was very receptive. You know, Amazon has this weird
Speaker 1: cultural ritual where they start every meeting with a dot
Speaker 1: with by reading a document. So I brought him a
Speaker 1: document to read and spiking the book and yeah, and
Speaker 1: he read it in sort of silence, and then he said,
Speaker 1: you know, it's too early to write the Amazon book.
Speaker 1: I did talk to him a couple of times on
Speaker 1: news things while I was reporting on it, and he
Speaker 1: allowed me to talk to his parents and friends and employees,
Speaker 1: but he was pretty distant. It was limited access for
Speaker 1: the first book. Uh that that's really kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit about your research and
Speaker 1: writing process. The new book, Amazon on Bound is very
Speaker 1: much told chronologically. How do you go about putting together
Speaker 1: this monstrous right? Well, let me continue the story. So
Speaker 1: after after the last book, the Everything Store comes out
Speaker 1: in twos and thirteen, and Bezos does not like it
Speaker 1: very I don't know if you recall this, but he
Speaker 1: had his wife at the time, Mackenzie Um and some
Speaker 1: employees like including Andy Jafsey, the new CEO. They all
Speaker 1: wrote one star reviews, and I thought, I thought Amazon
Speaker 1: was wasn't aren't they against people buying reviews that that
Speaker 1: violates their policies? I guess it was on the arm,
Speaker 1: So right they been, and they bought it and read it,
Speaker 1: I guess. Um. So anyway, there was a chill, and
Speaker 1: and a couple of years went by, and and then
Speaker 1: I and then at some point I realized that, you know,
Speaker 1: the books took off and had come to be seen
Speaker 1: as kind of the definitive history of early Amazon. But
Speaker 1: I realized that so much had happened Alexa and the
Speaker 1: global marketplace and Bezos becoming the wealthiest person in the world,
Speaker 1: that there were simply more story to tell. And so
Speaker 1: I went back to Amazon, probably a little cheekily and
Speaker 1: just told them that I was going to do it.
Speaker 1: And this time there was no meeting with Bezos, but
Speaker 1: they did allow they did allow me to talk to
Speaker 1: more more than a dozen senior executives, members of the
Speaker 1: Senior Leadership team, the FES team. Yeah, and and they
Speaker 1: basis a lot of going to talk to friends, and
Speaker 1: so the access wasn't all that different. But the foundation
Speaker 1: of the book of both books really were the employees
Speaker 1: who had been there, had participated in key projects, and
Speaker 1: then who had left or were there. But we're willing
Speaker 1: to sort of talk carefully because obviously Amazon and most
Speaker 1: companies these days they try to lock up former employees
Speaker 1: or current employees and nondisclosure agreements. I'd like to say
Speaker 1: that Amazon has a lot of surface area, right more
Speaker 1: so than a lot of other companies. It does so
Speaker 1: many things, and there's actually very few people with any
Speaker 1: kind of a bird's eye view over it. Maybe really
Speaker 1: just Jeff Bezos, I mean Andy Chassis and Jeff Wilkie,
Speaker 1: the former head of the retail business, you know, certainly,
Speaker 1: but they're extremely disciplined and careful in what they say.
Speaker 1: So it's really just it was almost like aggregating enough interviews,
Speaker 1: enough conversations that I could start to piece together enough
Speaker 1: of a picture of this entire company. And then also,
Speaker 1: and by the way, very not just Amazon, put the
Speaker 1: Washington Post blue Origin Bezos and Space company his basis,
Speaker 1: his personal type of the natural Enquirer, like lots of
Speaker 1: different avenues to go down. So it's really almost just
Speaker 1: a sheer exercise and talking to as many people as
Speaker 1: it could. And so people went on the record, even
Speaker 1: fail the inner circle of people without giving you a
Speaker 1: lot of pushback. Did you find this book was a
Speaker 1: little more challenging because it's such a moving target Compared
Speaker 1: to the first version, the version that you wrote in
Speaker 1: Yes and no, it was easier, and that the Everything
Speaker 1: Store was kind of a calling card so I could
Speaker 1: talk I could reach out to hundreds of people, and
Speaker 1: they instantly knew who I was and what I was
Speaker 1: up to, right and and and in some cases I
Speaker 1: had earned a measure of trust by what they saw
Speaker 1: as a as an accurate retelling of the company's early years.
Speaker 1: But it was more difficult in that it was it
Speaker 1: posted an enormous organizational and structural challenge. So in the
Speaker 1: Everything Store, it was a very linear story. It was
Speaker 1: a group of it was one guy in Wall Street
Speaker 1: and then a group of people in a garage and
Speaker 1: bellevue with an idea to sell books on the Internet
Speaker 1: straight through, you know, through the dot com boom, almost
Speaker 1: cratering in the dot com bust, and then a revival.
Speaker 1: It feels iconic that that story in a way. And
Speaker 1: then this story is a sprawl of things happening at
Speaker 1: the same time. I mean, it's Alexa at the and
Speaker 1: the entry in the India and Prime Video and the marketplace,
Speaker 1: and the grocery business and the logistics operation and adds
Speaker 1: and and all the other stuff I mentioned. So it
Speaker 1: was an organizational challenge. But in some ways this story
Speaker 1: was actually the better story. I mean, when you think
Speaker 1: about it from a pure value creation point of view,
Speaker 1: you know, the Everything Store covers the creation of about
Speaker 1: eighty billion dollars in market capitalization, and this this story
Speaker 1: covers the creation of one point six trillion. So in
Speaker 1: some ways, you know, this was the more dramatic business story. Sure,
Speaker 1: just the numbers are just mind blowing, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about some of the numbers a little later. Any chapter
Speaker 1: stand out as particularly challenging to write or particularly fun
Speaker 1: to dive into. I started this book in two dozen seventeen,
Speaker 1: so this was before h G two, before um the
Speaker 1: Antitrust Subcommittee report into the big tech companies, before obviously
Speaker 1: before the pandemic. But the funnest and the most unexpected
Speaker 1: story was bezos is tangled with the National Enquirer and
Speaker 1: Medium post about the bodies and the Washot post I
Speaker 1: had never expected. Well, let me step back, because you'll
Speaker 1: appreciate this. Most most companies will draw, you know, we'll
Speaker 1: build a spense around the private lives of their key executives. Right,
Speaker 1: it's seen as maybe a no go area. And Amazon
Speaker 1: was fiercely is fiercely protective of bezos Is privacy, and
Speaker 1: Bezos and is seriously protective of his family's privacy. And
Speaker 1: so for this thing to blow up at the end
Speaker 1: of two thousand, a pen as I'm writing the book,
Speaker 1: you know, and an alleged affair, a trashy tabloid newspaper
Speaker 1: accusations of political interfere inspired the Trump administration, a hall
Speaker 1: of mirrors, of crazy characters and private detectives and you know,
Speaker 1: unethical Hollywood characters and perhaps mbs. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: beyond anything that I had imagined, so in terms of
Speaker 1: like challenge and and maybe entertainment value. And I just
Speaker 1: couldn't sort of couldn't believe that this is where not
Speaker 1: only this is where, you know, something that I had
Speaker 1: pried open, but this is where Bezos had kind of
Speaker 1: led the world and lead his own story. Was astonishing
Speaker 1: to me. Let's talk a little bit about that empire
Speaker 1: and put some some flesh on the bones. In terms
Speaker 1: of numbers, I like the way you broke the book
Speaker 1: up into three sections, and each section starts with four
Speaker 1: data points. Annual revenues, number of employees, the market cap
Speaker 1: of Amazon and and Bezos is net worth, and some
Speaker 1: of the numbers from just over a decade, they were
Speaker 1: doing thirty four billion in sales in and then by
Speaker 1: it's a hundred and thirty six billion, and then by
Speaker 1: last year it's two hundred and thirty three billion. And
Speaker 1: along the way, they went from thirty three thousand employees
Speaker 1: to three hundred fifty two. Now they have about six
Speaker 1: hundred fifty thousand employees. Uh, and Bezos went from a
Speaker 1: mere fifteen billion in net worth today's worth well over
Speaker 1: UM was one five. Now he's coming up on two
Speaker 1: hundred billion. And by the way, very employees, it's over
Speaker 1: a million now over a million. Yeah. Sword So so
Speaker 1: that was the question I was gonna ask, is how
Speaker 1: much of the numbers are pandemic related and how much
Speaker 1: of this is just an acceleration of all these trends
Speaker 1: at Amazon that were in place before last year even
Speaker 1: you know began. I mean, I think it's both the
Speaker 1: pandemic was an accelerant and that growth might have happened,
Speaker 1: and the pandemic just moved everything forward. If if people
Speaker 1: are wondering, doesn't roll back to Amazon, let people go,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think what the pandemic did
Speaker 1: is that it made people more familiar with UM, you know,
Speaker 1: next Amazon's next day delivery, UM possibilities, grocery shopping. It
Speaker 1: increased Amazon's profits, and what they always do with that
Speaker 1: is they reinvested in the more Amazon So it created
Speaker 1: profilming centers closer to major cities, closer to our homes,
Speaker 1: more trucks on the highway, more events in our neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: more data centers. And what that means is, you know,
Speaker 1: Amazon spent the pandemic basically capturing more advantages, uh, the
Speaker 1: advantage advantages of performance centers close order to our homes
Speaker 1: and faster delivery. And it's not going to unline that.
Speaker 1: And it just means that shopping offline for food and
Speaker 1: for everything else is going to be more convenient, and
Speaker 1: that is probably frightening for offline competitors supermarkets. The other
Speaker 1: thing Amazon's doing is creating physical retail stores, so that's
Speaker 1: still capturing of all retail people shopping in actual stores,
Speaker 1: and Amazon itself stamping out these Amazon Fresh grocery stores.
Speaker 1: So it had a productive pandemic. You might you might
Speaker 1: say it was sort of perversely lucky because it had
Speaker 1: all the advantages going into it, and now it has
Speaker 1: even more. So we're gonna get to some of the acquisitions.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about Amazon Prime and Whole Foods, but before
Speaker 1: we do that. Early in the book, you talk about
Speaker 1: sort of the tens low point for Amazon, which was October.
Speaker 1: They had kind of stumbled with the Amazon Phone and
Speaker 1: a lot of the big growth engines were just starting
Speaker 1: to ramp up. I have to ask, who is possibly
Speaker 1: worse at assessing padditors then Microsoft, Steve Balmer? Is there
Speaker 1: anybody who is? I mean, if this guy, this guy
Speaker 1: missed everything from the iPhone to the iPod two and
Speaker 1: and he was dissing Amazon in like they don't make
Speaker 1: a profit? Who nobody's interested in those guys? I mean,
Speaker 1: I love your usage of him. What attracted you to
Speaker 1: using him as the uh, the patsy and as I
Speaker 1: think I call him the contrarian indicator. Um, but let
Speaker 1: me give a little bit of the defense of Steve
Speaker 1: Balmer and lay to us in fourteen. Um, he wasn't alone, right,
Speaker 1: There were there were investors like David Einhorn who were
Speaker 1: who were adding Amazon to the to the bubble stock basket.
Speaker 1: Um analyts we were mixed. At the time. There was
Speaker 1: a lot of speculation about the underlying profitability of Amazon
Speaker 1: Web Services, which the company was disguising on its income statement.
Speaker 1: At the R and yet we have to have to
Speaker 1: understand that Amazon is deliberately opaque, and you know, in
Speaker 1: a way that it's sort of surprising the sec You know,
Speaker 1: our other regulatory authorities haven't been more aggressive in getting
Speaker 1: the company to reveal more, but it is. It doesn't
Speaker 1: want the world to know how profitable a business Amazon
Speaker 1: Web Services is, and it's not showing profits. It's disguising
Speaker 1: its profits on its income statement by investing in more
Speaker 1: data centers, more fulfillment centers, expansion. At that point, the
Speaker 1: expansion in the India begins, and it's spending a billion
Speaker 1: dollars a year at that point a prime video. So
Speaker 1: no one has any idea because Bezos is sitting there
Speaker 1: at the craft table making new bets, and you know,
Speaker 1: Balmer just happens to be a bit of a loud
Speaker 1: mouth and expressed it at exactly the wrong time. Because
Speaker 1: you can go back and march the exact moment when
Speaker 1: Amazon has to finally reveal a WS as financials and
Speaker 1: the thing starts to take off. Huh. It's interesting that
Speaker 1: it was such a strategic advantage, uh, to not discuss
Speaker 1: Amazon Web Servers for so long, and they were able
Speaker 1: to to get away with that because of um it
Speaker 1: wasn't more than ten percent of the revenues. Is that
Speaker 1: was that the rationale for hiding that. I think that's right.
Speaker 1: That they could another business. Another CEO is going to
Speaker 1: want to show that off. It's going to want to
Speaker 1: impress investors, particularly because if you look at the stock
Speaker 1: performance in two thousand fourteen, I mean my recollection is
Speaker 1: the stock went down and you know, or at least
Speaker 1: it was embattled, and you know, another CEO is going
Speaker 1: to say, well, it's gonna like cater to their own ego,
Speaker 1: uh and to their recruitment needs of their company into
Speaker 1: the image and want to release that. But Basos, across
Speaker 1: the ten years of this of a WS growth, you know,
Speaker 1: he thinks long term, he thinks competitively. He didn't want
Speaker 1: to tip off competitors to how good of a business
Speaker 1: this was, and he kept it hidden. I mean that
Speaker 1: takes a little bit of a remarkable act of CEO
Speaker 1: patients and bravery to do that. But they felt like
Speaker 1: they had a gold mine there and they wanted to
Speaker 1: mine it for whatever it was worth. Let's see in
Speaker 1: let's see what the stock price looks like. Bear with
Speaker 1: me one second while I pull this up. Oh no,
Speaker 1: this was this was not a good year. They were
Speaker 1: down for the full year, and you're right the bottom
Speaker 1: while there was a low over the summer in in May,
Speaker 1: and then there was another low in October. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that doesn't surprise me that that bomber nailed the bottom.
Speaker 1: But a lot of people were pretty skeptical in an
Speaker 1: otherwise pretty decent year for the market, right right, And
Speaker 1: and when you look back at two thousand fourteen, it's
Speaker 1: so remarkable that that there was such skepticism because that
Speaker 1: that is the year that Amazon introduces Alexa. It is
Speaker 1: the year that they started preparing to to introduce the
Speaker 1: financials of aws UM. I think I think that might
Speaker 1: have been the first year that Amazon Studios originals start
Speaker 1: to come out, So the first batch of TV shows
Speaker 1: that weren't all that good, but I think it marked
Speaker 1: a transformation of Amazon Prime into more of a content service.
Speaker 1: So uh and and then and then the expansion in
Speaker 1: the India really begins in earnest in two thou fourteen,
Speaker 1: and so they're placing a lot of vests there and
Speaker 1: to the public markets and two investors. Everything looks kind
Speaker 1: of dire, but it's really the beginning of probably the
Speaker 1: most impressive wealth creation, maybe even in the history of business.
Speaker 1: I mean, Um, it's just it's such a perhaps perhaps
Speaker 1: alongside Apple, you know, the kind of scale that we
Speaker 1: haven't really seen before. Right, So so let's talk about
Speaker 1: some of the big winners that are driving that growth. Um,
Speaker 1: Amazon Prime. This really turned out to be quite a
Speaker 1: game change or not only making clients stickier, but really
Speaker 1: taking Amazon to a whole new level. It really has evolved.
Speaker 1: So back into thousan five, you know, when they conceived it,
Speaker 1: Um Basis wanted to kind of take shipping charges off
Speaker 1: the table. Like he knew Amazon could compete with selection,
Speaker 1: it could be competitive with prices, but the convenience just
Speaker 1: wasn't there to take many days for people to get
Speaker 1: their packages. And at the time Amazon had maybe a
Speaker 1: dozen fu filment centers in the US. So taking shipping
Speaker 1: off the table, trying to offset it with what was
Speaker 1: the seventy nine dollar a year charge it made It
Speaker 1: made a lot of sense. And then you you wrap
Speaker 1: people up into the Prime ecosystem UM, and they spent more.
Speaker 1: And then you fast forward five seven years and Basis
Speaker 1: sees that maybe shipping isn't going to be that much
Speaker 1: of a differentiator anymore in a world where Amazon has
Speaker 1: hundreds of fulfilment centers around the country where one day
Speaker 1: or two day shipping might be possible even without Prime membership.
Speaker 1: And so we kind of surprises all of his executives
Speaker 1: by saying we're gonna put free TV shows and movies
Speaker 1: into this. And now today I would say that's probably
Speaker 1: more more important to the prime to Prime membership, the
Speaker 1: fact that you get access to prime video, prime music.
Speaker 1: I mean, they've got I think it's Amazon Music, mkindle club.
Speaker 1: People don't even know what it gets to you, and
Speaker 1: maybe that's part of it. They're sort of this hazy,
Speaker 1: ambiguous it's a lot of it. That's a lot of things,
Speaker 1: and people tend to maximize the value. It's want to
Speaker 1: maximize the value of any club they belong to. So
Speaker 1: it's a sort of neat psychological trick and and and
Speaker 1: the center of the Amazon operating model. And and then
Speaker 1: related to the expansion of groceries, but as well as
Speaker 1: coming up with um physical locations near I think it
Speaker 1: was prime members was the purchase of whole foods, which
Speaker 1: you discussed in the book. You know, remind me a
Speaker 1: little bit of the Google YouTube purchase. The increase in
Speaker 1: stock price essentially made the purchase free. To tell us
Speaker 1: about the whole Foods purchase. I so I devote a
Speaker 1: whole chapter to Amazon's adventures slash misadventures in groceries. And
Speaker 1: it's really interesting because this is one area where Bethos
Speaker 1: wasn't as far sighted as some of his executives. He
Speaker 1: had people advocating for an expansion in the grocery delivery
Speaker 1: as far back because two thousand and seven he thought
Speaker 1: that this would be an opportunity that would be there
Speaker 1: for Amazon. Um and and executives were writing papers and
Speaker 1: I quote some of them in the book. UM, I
Speaker 1: love the one that was called Amazon's futurist crap, which
Speaker 1: stood for can't realize the profits and was a lot
Speaker 1: of basically consumables and grocery store items. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: until Google introduces Google Express and instat Cart kind of
Speaker 1: comes unto the scene, starts raising torrents of money that
Speaker 1: he starts moving faster. And the challenge with fresh food
Speaker 1: is that is that you need to hold different fulfillment
Speaker 1: network refrigerated and rapid deliveries Mainly people want to be
Speaker 1: at their homes when they when they get when they
Speaker 1: get their deliveries. And um and and nothing that Amazon
Speaker 1: was trying is working very well. There was Prime Now
Speaker 1: and Amazon Fresh, and so Whole Foods comes along in
Speaker 1: two seventeen. It's a distressed asset um. John mackew is
Speaker 1: beset on all sides by activists investors clinging to his
Speaker 1: organic selection in an age of broader selection and prevalent
Speaker 1: junk food and supermarkets. And and Bezos buys it. Now.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because amazon s futuring groceries isn't necessarily whole food.
Speaker 1: They're creating these Amazon Fresh supermarkets. But I think they realized,
Speaker 1: or Bezos realized, that he was going to need to
Speaker 1: learn a lot about the grocery businesses if Amazon was
Speaker 1: going to fill its potential there. So let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about some of their products. Um that we're winners,
Speaker 1: will talk about Kindle, go on, Alexa and fire TV.
Speaker 1: It's kind of amazing to think a CEO said, I
Speaker 1: have an idea for a reader and we're going to
Speaker 1: build this from scratch. Tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: the genesis of Kindle and what it meant for Amazon,
Speaker 1: whose roots were in book selling, right right. So we're
Speaker 1: going back now to to some of the material I
Speaker 1: cover in the Everything Store, And this is probably about
Speaker 1: two four and Bezos is basically watching Apple vaporized his
Speaker 1: music business with the iPod and itube store, and he
Speaker 1: understands that a digital transformation is coming from media and
Speaker 1: that Amazon's brand is still very tightly intertwined with the
Speaker 1: book business, and concludes that if Apple were to ever
Speaker 1: move into digital books, that Amazon would be vulnerable. And
Speaker 1: so he basically tells his leadership team, the f team,
Speaker 1: that they're going to build a knee reader. At the time,
Speaker 1: Sony had tried to do it and had sort of
Speaker 1: failed with the Sony Reader. And there's all sorts of
Speaker 1: objections because what does Amazon at the time know about
Speaker 1: building devices, And Beza says, I know it's hard, We're
Speaker 1: going to do it, and it's a three year process.
Speaker 1: It's actually very similar to the Alexis story which I
Speaker 1: tell him in Amazon Unbound. But he drives the initiative,
Speaker 1: he sponsors it, he authorizes all sorts of investments, he harangued,
Speaker 1: He gets his his sales folks to go to New
Speaker 1: York City and harangue the book publishers and the unlocking
Speaker 1: more of their catalogs for the for the e book business.
Speaker 1: They had been very hesitant because it wasn't a major
Speaker 1: business for them. Amazon uses its leverage and strength with
Speaker 1: the publishers to basically get them to digitize their books,
Speaker 1: and then they announced the thing into two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: and that is the beginning. Um that is the beginning
Speaker 1: of Amazon and devices at leads to everything from Alexa
Speaker 1: to the failed fire phone, to the fire TVs to
Speaker 1: all sorts of things we haven't seen yet. And it's
Speaker 1: a great illustration of Bezos really inventing his company in
Speaker 1: every turn and thinking ambitiously in an unbound way about
Speaker 1: what Amazon could become. It wasn't just a retailer, it
Speaker 1: wasn't just a bookseller. It wasn't just an enterprise software company.
Speaker 1: When it's cloud business, he doesn't he doesn't place any limits,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem to me, and what what Amazon can be,
Speaker 1: and that kind of tease up the Echo, which is
Speaker 1: its own product category. If this was a standalone product
Speaker 1: from a new startup company that had sold hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of units, they would be a really successful company.
Speaker 1: Tell us how how did the echo come about? Well,
Speaker 1: it's interesting that you see the very I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know if it would be. Um, Amazon probably sells
Speaker 1: those units at close to cost. And and this will
Speaker 1: get to the origin. You know, it's the brains of
Speaker 1: Alexa are in Amazon webster uses and and I'm sure
Speaker 1: it gets a nice wholesale rate on that. And that's
Speaker 1: where Beza started with this. He sent an email to
Speaker 1: his his colleagues and late to us in ten we
Speaker 1: should build a computer whose brains are in the cloud
Speaker 1: that's completely controllable by your voice. Because he's thinking at
Speaker 1: the time, how does he exploit Amazon's advantage in cloud computing,
Speaker 1: and how does he create some consumer facing applications. And
Speaker 1: he's a big science fiction fan and he's totally engrossed
Speaker 1: with the possibilities and improvements and voice search at the time.
Speaker 1: And that's that email spawns Alexa, and very much like
Speaker 1: the kindle, he gets in the in the weeds, and
Speaker 1: he sponsors it, and he authorizes the hiring of all
Speaker 1: sorts of oppressive voice scientists and they bring it out
Speaker 1: into the world and collect data in a very surreptitious
Speaker 1: and interesting way. Um and and now it's so tightly
Speaker 1: interwoven into the Amazon empire that we don't know if
Speaker 1: that if it makes money. I don't think it's been
Speaker 1: as evolutionaries maybe they have hoped. It's certainly not a
Speaker 1: conversational computer or or really a useful every day assistant
Speaker 1: in the way that they hoped. And there's not really
Speaker 1: a productive app ecosystem as there is with the iPhone.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting. Um. It certainly has helped to change
Speaker 1: Amazon's image, and they market the thing, and I think
Speaker 1: it helps their their image as an innovator. Alexa. What's
Speaker 1: the title of brad Stone's new book? I don't have
Speaker 1: an answer. I guess Masos is not too happy with
Speaker 1: you these days. I didn't hear. It's sorry. I don't
Speaker 1: have an answer to that. All right, we'll go after
Speaker 1: the get get it to fix it. Did you see
Speaker 1: in the new book, I I fleuped out the identity
Speaker 1: of the voice Alex. I was very proud of that. Yes,
Speaker 1: that was really interesting. It's a woman who's a voiceover
Speaker 1: artist in Colorado? Is that right? What's right? Right? Na?
Speaker 1: Nina Raleigh? And you know I had I had recalled
Speaker 1: that the identity of theory had been unveiled a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, and so I was very curious. Okay,
Speaker 1: who's voice is springing from Alexa? And and before we
Speaker 1: move on from the section of of what's been driving
Speaker 1: Amazon's growth, I mean, Amazon Web Services is just a monster,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Oh, it's it's it's there's a I think
Speaker 1: it's a fifty billion dollar run rate. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a ten year old division and tide Amazon. It's
Speaker 1: in and it's changed the way companies and universities and
Speaker 1: governments compute and run their businesses. Um, it's it's created,
Speaker 1: you know, massive new business opportunities from Microsoft and IBM
Speaker 1: and Google. It is and and it's showing no signs
Speaker 1: of slowing down. So when you when you think about
Speaker 1: you know, Bethos who really had some of the initial ideas,
Speaker 1: and and Andy Jassey's success running it over the past
Speaker 1: ten years. And yes, it's it's been remarkable. Earlier we
Speaker 1: were talking about some of the drivers of growth of Amazon.
Speaker 1: There are two other areas that help drive growth, but
Speaker 1: not without some problems. And let's talk about both of them.
Speaker 1: The first is the third party market sort of turning
Speaker 1: Amazon into a quasi eBay in some ways tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about what that did, opening Amazon up
Speaker 1: to basically anyone who wants to sell goods on their site.
Speaker 1: I would say in the first years it was it
Speaker 1: was it was pretty positive. I mean, um, creating a
Speaker 1: third credit marketplace, added selection, and added product categories that
Speaker 1: Amazon wasn't going to touch itself create minted a lot
Speaker 1: of success, particularly in the West. And the key turning point,
Speaker 1: and the story that I'm telling in the book and
Speaker 1: the chapter devoted to marketplace, is when Amazon quite consciously
Speaker 1: in about two thousand fifteen, started pursuing the global selling
Speaker 1: opportunity of basos stalk companies like Ali Baba with all
Speaker 1: the express and a startup called wish dot com basically
Speaker 1: conducting a form of geographic arbitrage, allowing sellers and manufacturers
Speaker 1: and China and other other parts of the world to
Speaker 1: sell in the West and and to lower lower prices
Speaker 1: and increased selection. And they pursued task in a very
Speaker 1: Amazon like way, building systems, self service systems and translation tools,
Speaker 1: aggregating inventory and lowering the cost of ship and then
Speaker 1: suddenly the marketplace tilt in favor of of overseas sellers,
Speaker 1: and you have a lot of disgradled sellers in the West,
Speaker 1: and an explosion selection lower prices and all kinds of casks, counterfeits, fraud,
Speaker 1: exploding cover boards, UM, and and perhaps a real depreciation
Speaker 1: and the quality of products that are sold on Right.
Speaker 1: That's where I wanted to get to, is that. Look,
Speaker 1: my my first Amazon purchase was when my college roommate
Speaker 1: gave me a gift certificate and I actually hunted down
Speaker 1: with that. First purchase was in December. UM burn Rate
Speaker 1: was the book. But I'm I'm kind of surprised at
Speaker 1: after working so hard to maintain quality and to guarantee
Speaker 1: lowest prices and to guarantee a very high level of
Speaker 1: customer service, suddenly there's just fakes and stuff that's poorly
Speaker 1: made and falls apart. You mentioned the hoverboard. Um, a
Speaker 1: number of houses had burned down, and half of the
Speaker 1: you write in the book half the houses that burnt
Speaker 1: down due to hoverboard fires, they were purchased on Amazon.
Speaker 1: How did the company respond to to this problem? Well,
Speaker 1: in terms of the hoverboard challenge, I mean they stopped
Speaker 1: selling them a little a little bit too late, and
Speaker 1: now they're involved in endless litigation, and in terms of
Speaker 1: the overall problems of fraud and counterfeit and fake reviews,
Speaker 1: they've been a very Amazon and Silicon Valley type. They've
Speaker 1: created systems, they've they've tried to use technology to an
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence to weed out fraud, to increase the level
Speaker 1: of the quality of of sellers on the platform, and
Speaker 1: with with I think some mixed results. On a related
Speaker 1: issue to that, I recall sending an email to to
Speaker 1: Bezos after I'm trying to remember which Michael Lewis book
Speaker 1: it was that had come out. Maybe it was Flashboys
Speaker 1: or The Big Short and I always it had to
Speaker 1: be after the Kindle because there were all these one
Speaker 1: star reviews of a Michael Lewis book, because the Kindle
Speaker 1: release was set by the publisher to take place like
Speaker 1: three months or six months later, it was it was
Speaker 1: after the book public It was kind of insane that
Speaker 1: these Kindle fan boys were one starring reviews. Since then,
Speaker 1: we've had like a much bigger problem with reviews, fake reviews,
Speaker 1: purchase reviews. How is Amazon responding to that? My takeaway,
Speaker 1: I just can no longer rely on reviews. I just
Speaker 1: assume most of them are nonsense. That's true. And as
Speaker 1: a as an author whose sales are are taking place,
Speaker 1: uh predominantly, And I was getting to test the I
Speaker 1: just I just saw a I think it was a
Speaker 1: two star review because somebody felt that there were fingerprints
Speaker 1: smudges on the cover. You's like, you gotta be getting
Speaker 1: me but doing Yeah, I mean, I think you know.
Speaker 1: They they've done a couple of things. They prioritize UM
Speaker 1: actual purchases, the reviews from yeah, verified reviews, but they've
Speaker 1: also i think lowered the significance of reviews. And when
Speaker 1: when you think back a couple of years ago, and
Speaker 1: this leads into advertising. Um, the search engine was this
Speaker 1: taxonomy of useful products UM that a very secretive and
Speaker 1: is on algorithm would order. And one of the big
Speaker 1: variables was the number and the quality of reviews that
Speaker 1: a product got. And of course that just opened it
Speaker 1: up to third party sellers gaming the system, buying fake reviews,
Speaker 1: generating their own, and you know, and that variable ended
Speaker 1: up being less useful. And now it's basically the Amazon
Speaker 1: Church results are essentially pay for play people by search
Speaker 1: ads to appear there, and reviews are no longer important.
Speaker 1: The advertising is a little bit of a fail also,
Speaker 1: because you know, I was searching for a lithium battery
Speaker 1: the other day. It's number thirty four fifty and up
Speaker 1: pops during cell and I click it and buy it.
Speaker 1: And it's only after it arrives that I realized this
Speaker 1: isn't this is the you know, three thousand and twenty three.
Speaker 1: Why would that show up in a search for a
Speaker 1: very specific and so I've I've kind of learned be
Speaker 1: aware of sponsored results, and really it's best to start
Speaker 1: your search off of Amazon. I never approached Amazon shopping
Speaker 1: that way. Now it's look for what you want to
Speaker 1: get and then if Amazon has it, great, But don't
Speaker 1: begin your search on Amazon. I wonder are they trading
Speaker 1: off advertising revenues for sales. I told the story of
Speaker 1: the evolution of the ad business inside Amazon and the
Speaker 1: decision to move sponsored search results up to the top.
Speaker 1: Sponsored listing to the top of search results was a
Speaker 1: very specific decision made by days Os, and I think
Speaker 1: he understood how profitable the search business could be inside
Speaker 1: Amazon and simply wanted the cash to go, you know,
Speaker 1: to make his investments in Prime video and satellite internet
Speaker 1: access and the other ambitious plans that he has. They
Speaker 1: saw that it would lead to a decrease in in
Speaker 1: customer satisfaction. I believe that this might even be seen
Speaker 1: as a turning point in Amazon's history. Um He judged
Speaker 1: that the impact on customer satisfaction would have to be
Speaker 1: so large as to outweigh the benefit that AMA Amazon
Speaker 1: would be getting. I call this the gold mine in
Speaker 1: the back gyard. But I do think there's some cough.
Speaker 1: And I just did a lithium battery search the one
Speaker 1: Barry that you just described, and it's a mess. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a debacle, absolutely. Yeah. It's all sponsored a private
Speaker 1: label brands, and I have, you know, just absolutely no
Speaker 1: idea here, right. If you don't know exactly what you're
Speaker 1: looking for, the Amazon search is as often as not unhelpful.
Speaker 1: Let's let's talk about two of the biggest failures um
Speaker 1: and I'm going to use those terms loosely, A new
Speaker 1: one and an old one. The latest debacle h Q two.
Speaker 1: I mean, how tone deaf was that? That was just
Speaker 1: such an avoidable self inflicted wounds? How did they blow
Speaker 1: that so badly? So it's interesting. I have a chapter
Speaker 1: in the book about HQ two and and one I
Speaker 1: think easy answer is that the political environment kind of
Speaker 1: drastically changed under them as they as they embark on
Speaker 1: this um on, this on the search, which lasted much
Speaker 1: longer than they thought. And it starts with a kind
Speaker 1: of political earthquake in Seattle, the city council turning hospital,
Speaker 1: Amazon being blamed for all sorts of ills, and Bezos
Speaker 1: think looking at Elon with the giga factory in Nevada
Speaker 1: and fox Kind in Wisconsin and thinking this process is
Speaker 1: going to underscore who wants us? And in the year
Speaker 1: plus as they do this, Amazon hits the trillion dollars
Speaker 1: in market cap, Bezos becomes the wealthiest person in the world.
Speaker 1: AOC gets elected, the progressive political movement gathers steam and
Speaker 1: a sense, and the tech lash begins. And as they announced, um,
Speaker 1: you know New York City, in Washington, d c um,
Speaker 1: they you know, they realize that it's it's not just
Speaker 1: gonna be expression of who whats us. It's going to
Speaker 1: be a verdict about the role that tech company, me
Speaker 1: and even big companies are playing in our community. So
Speaker 1: that's a much different discussion than the one they wanted
Speaker 1: to have. Huh. So, So to two things about that,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna push back a little bit. First, the tech
Speaker 1: lash had been ramping up for a good couple of
Speaker 1: years before h Q two. Remember Bernie Sanders almost bat
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton to be the nominee. So issues of wealth
Speaker 1: inequality and income inequality and and the halves and the
Speaker 1: half nots. I mean, that's been an ongoing discussion for
Speaker 1: at least since the Great Financial Crisis. Uh, it's certainly accelerated.
Speaker 1: But but the other thing is when you look at
Speaker 1: when they started the search, they were already a giant
Speaker 1: and wildly successful company. Um. It just seems and and
Speaker 1: kudos to Scott Galloway at n y U who basically said,
Speaker 1: all these things are are affront and the areas that
Speaker 1: are gonna win are gonna be where the CEO has
Speaker 1: a home or one to live and and he literally
Speaker 1: said it will either be New York or d C.
Speaker 1: And lo and behold it was both. Um. So the
Speaker 1: question is why not why not be small? Are they
Speaker 1: just at a at a certain point you become so wealthy,
Speaker 1: you just out of touch. Why not say Hey, we're
Speaker 1: gonna come in and here's what we're gonna do for
Speaker 1: the community, and we're gonna build a waterfront park, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna help expand um mass transit, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: do this, and we're gonna do that. This looks like
Speaker 1: it was just sold so poorly. And I want to
Speaker 1: actually agree agree with you that there were there worked
Speaker 1: some quite clear, invisible signs that the political climates and shifted.
Speaker 1: But I think it's a function of how reclusive and
Speaker 1: maybe self absorbed by us and other Amazon executives were,
Speaker 1: so they just kind of failed to see it. And
Speaker 1: you know, the fact they you know, they wanted to
Speaker 1: be wooed by communities. But I think you're making a
Speaker 1: pretty good point, which is that they actually were going
Speaker 1: to be the ones that would have to do the wooing.
Speaker 1: And seeing two hundred thirty regions prostrate themselves, sorry, prostrate
Speaker 1: themselves in front of Amazon, a big, wealthy technology company,
Speaker 1: was just unseemly, I think exactly exactly. It's amazing. And
Speaker 1: then the other failure I have to talk about, which
Speaker 1: is kind of shocking, is Blue Origins has just been
Speaker 1: a mess from day one. It was preordained to fail.
Speaker 1: How how could you say we're going to set up
Speaker 1: a private company to reinvigorate space travel, but we're going
Speaker 1: to do it on the cheap. It's just it's so
Speaker 1: opposite of the Amazon approach. What was he thinking? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: this is um he sets up Blue Origin in two thousand.
Speaker 1: He is a relative popper by by today's standards in
Speaker 1: terms of his his wealth and this whole saying in
Speaker 1: the space business, Um that the quickest way to become
Speaker 1: a millionaire is the start off as a billionaire. So
Speaker 1: I think he went into it knowing that building rockets
Speaker 1: is not for the faint of heart, and so he
Speaker 1: righte he sets out to constrain the investment, to keep
Speaker 1: the headcount small. He's going to privately fund it, and
Speaker 1: he's going to think long term, all the sort of
Speaker 1: Bezos hallmarks. And what happens is Elon Musk comes in
Speaker 1: and Um literally you know, starts going quickly raising money
Speaker 1: from venture capitalists, UM, funding space X with government contracts,
Speaker 1: and and Bezos's approach seems you know, kind of meager
Speaker 1: and tame. In response, then Bezos changes gears, starts selling
Speaker 1: a billion dollars worth of Amazon stock every year to
Speaker 1: fund it, and sees a lot of dysfunction at the company. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that this function was ongoing. There's a data point you
Speaker 1: mentioned the book that was mind blowing. Elon Musk's SpaceX
Speaker 1: wins a contract for FO forty million dollars, but like
Speaker 1: so many Defense Department and government contracts, there are some
Speaker 1: price over rides and he ends up, according to an
Speaker 1: inspector general, getting paid seven point seven billion dollars went
Speaker 1: to space X, which which makes every time he complains
Speaker 1: kind of laughing. Right. I think that's more that that first,
Speaker 1: that was the first installment of a contract than that
Speaker 1: then kind of continued to evolve UM and that Bezos
Speaker 1: was looking at back go and you know, we should
Speaker 1: have we should have been on this UM. He he
Speaker 1: was ultimately I think jealous, probably a strange position for
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos to be in that that musque was getting
Speaker 1: paid to play. You know, they have similar dreams in
Speaker 1: space UM. And here the government is funding SpaceX and
Speaker 1: its ambitions and helping Elon scale the company, and and
Speaker 1: Bezos is still shelling out personally for Blue Origins Amazing
Speaker 1: and our final discussion on failure UM. They had an
Speaker 1: internal process of reviewing employees called stacked ranking that led
Speaker 1: to what you described as a quote informal cruelty unquote
Speaker 1: that is definitional for the company's corporate culture. Explain what
Speaker 1: that was about and why they ultimately had to change
Speaker 1: it right and and different companies have experimented with different
Speaker 1: versions of this. Bezos early on never wanted Amazon to
Speaker 1: become a country club, a place where employees got comfortable.
Speaker 1: He was particularly worried in the fulfillment center is that
Speaker 1: if people stuck around for too long, they could be
Speaker 1: susceptible to organizing efforts from unions. And the review process
Speaker 1: really encouraged managers to you know, to to evaluate and
Speaker 1: then and then um dismissed the lowest performers. And this
Speaker 1: is a management practice that has wreak havoc everywhere Microsoft, off,
Speaker 1: the General Electric etcetera. Um, there were there was one
Speaker 1: element that led to I think these sort of negative
Speaker 1: evaluations of Amazon, Amazon's culture. That was a theme in
Speaker 1: the Everything Store. It was obviously there was that high
Speaker 1: profile New York Times article into those of jifteen and yes,
Speaker 1: I think after the Times article they re evaluated it.
Speaker 1: I still get reports periodically that a form of it
Speaker 1: still exists. And the Amazon so big of a company
Speaker 1: right now, there are lots of different pockets of of
Speaker 1: employee you know, experiences and reviews. Um, but I think
Speaker 1: you know, this is part of the basis is philosophy.
Speaker 1: He he wants people to come to Amazon, to have
Speaker 1: the most productive years of their career, to move at
Speaker 1: breakneck speed, and when they when they slow down, to
Speaker 1: move on, he doesn't mind. He doesn't mind that even
Speaker 1: the compensation systems are sort of geared towards avoiding people
Speaker 1: becoming extraordinarily so extraordinarily wealthy that they stopped being motivated.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it is interpreted as a kind of informal
Speaker 1: cruelty among some people. And that's why, um, disgruntled former
Speaker 1: Amazon employees are not a rare species, to say the least.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about some really fascinating things
Speaker 1: with Bezos, including one of my favorite memes circulating Twitter
Speaker 1: is the photo of him in sort of bookish looking
Speaker 1: with glasses. And then there's a photo from I think
Speaker 1: it was sun Valley where he's kind of jacked in
Speaker 1: a you know, vest and shirt, strolling confidently towards the viewer,
Speaker 1: and it was Amazon, Amazon Prime, and that was everywhere
Speaker 1: for a while. Tell us about the transformation of Bezos
Speaker 1: from a sort of you know Wall Street geek into
Speaker 1: uh an overlord. Right, Well, the physical transformation, so this
Speaker 1: is only the most obvious part of it, right The
Speaker 1: guy has been working out and getting in shape, and
Speaker 1: in the first book I ascribed that from a former
Speaker 1: friend to his interest in in um in one day
Speaker 1: going to space until he's trying to safe fit. Now
Speaker 1: I think it's more. I suspect it's more, you know,
Speaker 1: the billionaire fixation with longevity and and and health. But
Speaker 1: again that that's only part of it. He his eyes
Speaker 1: have opened up to a larger world beyond Amazon, and
Speaker 1: and that's me a his ownership of The Washington Post
Speaker 1: and participation in in Washington, d C. Society, UM Space Company,
Speaker 1: Hollywood right throwing parties. He simply seems to enjoy the lifestyle,
Speaker 1: the extravagance that comes with his position, much more than
Speaker 1: he ever did. And and the greatest symbol of this,
Speaker 1: I never thought Jeff Bezos circa even two thousand and
Speaker 1: ten would be a yacht guy, you know, someone who's
Speaker 1: spending time on big books. And I was a report
Speaker 1: in the book. He's building this massive three three mass
Speaker 1: math with a with its own support yacht with it
Speaker 1: was the right room for he and I think part
Speaker 1: of that the the influence of Laurence Sanchez, his partner, um,
Speaker 1: and part of it is simply him enjoying the world
Speaker 1: stage that is human and the robot, the machine that
Speaker 1: created Amazon. You know, is is susceptible too. I guess
Speaker 1: some of these human impulses. Yes, so so you we
Speaker 1: we already talked. Mackenzie Scott, his former wife, gave The
Speaker 1: Everything Store a one star review. But but her and
Speaker 1: and Bezos' new girlfriend, Sanchez could not possibly be more different.
Speaker 1: She's very social and outgoing. Mackenzie Scott is a little
Speaker 1: bit more of an introvert and and a homebody. How
Speaker 1: much of the divorce comes from him wanting to step
Speaker 1: out a bit and you know, literally the wife wanting
Speaker 1: a quiet night at home. What's the genesis of this?
Speaker 1: Because there wasn't a whole lot about the divorce um
Speaker 1: other than to say it was already sort of happening
Speaker 1: before Sanchez ever showed up on the scene. I mean, Barry,
Speaker 1: this the easiest answers that we have no idea, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, who really knows what happens in the private
Speaker 1: confines of that marriage. Other than to observe what what
Speaker 1: you've just said, which is Mackenzie Scott is fiercely private.
Speaker 1: I think I think she's done one interview um around
Speaker 1: the publication of one of her novels. Um. She she
Speaker 1: speaks very carefully in the in the few medium posts
Speaker 1: that she's written about her philanthropic contributions. And she didn't
Speaker 1: seem to enjoy as much going to the awards shows
Speaker 1: or to the fashion galas um as as Jeff Bethos did.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they're they're they're interest for public attention were diverging. Um,
Speaker 1: that's certainly true. And in Lauren Santis, Bezos has found
Speaker 1: someone who's extremely comfortable moving in those circles. Um. And
Speaker 1: yet who you know, I don't think it's it's ever
Speaker 1: possible to know, Um, you know what what has really
Speaker 1: you know, what really happens in a marriage? Huh? To
Speaker 1: say the least, let's talk a little bit. You mentioned
Speaker 1: the Washington Post Bezos really helped to drive a huge
Speaker 1: turnaround at the Post, and I was kind of surprised
Speaker 1: to read that the tagline democracy dies in darkness? Was
Speaker 1: that really a Bezos line? Well, if you if you
Speaker 1: remember Barry, that was a line in a speech um
Speaker 1: that Bob Woodward had given crediting of pre Watergate era judge,
Speaker 1: and then Bezos had heard that, and when he asked
Speaker 1: Marty Baron and others is the Washington Post to go
Speaker 1: find a slogan for the paper, he suggested that it
Speaker 1: should do something like democracy Dies in Darkness. And then
Speaker 1: they spent about a year and probably you know, thousands
Speaker 1: of hundreds of thousands of dollars, paying branding firms and
Speaker 1: coming up with ideas and firing them, and they basically
Speaker 1: got back to Democracy Dies in Darkness, which originally they
Speaker 1: had thought was kind of too dreary, uh, and then
Speaker 1: ended up being perfect for the age of Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: So yes, it was sort of bezos inspiration but a
Speaker 1: little a little bit of well hard to call, you know,
Speaker 1: that era luck, But it certainly was for the Post, right,
Speaker 1: because even though Bezos did drive a remarkable turner on there,
Speaker 1: they certainly did, they were fortunate by the revival of
Speaker 1: interest and political news had accompanied the Trump years. So
Speaker 1: it's interesting because as you read the book, it's as
Speaker 1: much about Amazon the company as it is about Bezos,
Speaker 1: like a bio of him. Was the intention or did
Speaker 1: it just become clear you can't write about one without
Speaker 1: writing about the other. I think in both books I
Speaker 1: thought of them as um as. Yes, as both um.
Speaker 1: I you know, since I'm working with limited access to Bezos. Um,
Speaker 1: they're predominantly about the companies. But just is the main character, right,
Speaker 1: And you can't when you peel back the layers of
Speaker 1: the onion on most major inventions at Amazon and most
Speaker 1: big strategic moves, you find you get to Jeff Bezos
Speaker 1: and and a decision that he made. And this book
Speaker 1: Amazon Abound is about transformation. It's it's the transformation of
Speaker 1: this company into this monolith that is dominating all of
Speaker 1: our life now and and our economic reality. And then
Speaker 1: the accompanying transformation of Bezos right into the richest man
Speaker 1: in the world, into into this figure on the public stage,
Speaker 1: the evolution of a tech geek into kind of a
Speaker 1: business superhero. And yeah, they're really intertwined. I think. I
Speaker 1: think in some ways they function as biographies for the
Speaker 1: company and for the man. So there's a quote of
Speaker 1: his in the book quote you can invent your way
Speaker 1: out of any box unquote, which kind of raises the question,
Speaker 1: how does he see himself? Is he an inventor, Is
Speaker 1: he a business founder? Is he a CEO and a leader? What?
Speaker 1: What is his self identified role? Yeah, that one's easy
Speaker 1: to answer because he keeps insisting and he did so
Speaker 1: again in his latest shareholder letter that he's an inventor.
Speaker 1: That is how he wants to be seen. And it's
Speaker 1: funny because I have a colleague at Bloomberg and we
Speaker 1: were talking about that and she said, you know, this
Speaker 1: reminds me a little bit of Taylor Swift, who wants
Speaker 1: to be seen as a songwriter, but the world kind
Speaker 1: of sees her, you know, more as a singer and
Speaker 1: as a performer. I think that's true with Bezos too.
Speaker 1: He wants to be seen as an inventor, but you know,
Speaker 1: by his admire as he will largely be seen I
Speaker 1: think as an operator and an entrepreneur, a creator of
Speaker 1: amazing business value, and by his critics as a monopolist. Right,
Speaker 1: and the verdict is still out on this, but as
Speaker 1: a as an aggregator of extraordinarily extraordinarily wealth and and
Speaker 1: not yet really as a philanthropist whose contribution back has
Speaker 1: been commensurate with with his um you know, accomplishment. So yes,
Speaker 1: he wants to be seen as an inventor, and that
Speaker 1: that might be uh, the jury is out on that
Speaker 1: a little bit. So when he looks at all of
Speaker 1: those accomplishments, what does he see as his lasting legacy?
Speaker 1: How does he want to be remembered? With the caveat
Speaker 1: that he's still a relatively young man, and is what
Speaker 1: early fifties, Well, let's see, it's probably it's probably mid
Speaker 1: the late fifties, right, yeah, mid fifties right now. I
Speaker 1: think he wants to be seen as an inventor. I
Speaker 1: think that he wants to be seen. The last investor
Speaker 1: letter is really this interest thing, an impassioned defense of
Speaker 1: Amazon as a contributor, as a as a generator of value,
Speaker 1: and he goes one by one talking about the the
Speaker 1: gross merchandise value generated by third party sellers, the salaries
Speaker 1: of the third party workers, how much Amazon shareholders have benefited, um.
Speaker 1: And he's really trying to reframe the debate, I think,
Speaker 1: around his own wealth and Amazon's own power, and to
Speaker 1: shed lights on how much value Amazon is creative. So
Speaker 1: I think he wants to be seen and he wants
Speaker 1: Amazon's legacy to be one that has contributed to the
Speaker 1: economy and positive ways, and and and the reason why
Speaker 1: he's arguing that so precipitously is because the prevailing sentiment
Speaker 1: right now at least is that you know, billionaires are
Speaker 1: bad and in some corners of society, of course, um
Speaker 1: that they represent something untoward in the distribution of wealth
Speaker 1: in our society and the widening income gap, and that
Speaker 1: big tech companies have come to dominate the economy and
Speaker 1: the snuff out opportunity for smaller businesses. And look, I
Speaker 1: mean I try to I try to get into that
Speaker 1: debate in the book. I think that's a little bit
Speaker 1: of a harsh view. Amazon has made some real positive
Speaker 1: contributions and and basis is I think only beginning to
Speaker 1: grapple with the fact that his legacy right now is
Speaker 1: very much contested and he'll have to probably spend the
Speaker 1: next couple of years, you know, turning turning that around
Speaker 1: and making significant contributions and changing people's mind. You have
Speaker 1: to say the least, I'm trying to remember where which
Speaker 1: document of there's where they might have been. In defense
Speaker 1: of something that Bernie sanders Um had said, he points out,
Speaker 1: we employ over a million people, with a second biggest
Speaker 1: job creator in the country which actually is as good
Speaker 1: a time as any to talk about what he did
Speaker 1: with the fifteen dollar an hour um increase. This this
Speaker 1: was just a brilliant jiu jitsu in response to I
Speaker 1: think Bernie Sanders haranguing uh Bezos. He figured out pretty quickly, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is paying more money is a giant competitive advantage
Speaker 1: to us. Tell us about how he raised the minimum
Speaker 1: wage at at Amazon to fifteen right, and we should
Speaker 1: we should note I mean a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of these moves by Amazon, as welcome as they are,
Speaker 1: our our reaction reactions, and the fight for fifteen dollars
Speaker 1: an hour, it's something that starts ten years ago among
Speaker 1: among big companies and fast food chains. UM employee strikes
Speaker 1: lots of pressure, and Amazon is growing by leaps and
Speaker 1: bounds over the past few years, becoming a more and
Speaker 1: more prominent employer. The lens of public scrutiny is on
Speaker 1: their relationship with their employees, and at a certain point,
Speaker 1: I think they realized that they're going to have to
Speaker 1: get a head of it, and and they do have
Speaker 1: the resources to get ahead of it in a way
Speaker 1: that perhaps some of its competition UM Walmart and the
Speaker 1: like do not, and so they they raise their their wage.
Speaker 1: And sorry, one other thing baries that as they're hiring
Speaker 1: more and more people, um, you know, hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of people in their for filming centers at a time
Speaker 1: of economic prosperity and tightness in the labor market, I
Speaker 1: think they realized they need to sweeten the pot for
Speaker 1: for workers to even just fill those for filming centers,
Speaker 1: particularly during the holidays. And so fifteen dollars an hour.
Speaker 1: It's a recruiting mechanism. It's a strategic weapon to to
Speaker 1: bludgeon their competitors over the head who can't match the rate.
Speaker 1: And then it's a little bit of a of a
Speaker 1: defense um to the for the activists and the politicians
Speaker 1: like Bernie Sanders who are criticizing Amazon's relationship with their employees. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he went away for a little while. Eventually he started
Speaker 1: coming back at Bezos, but for a while he was
Speaker 1: pretty satisfied. Let's let's talk about on another jiu jitsu
Speaker 1: that was so brilliantly played. Um. Laurence Sanchez's brother got
Speaker 1: access to a variety of texts and then went about
Speaker 1: selling them to the National Enquirer. He claimed that he
Speaker 1: had a nude selfie of quote unquote below the belt
Speaker 1: selfie that turned out not to be so true, and
Speaker 1: Bezos just completely up ended what looked like being trapped
Speaker 1: in a box. Tell us a little bit about that
Speaker 1: incredible escaping act. Yeah, right, this is this is one
Speaker 1: of those episodes that I couldn't quite believe I was
Speaker 1: I was going to be writing about. Um, Bezos has
Speaker 1: tangled with the National Enquirer. You mentioned Laurence Snchez, his
Speaker 1: brother delivering um, delivering those text messages to the paper. Um.
Speaker 1: He you know, he thought he was trying well, the
Speaker 1: cup was sort of conducting their relationship out in the open,
Speaker 1: and you know, for whatever reason, he decided that he
Speaker 1: wanted to try to get ahead of it. He was
Speaker 1: also he was also paid quite well by the Inquirer
Speaker 1: for the information. And UM, it's it's almost impossible to
Speaker 1: believe Bezos. Um. Well, it's a really complicated saga. UM.
Speaker 1: I don't know how far you want me to go back.
Speaker 1: But the the Inquirer was very susceptible to accusations that
Speaker 1: they had political motives, and Bezos and his representatives had
Speaker 1: had been floating the possibility that they were doing the
Speaker 1: work for the Trump administration to embarrass Bezos as an
Speaker 1: owner of the Washington Post, and in the negotiations, um,
Speaker 1: the Inquirer essentially was threatening Bezos with the release of
Speaker 1: all of this, these these embarrassing photos, saying you have
Speaker 1: to stop accusing us of having political motives. It wasn't
Speaker 1: politically motivated at all, simply a good story. And then
Speaker 1: Bezos turns around and publishes told his emails um and
Speaker 1: suggest that there were political motives and suggests that studies
Speaker 1: were involved, and then sympathies swing to his side. It
Speaker 1: was this brilliant move. If people remember that episode at all,
Speaker 1: they probably think Bezos did the right thing. And as
Speaker 1: I untangled it, I sort of at least I concluded
Speaker 1: that there weren't political motivations, so the Staudies weren't involved.
Speaker 1: They may have hacked Beazos' phone. We kind of don't know,
Speaker 1: but it was. It was simply a sort of brilliant
Speaker 1: pr master master stroke, and they edited the Inquirer ended
Speaker 1: up getting fired. Um, you know, and I think we
Speaker 1: we That was my excerpt in Bloomberg Business Week, and
Speaker 1: the cover line was Bezos wins again. And of course
Speaker 1: because he did right and this is one where by
Speaker 1: all measures, he should have been embarrassed, and he kind
Speaker 1: of came out on top the New York Post with
Speaker 1: another memorable headline, Bezos exposes Pecker, referring to David Pecker
Speaker 1: was the editor of the UM Inquirer and had already
Speaker 1: been under pressure because of the catching killed deals they
Speaker 1: had done to protect Donald Trump UM and were some
Speaker 1: I don't remember what the problem was. I guess that's
Speaker 1: a violation of campaign finance laws. And he was sort
Speaker 1: of in limbo with the Southern District. Is that what
Speaker 1: took place there? Yeah, they had a non prosecution agreement
Speaker 1: with the Southern District of New York that required am I,
Speaker 1: the company that operated the National Inquirer, to to to
Speaker 1: be a good citizen, to not break the law, to
Speaker 1: play by the rules. And so when the Washington Post
Speaker 1: and Gavin de Becker Bezoss representative started insinuating that the
Speaker 1: Inquirer was doing the work of the Trump administration to
Speaker 1: embarrass Jeff Bezos, UM, you know that was that was
Speaker 1: sensitive for for am I, and Pecker wanted wanted the
Speaker 1: Dylan Howard, the under the Inquiry to kind of settle
Speaker 1: settle settled the matter. That's just an incredible story. And
Speaker 1: I guess the the lesson is, if you're in the
Speaker 1: business of challenging wealthiest people in the world with lots
Speaker 1: of resources, you probably don't want to do it while
Speaker 1: you're on double secret probation is probably a bit. There's
Speaker 1: a line from the Wire that I love in this
Speaker 1: in this context, if you come at the King, you
Speaker 1: better not miss And they came at the King and
Speaker 1: they missed. Before we get to our favorite questions, I
Speaker 1: have to ask you some recent news that came out
Speaker 1: after the book was published. What do you make of
Speaker 1: this eight point four billion dollar purchase of MGM. Is
Speaker 1: this about Amazon Prime or is this about Bezos getting
Speaker 1: to hang with Hollywood Royalty. Well, you can hang with
Speaker 1: Hollywood Royalty without MGM. It's about intellectual property. It's about
Speaker 1: the vault of franchisees, the deep. The MGM has James Bond,
Speaker 1: the Rocky Series, Legally Blonde, et cetera, RoboCop um. Amazon
Speaker 1: is facing the likes of Disney Plus and an Apple.
Speaker 1: Um you know, not just Netflix, Paramount, Peacock Network and
Speaker 1: and franchises are are going to be a big differentiator.
Speaker 1: UM In addition, we talked about the advertising business and
Speaker 1: with MGM, Amazon gets this vault of this catalog of
Speaker 1: archival programming. They can funnel all that into Prime video
Speaker 1: and into another streaming service I m DBTV, which is
Speaker 1: it's free to use and it's supported by advertising, and
Speaker 1: and this is like, this is these are table stakes
Speaker 1: now in the new streaming wards being able to mint
Speaker 1: franchises and have very deep catalogs of libraries of archival programming.
Speaker 1: Really interesting. All right, for our last regular question, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna throw a curveball at you and say congratulations
Speaker 1: on winning the Amazon Whole Food sweep steaks. Okay, I
Speaker 1: love this story. Yeah, thank you Berry. Um, I is
Speaker 1: that correct? Yes, I'm working on this book and I
Speaker 1: got a call telling me that I won a Whole
Speaker 1: Food sweep stakes and I had never entered any but
Speaker 1: apparently if you use your Amazon credit cards and a
Speaker 1: Whole Foods, who got entered in? And what are the
Speaker 1: chances I won? And I thought it was a fraud.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a telemarketing scam totally. And I and
Speaker 1: I think, Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna look into this
Speaker 1: because somebody's abusing you know, the Amazon name, and I
Speaker 1: find out that it's real, and of course I didn't,
Speaker 1: I didn't accept it. But it was just so peculiar.
Speaker 1: I mean, what what are the what are the chances
Speaker 1: I could be eating you know, free and whole foods now,
Speaker 1: But sadly my journalistic obligations prevented me from accepting it.
Speaker 1: That's pretty hilarious. All right, Let's jump to our favorite
Speaker 1: questions that we ask all of our guests. And let's
Speaker 1: start with and I asked this to everybody, not just
Speaker 1: to you. What are you streaming these days? Give us
Speaker 1: your favorite Netflix and Amazon Prime shows? Interesting? Let's see, Um,
Speaker 1: we just started Halston this is the you and McGregor
Speaker 1: fashion thing on Netflix. We're only one episode in my
Speaker 1: I'll reserve judgments on that. Um. The Michael Douglas series
Speaker 1: Comisky Method, so they just did season three. I've loved
Speaker 1: that show. The opening of the first episode at the
Speaker 1: funeral is just totally hilarious. Um, and I haven't been
Speaker 1: watching a lot of TV. So those are the two
Speaker 1: right now. UM. I tried, I have I have young daughters,
Speaker 1: teenage daughters. I tried to introduce one to a classic film,
Speaker 1: rain Man over the weekend the great Dustin Hoffman films,
Speaker 1: and she wanted to watching halfway halfway through. UM, so
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe maybe you know, it's not it's
Speaker 1: not as moving for for the younger generation. My experience
Speaker 1: is that the younger generation can't enjoy the pacing which
Speaker 1: is so much slower. I mean, unless you go to
Speaker 1: something like the front page or bringing up baby. The
Speaker 1: pacing of movies from the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties are
Speaker 1: just so much slower than you know, how how rapid
Speaker 1: the jokes come and how fast explosions come. Today it's
Speaker 1: a different era and and they don't have the tolerance
Speaker 1: for that. I think that might be true, and in
Speaker 1: the exactly the same way as I rejected the movies
Speaker 1: of my parents generation. I'm now and there's receiving rooms. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's it's everything is accelerating. Let's let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about your career and ment yours who helped guide
Speaker 1: and shape your career? Well? Um, I think probably the
Speaker 1: most influential with Stephen Levy, um, technology writer at at
Speaker 1: Newsweek Magazine. UM. He has written great books about Apple
Speaker 1: and Facebook and Google. And seeing him work and the
Speaker 1: way he writes was always very inspirational to me. Um
Speaker 1: George Hackett was an editor of mine at Newsweek magazine.
Speaker 1: He was he was quite influential and just a great,
Speaker 1: great editor. And then um at Josh Turangle, the former
Speaker 1: editor of Business Week who brought me over from from
Speaker 1: the New York Times, and the way he managed people
Speaker 1: and his story sensibility, the way he really refreshed business Week.
Speaker 1: When Bloomberg bought it was was wonderful to watch. What
Speaker 1: are some of your favorite books and and what are
Speaker 1: you reading right now? Let's see, I'm reading Cast, the
Speaker 1: wonderful book by Isabel Wilkerson just about um, you know,
Speaker 1: how we view racial and income divisions in the in
Speaker 1: the United States. That's that's been really eye opening. I
Speaker 1: feel like my reading has been eclipsed by self promotion
Speaker 1: and book promotion over the past a few weeks. So
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm really looking forward to this summer
Speaker 1: when I get to maybe read some of the other
Speaker 1: excellent books that have that have come out this year.
Speaker 1: I read the novel Clara and the Sun by A.
Speaker 1: Kazoo Is Shiguru, which um you know who wrote Remains
Speaker 1: of the Day is just such a wonderful author. And
Speaker 1: this book is about it's a sort of science fiction
Speaker 1: future where people can take home home robots, and it
Speaker 1: is it is such a moving novel. I actually read
Speaker 1: it and then immediately reread it, And so that is
Speaker 1: a book I heartily recommend. What sort of advice would
Speaker 1: you give to a recent college grad who was thinking
Speaker 1: about a career in either investment finance or or journalism
Speaker 1: or both? Right, well, I would have absolutely no advice
Speaker 1: on the investment finance side of things, very that that
Speaker 1: might be more your per view than mine. Um on journalism,
Speaker 1: after maybe waving my hands, uh, you know, at them
Speaker 1: to get them to reconsider if they were really determined,
Speaker 1: I would um, I would. I would encourage young journalists
Speaker 1: to kind of find their lean, you know, find something
Speaker 1: that they're passionate about and interested in, to go deep
Speaker 1: on um and to sort of master the expertise in
Speaker 1: and then to just be persistent. This business is all
Speaker 1: about persistence and being there after everyone else has left,
Speaker 1: and going a little deeper and asking that last question
Speaker 1: and digging into another box of files when you feel
Speaker 1: like you're exhausted and want to drop. And that's that's
Speaker 1: the key to this business. Right, it's not rocket science.
Speaker 1: We don't we don't need PhDs to do it. But
Speaker 1: often it's just sheer curiosity and persistence and absorption and obsession, right.
Speaker 1: I mean I have become over the past decade sort
Speaker 1: of obsessed with understanding how Amazon works and what drives
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos, um, you know, and what's good about it,
Speaker 1: what's bad about it? And I think you need that
Speaker 1: kind of absorption, of an obsession of curiosity to succeed
Speaker 1: as a journalist today. And our final question, what do
Speaker 1: you know about the world of journalism today? You wish
Speaker 1: you knew when you were first getting started twenty plus
Speaker 1: years ago, years ago. I mean, it's just just such
Speaker 1: a different environment. I guess I wish I had known
Speaker 1: how rapidly things would change. You know. I spent the
Speaker 1: first ten years in my career as I as I
Speaker 1: said earlier in the conversation that Newsweek, magazine and Newsweek
Speaker 1: does exist, and magazines of course exists, but that kind
Speaker 1: of media organization no longer does. Um. There there was
Speaker 1: a whole class of journal who labored in the salt mine,
Speaker 1: so to speak, um, not really reporting and writing, but
Speaker 1: researching and and and performing support functions. Um, and then
Speaker 1: every week would be a desperate competitive scramble to get
Speaker 1: your articles in the magazine. And I actually think I
Speaker 1: learned a lot from that. But um, there's no replacement
Speaker 1: for writing and publishing and repeating and reporting and getting
Speaker 1: out into the world. And and those are the kinds
Speaker 1: of skills that are rewarded in today's journalistic environment. And
Speaker 1: so I think I might wish that if I was
Speaker 1: able to foresee the way in which the media climate
Speaker 1: would change that I had been, that I would have
Speaker 1: been a little bit more productive in my earlier, earlier years,
Speaker 1: where where like success at a big magazine, just being
Speaker 1: at a big magazine like like news Week, seemed like
Speaker 1: a career accomplishment on its own. But of course, you
Speaker 1: know that world no longer exists. We have been speaking
Speaker 1: with Brad Stone. He is the author of Amazon Unbound,
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos and The Invention of a Global Empire. Thanks
Speaker 1: Brad for being so generous with your time. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed this conversation, well be sure and check out any
Speaker 1: of our previous almost four hundred interviews we've done over
Speaker 1: the past seven years. You can find those at iTunes, Spotify,
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. We love your comments, feedback
Speaker 1: in suggestions right to us at m IB podcast at
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot net. You can sign up for my daily
Speaker 1: reads at rit Halts dot com. Check out my weekly
Speaker 1: column on Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion. Follow me on
Speaker 1: Twitter at rit Halts. I would be remiss if I
Speaker 1: did not thank our crack staff that helps put these
Speaker 1: conversations together each week. Rolie Volmer is my audio engineer.
Speaker 1: Atico val Bron is our project manager. Michael Boyle is
Speaker 1: my producers slash booker. Michael Batnick is my head of research.
Speaker 1: I'm Barry Rihults. You've been listening to Masters in Business
Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Radio