Speaker 1: I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon
Speaker 1: customer because you guys paid progress. You guys paid probles.
Speaker 1: This is Megacorp, an investigative podcast exposing some of the
Speaker 1: world's most unethical corporations. This series is about Amazon. I'm
Speaker 1: Jake Hanrahan, journalists and documentary filmmaker. Megacorp is produced by
Speaker 1: H eleven for Cool Zone Media. So after eight episodes
Speaker 1: now diving into the many scandals at the heart of Amazon,
Speaker 1: I thought it was time to talk about the man
Speaker 1: who built the empire, Jeff Bezos. As we know, Bezos
Speaker 1: is the richest man on Earth. He founded Amazon in
Speaker 1: and now it's one of the biggest company k needs
Speaker 1: on the planet. Is also, as we've discovered, one of
Speaker 1: the most controversial. But how did Bezos get to this point?
Speaker 1: But if there's anyone that knows that, it's journalist Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: He runs the Behind the Bastards podcast, which looks into
Speaker 1: the lives of some of the worst bastards on Earth.
Speaker 1: So I spoke to Robert Evans about Jeff Bezos. Robert
Speaker 1: goes into a lot of detail in this so mostly
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna let the interview run first. Maybe if
Speaker 1: you can just kind of go into the early life
Speaker 1: of Jeff Bezos, because he didn't start out as Jeff Bezos. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was born Jeffrey Preston Jourgensen um. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that is I think the first and most
Speaker 1: amazing thing about the Jeff Bezos story is that his
Speaker 1: his actual father abandoned the family. And this is not
Speaker 1: this is not like your normal story of a dude
Speaker 1: winding up without a dad, where like it there's there's
Speaker 1: something like really unsettling or or dark here. It's that
Speaker 1: his his actual father is bio dad um. Theodore Jourgensen
Speaker 1: was just like kind of a uh, kind of a
Speaker 1: ship head carney who really really really loved unicycling. He
Speaker 1: was a high wire unicyclist um, and having a kid
Speaker 1: got in the way of his unicycling dreams. Yes, you
Speaker 1: did hear that right, Jeff Bezos. His biological father abandoned
Speaker 1: him when he was young to fulfill a dream of
Speaker 1: his as a high wire unicyclist. Now, it's not funny
Speaker 1: when somebody abandons the family, but what a strange start
Speaker 1: that is. Anyway, Robot explains more, he could not get
Speaker 1: on board with being Jeffrey's father and eventually kind of
Speaker 1: bounced the funk out of his life and in fact
Speaker 1: did not know that his son was Jeff Bezos and
Speaker 1: who Jeff Bezos was really until a journalist tracked him
Speaker 1: down like decades later when Amazon was a huge deal
Speaker 1: and was like, you know, your kids like super rich
Speaker 1: in creating what's turning into this monster company. He was
Speaker 1: very surprised. Um, and I think is still kind of
Speaker 1: a deadbeat unicyclist dude. So Jeff by the time he
Speaker 1: was pretty young, Um, his mom had met a a
Speaker 1: new dude, UM whose name was Miguel Angel Bezos Perez,
Speaker 1: who was a Cuban who kind of his version of
Speaker 1: the story. And I don't know about much about his
Speaker 1: family back in Cuba or kind of like where they
Speaker 1: stood and whatnot. But he was apparently as a teenager
Speaker 1: like painting anti Castro graffiti, which got him in trouble
Speaker 1: and at age sixteen he had to flee the country. Um,
Speaker 1: and so he wound up in the United States. Uh.
Speaker 1: He did his undergrad work at the University of Albuquerque,
Speaker 1: So he wound up in because Bezos comes from the Southwest, right,
Speaker 1: That's where his his family's like a lot in New
Speaker 1: Mexico because his mom's side of the family were really
Speaker 1: heavily involved in um, the US nuclear programs and like
Speaker 1: nuclear missiles and and all that, all that and stuff.
Speaker 1: Um and Miguel wound up in the same region because
Speaker 1: the University of Albuquerque was offering free scholarships to Cuban refugees,
Speaker 1: and so he met Jeffrey's mom, Jacqueline Um, when he
Speaker 1: was working as a clerk at a bank that she
Speaker 1: worked at two and they fell in love and married
Speaker 1: and I think before jeff really, I don't think jeff
Speaker 1: really remembers much time before mcguel, because Miguel's just kind
Speaker 1: of always been his dad, And so his mom changed
Speaker 1: the changed his last name to Bezos and that's how
Speaker 1: he became Jeffrey bezos Is because this this this Cuban
Speaker 1: immigrant dude kind of uh stepped in to his life
Speaker 1: and took over as his dad. So he got pretty
Speaker 1: lucky there. Um, it's a little bit of a winding story.
Speaker 1: I think it's very funny that his dad abandoned him
Speaker 1: to be a unicyclist, but also I don't I think
Speaker 1: it's probably too much to say that had an effect
Speaker 1: on him, because I don't think he really it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like he had any memory of that, you know,
Speaker 1: so it's unlikely that that like that laid some deep
Speaker 1: seated wound that is responsible for anything that Amazon has done. Right,
Speaker 1: And this this guy, Miguel kind of took him under
Speaker 1: his wing, right, Like, he seems to be quite instrumental
Speaker 1: in you know, the way Bezos jeff Bezos so the
Speaker 1: world growing up. Yeah, And I think that's why Jeffrey
Speaker 1: kind of grows up as a a very very committed
Speaker 1: capitalist um. Obviously, his dad is like an anti castro
Speaker 1: activist as a kid um and then as an you know,
Speaker 1: as an adult once he's graduated and out in the world.
Speaker 1: Miguel works as a petroleum engineer for Exxon, So he
Speaker 1: is like very much into kind of some of the
Speaker 1: morally grayer or morally blacker aspects of of of of capitalism. Um. Like,
Speaker 1: he's very on board with big business, and I think
Speaker 1: his attitudes towards kind of capitalism versus socialism certainly have
Speaker 1: an impact on young Jeffrey as he grows into an adult.
Speaker 1: When did we see these things kind of manifest He
Speaker 1: didn't go straight to Amazon. Right, he built this kind
Speaker 1: of built you know, he built a good life for
Speaker 1: himself already before that. Yeah. Yeah, so he's you know,
Speaker 1: he goes to his family has number one. His his
Speaker 1: maternal family is loaded, right, They've got he He spends
Speaker 1: his summers as a kid on a twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: acre ranch in Texas, which is, you know, land is
Speaker 1: cheaper in Texas, but you're not poor if your family's
Speaker 1: got twenty five thousand, twenty five. There are countries in
Speaker 1: Europe smaller than this far um. But it also means
Speaker 1: that Jeff like spends his childhood with his grandpa doing
Speaker 1: a lot like practical engineering, you know, learning how to
Speaker 1: like not just put up fences, but like build different
Speaker 1: feeding things for livestock, doing a lot of handyman work,
Speaker 1: repairing engines and stuff. So he grows up with this
Speaker 1: like really um, like this really caught like a lot
Speaker 1: of experience making things and and working hard and this
Speaker 1: kind of like he's very molded both by his his
Speaker 1: adopted father's um attitude towards free enterprise and by this
Speaker 1: kind of very idyllic rural American chunk of his upbringing
Speaker 1: where he's you know working on a farm and self
Speaker 1: reliance and all this stuff. And of course it's self
Speaker 1: reliance within the context of it's his grandpa's hobby farm.
Speaker 1: You know, his grandpa does not have to make a
Speaker 1: living with this farm. His grandfather was in the US
Speaker 1: nuclear program for decades UM and then retired, and this
Speaker 1: farm is kind of like his hobby as as a
Speaker 1: retired man. So there's there's you get two sides of
Speaker 1: it both, Like Jeff is kind of convinced, I've grown
Speaker 1: up with this kind of traditional American rural self supporting,
Speaker 1: like you tell take care of yourself, the government doesn't attitude.
Speaker 1: But also the reason why there it's so much more
Speaker 1: pleasant than a lot of people who grow up in
Speaker 1: a rural agricultural setting is that they're rich. You know,
Speaker 1: I grew up in a farming community, and it's it's
Speaker 1: not most people do not have access to the resources
Speaker 1: he had. But I'm not sure he's really aware of that.
Speaker 1: I think he kind of sees himself as having assault
Speaker 1: of the earth up bringing, even though that's really not
Speaker 1: the case. Um. And he he benefits as well because
Speaker 1: he's in he's farming in the summers and then during
Speaker 1: the rest of the year, he's in Houston. Um, that's
Speaker 1: where his family kind of winds up and he goes
Speaker 1: to this very special He's in a public school, but
Speaker 1: his school district has money for something. They call it
Speaker 1: the Vanguard Program, and it's like this basically this super
Speaker 1: special gifted and talented program where they're kind of experimenting
Speaker 1: with with different ways of of taking care of of
Speaker 1: of or or of teaching kids, and of course sort
Speaker 1: of like molding the curriculum of the program to the
Speaker 1: gifts of the children. And it it seems like a
Speaker 1: good idea. It works really well for Jeff. And it's
Speaker 1: it's you hear about stuff like this too with um
Speaker 1: with with Bill Gates in particular, and I think Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs kind of benefited from something similar when he was
Speaker 1: a kid. Ditto um Wozniak. Where these are at the
Speaker 1: very least upper middle class kids who benefit from a
Speaker 1: specific kind of educational program that is not available to
Speaker 1: most kids. So Jeff has very early access to computers. UM,
Speaker 1: he's able to do what he wants in school rather
Speaker 1: than kind of like do what the school wants him
Speaker 1: to learn. The school is kind of go looking at Okay,
Speaker 1: here's what Jeff's interested and here's the stuff that he's
Speaker 1: he thinks is fascinating. Let's mold his um, his educational
Speaker 1: program to it. UM. And he's a very competitive kid.
Speaker 1: There's a writer who's sort of evaluating the school program
Speaker 1: when he's like twelve or so. UM and you know,
Speaker 1: decades later, she still had her notes on him because
Speaker 1: he really struck her as UM, very intelligent, very competitive.
Speaker 1: He was working on a science project at the time
Speaker 1: called an infinity cube, which was this battery powered thing
Speaker 1: with rotating mirrors that made the optical illusion of an
Speaker 1: endless tunnel. And it was a thing he'd seen in
Speaker 1: a store but was expensive, so he like made a
Speaker 1: version of it for himself for cheaper. UM. He was
Speaker 1: entering a bunch of local science competitions and winning them.
Speaker 1: He's he's a very very like bright kid. Everyone kind
Speaker 1: of pegs this, this kid out as special and they
Speaker 1: just this whole community because again this is a public
Speaker 1: school program. This whole community in Houston pours resources into
Speaker 1: Jeff when he's a little kid. UM and he graduates, Uh,
Speaker 1: he and his you know, I think when he's in
Speaker 1: Florida by the time he graduates. Um, but he uh,
Speaker 1: he starts this kind of like after school program the
Speaker 1: summer after he graduates with another kid where they're like
Speaker 1: teaching younger kids science stuff, doing like star gazing and
Speaker 1: whatnot with them. Um. He has a really early interest
Speaker 1: in space travel. Uh. He's his favorite show is Star Trek.
Speaker 1: As a kid, he's got kind of some of these
Speaker 1: utopian dreams and it's weird because there's this mix of
Speaker 1: like these sort of utopian and Star Trek is coming
Speaker 1: at utopia from a very left wing sort of perspective. Um,
Speaker 1: and he's fascinated by that. But all of his heroes
Speaker 1: are these businessmen Walt Disney and Thomas Edison, these guys
Speaker 1: who are um, real like capitalist he os. And he
Speaker 1: actually he prefers Disney to Edison, um because he thinks
Speaker 1: Disney was better at building a team and working together,
Speaker 1: like making them work together in a concerted direction. And
Speaker 1: it makes sense that Disney is kind of the person
Speaker 1: he idolizes, right, because Amazon is definitely has that sort
Speaker 1: of thing that Disney has where they're pulling everything in
Speaker 1: the world to them and making this kind of capitalist
Speaker 1: katamari that that just owns everything in a space, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's come from he comes from a very privileged background.
Speaker 1: He acts like the way he talks, I agree with you.
Speaker 1: It's as if I don't even think he's kind of
Speaker 1: trying to present a fight narrative. He just thinks because
Speaker 1: he was on a farm that he's from some like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm the salt of the earth, I'm from the dirt. Like, no,
Speaker 1: you're from the dirt on like a twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: acre farm. That's very different. You know, if he didn't
Speaker 1: want to, if his granddad decided he was sick of
Speaker 1: that farm, it's not like they would have starved, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they could have. They could have stopped all of the
Speaker 1: farming and kept living comfortably in the ranch house and
Speaker 1: would have would have been And I think it's easy
Speaker 1: when you're in the kind of position he was as
Speaker 1: a kid to note that, like, well, we worked hard.
Speaker 1: You know, I was up at dawn every day, we
Speaker 1: didn't stop working until night. We did a bunch of
Speaker 1: really physically and mentally difficult tasks. So that means like
Speaker 1: I had kind of this working class experience and upbringing,
Speaker 1: and the reality is that you're not. You don't really
Speaker 1: know any of that, you're not really having the authentic
Speaker 1: experience if there's not the fear of failure. I think
Speaker 1: it's it's easy because he's working hard as a kid
Speaker 1: for him to forget that. He also has a safety
Speaker 1: net that about like half a percent of kids in
Speaker 1: America maybe benefit from, you know. So so he goes
Speaker 1: on then too, he doesn't exactly end up working in
Speaker 1: the farming industry or anything like that, right, he kind
Speaker 1: of follows his dreams of these kind of like capitalist heroes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he follows his dreams. He does start like a little
Speaker 1: kind of educational business that does seem like a decent
Speaker 1: thing to do. Um, and then he goes off to college.
Speaker 1: He goes to Princeton. He seemed most of the people
Speaker 1: he went to journalists have found other folks who were
Speaker 1: in his class. He made really no impression on on
Speaker 1: most people. He's very much like kind of a forgettable dude.
Speaker 1: And in fact, one of the classmates who like sets
Speaker 1: him up with a job after college, so you would
Speaker 1: think this guy knew him well. Like when the interviewed
Speaker 1: later after Jeff is rich and famous, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't remember anything but that he was smart, like
Speaker 1: he does. He doesn't really Um, he doesn't really leave
Speaker 1: much of an impact like bright, but not a dude
Speaker 1: whose personality like you remember. Um and there's some weird
Speaker 1: he doesn't like music. Um and it doesn't appear to
Speaker 1: be a thing where like some people have like an
Speaker 1: auditory processing issue right where it's uncomfortable, like for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: music just like it doesn't feel good in their ears.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's that because they'll play music for
Speaker 1: other people and stuff. So with that in mind, let's
Speaker 1: take a look at a tweet Jeff Bezos put out
Speaker 1: on February three, twenty next to a picture of the
Speaker 1: singer Lizzo, Bezos wrote quote, I just took a DNA tist.
Speaker 1: Turns out I'm one hun present Lizzo's biggest fan. End quote. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously that's very cringe to say. But also this is
Speaker 1: from a guy that apparently doesn't like music. He's either lying,
Speaker 1: disingenuous or he does actually like music. Who knows which
Speaker 1: one it is? Just doesn't get it, you know, he
Speaker 1: just doesn't understand why people like music, which is which
Speaker 1: is interesting that some folks will claim that this is
Speaker 1: why Apple beats Amazon to the digital music game, right,
Speaker 1: and and then Spotify later. Like Amazon is for all
Speaker 1: the things, they're ahead of the curvan, kind of always
Speaker 1: behind on digital music, um, which there's a weird you know,
Speaker 1: the stuff with Joe Rogan and Neil Young and the
Speaker 1: fight over Spotify. There's kind of a weird parallel there
Speaker 1: because Neil Young when he deletes his catalog from Spotify,
Speaker 1: I'm sure he has an issue with Joe Rogan, but
Speaker 1: a big part of what Young is doing is he's
Speaker 1: he's got a deal with Amazon Music, right, and so
Speaker 1: he's plugging Amazon Music too, you know. Convenient. They're all millionaires, right,
Speaker 1: Like you shouldn't expect any of them to be your hero.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so people will say that like that is
Speaker 1: kind of why Amazon is consistently behind the curve when
Speaker 1: it comes to digital music, which is which is noteworthy
Speaker 1: just because there one thing you have to give Amazon
Speaker 1: credit on there, the head of the curve on most things,
Speaker 1: you know, um, but Bezos just doesn't get that, and
Speaker 1: so they're kind of consistently behind. Um And yeah, he uh.
Speaker 1: He eventually winds up working in a company called Fittel,
Speaker 1: which is like a finance a tech finance company. This
Speaker 1: is in the mid eighties. I think eight four eight
Speaker 1: five is when he gets his first big boy job. Um.
Speaker 1: And so that's this period where computers are starting to
Speaker 1: become standard in investment banks and brokerages, but they're still
Speaker 1: not the norm. Right there there that that process begins,
Speaker 1: the more forward thinking investment banks and brokerages are putting
Speaker 1: computers in, right, but a lot of this is still
Speaker 1: done by analog you know, today all trading is kind
Speaker 1: of done by these machines, and there's some human input,
Speaker 1: but like a lot of it is these computers kind
Speaker 1: of gambling with each other. This is the V's He's
Speaker 1: in on the ground floor of that process, and he
Speaker 1: is working with a company that basically gets hired by
Speaker 1: these big banks and brokerages to help them set up
Speaker 1: these networked computer banks that are initially just kind of
Speaker 1: augmenting human decision making, but will eventually take it over
Speaker 1: to a very large extent in finance. You know, that's
Speaker 1: how things work now. And he is he's he's UM.
Speaker 1: I don't think he's necessarily a huge part because he's
Speaker 1: not a visionary part of this, right He's working for
Speaker 1: the visionaries who see where the future is going to
Speaker 1: be here, but he is also as a code or
Speaker 1: helping to build this, so he's definitely like it's a
Speaker 1: good internship for him in terms of he's experiencing work
Speaker 1: with these people who have seen the future and and
Speaker 1: helping to kind of make it with people. And he
Speaker 1: he bounces around a few of these early fintech companies
Speaker 1: until in nineteen eighty nine, Um, he starts having a
Speaker 1: conversation with a colleague about like, Hey, you know, we're
Speaker 1: we're setting up these computer networks, um that are that
Speaker 1: are connecting like brokerage and allowing them to basically gamble
Speaker 1: a lot faster. Uh, what if we were to set
Speaker 1: up like a a networked computer intranet thing that anyone
Speaker 1: could use to like connect to news stories which will
Speaker 1: be curated algorithmically based on a person's interest. Um, and
Speaker 1: they almost get investments in the idea you know you'll
Speaker 1: do this is basically like how Facebook and Twitter work, right, Um,
Speaker 1: it's a version of that. It doesn't quite happen, but
Speaker 1: the fact that Bezos is sort of thinking about this
Speaker 1: in nineteen nine shows that he does have a really
Speaker 1: pretty deep understanding of where networked computing is going to
Speaker 1: go right, Like he's not just following the trend. He's predicted, Oh,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be a big deal. Um, And he's
Speaker 1: very much ahead of the eight ball on that um.
Speaker 1: I think in the late eight like early nineties, he
Speaker 1: gets a job with an investment with an investment firm
Speaker 1: that manages a hedge fund called d E. Shaw Um,
Speaker 1: which is this as firms go, it's one of these
Speaker 1: ones that's really ahead of the curve. They're doing a
Speaker 1: lot of comput uter stuff. The guy who runs it
Speaker 1: is hiring a lot of programmers, and Bezos is a
Speaker 1: fucking superstar there, you know, um, his colleagues and he's
Speaker 1: both a superstar, but he also he's clearly already thinking
Speaker 1: about his legend. Right. People who work with him will
Speaker 1: note that he would like keep a sleeping bag in
Speaker 1: his office so that he could work overnight if he
Speaker 1: needed to. But the main purpose of the sleeping bag
Speaker 1: was not for him to actually sleep at work, because
Speaker 1: he didn't do that often. He just kept it in
Speaker 1: view so his employees would see it and like would think, oh, Jeff,
Speaker 1: you know, we need I need to work like that,
Speaker 1: because Jeff is like crashing at work sometimes he's using
Speaker 1: it as a prop right, just when through it for
Speaker 1: a second. I think this point that Robot is explaining
Speaker 1: is very interesting if you look at how Amazon went
Speaker 1: on after Bezos started it. He's always saying, hope, people
Speaker 1: need to just work harder. But as we see here,
Speaker 1: he allegedly used props to give the impression that he
Speaker 1: was the hardest worker buck in the day. Now the
Speaker 1: hardest workers are on the warehouse floor and he's telling
Speaker 1: them I need to work as hard as him. Perhaps
Speaker 1: he's still using props now. He's very much bought into
Speaker 1: the kind of myths we say about like how you
Speaker 1: ought to work and kind of you know, this is
Speaker 1: how you get ahead is by being uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the busiest, and by you know, sleeping at your desk
Speaker 1: and and and basically living at the office. This kind
Speaker 1: of stuff that that is huge in the tech industry, right.
Speaker 1: This is why Google has sleeping rooms and massages on site,
Speaker 1: and like they try to keep people at the office
Speaker 1: as often as possible. Um, you know this is this
Speaker 1: is just kind of uh, he's he wants to I
Speaker 1: think he he understands that mythologizing as an important part
Speaker 1: of being a founder and I think even though he's
Speaker 1: not a founder at this point, he wants to found
Speaker 1: a a big tech company. You know that that is
Speaker 1: beginning to be his ambition. Um, but he's working at
Speaker 1: D E. Shaw, He's doing great. He meets a woman
Speaker 1: named mckenzy Tuttle while working at the Hedge Fund. She
Speaker 1: graduated from Princeton to She actually studied with Tony Morrison
Speaker 1: when she at an English degree, which is a is
Speaker 1: weird that there's a connection between Tony Morrison and Jeff
Speaker 1: Bezos that close, But there you go. Um, she's a
Speaker 1: novelist and she's kind of working as a secretary in
Speaker 1: this tech company and she winds up with a big
Speaker 1: crush on Jeff. And it is one of those things
Speaker 1: like we talked about Bill Gates. Bill Gates has gotten
Speaker 1: in some trouble recently because he had a history of
Speaker 1: creepily hitting on women who were his employees at Microsoft Conn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and some kind of connections to Epstein. We could go
Speaker 1: out for a while about about that. Um, it does
Speaker 1: not appear to be that kind of case with Bezos. McKenzie,
Speaker 1: even though she's divorced him now, is adamant that like
Speaker 1: she was the one who started hitting on him. Um.
Speaker 1: She was the one who kind of pushed him to
Speaker 1: go out with her and fell in love with him.
Speaker 1: And it does seem they stayed together a long time
Speaker 1: you know. Um, you know they've split up now, but
Speaker 1: they were together like twenty years or so. Um. And
Speaker 1: she was a big part of the creation of Amazon.
Speaker 1: So whatever else, it does seem like, uh, he is
Speaker 1: a human being who was capable of connecting with another person,
Speaker 1: which I guess there you go. Um. Yeah, So they
Speaker 1: she gets together with mckensey while he's working at D. E.
Speaker 1: Shaw and he starts to this is the you know,
Speaker 1: he's making really good money at this he's not like
Speaker 1: a millionaire, but he's extremely comfortable. But he starts to
Speaker 1: kind of chafe. Not because he likes his boss. He
Speaker 1: likes what they're doing, but it's not his business. And
Speaker 1: he's already had this idea that he really wants to
Speaker 1: to to create one that he's he's kind of started
Speaker 1: forming while talking with his boss at d Shaw. He
Speaker 1: wanted to build something he called the Everything Store. Um.
Speaker 1: So this is the early nineties, you know, this is
Speaker 1: kind of right around the period a little before the
Speaker 1: period that we hit eternal September, you know, where everybody
Speaker 1: is online. This is like immediately before that happens. But
Speaker 1: Jeff sees the potential of the Internet and recognizes that
Speaker 1: a huge amount of commerce is going to take part
Speaker 1: in it, and that if you, because of what the
Speaker 1: internet is, if you could build a store with the
Speaker 1: kind of distribution center necessary, you could sell every thing
Speaker 1: to anyone, you know, as opposed to having to kind
Speaker 1: of uh locally curate your your inventory and deal with
Speaker 1: all of that. Like, you could have a store that
Speaker 1: could sell everything cheaper than basically anyone else, um, and
Speaker 1: undercut all these retail change chains, um. And he has
Speaker 1: one of the the idea he has about this that's
Speaker 1: particularly innovative. That's that's new at this point you have
Speaker 1: to think, you know, we're talking four. He wants to
Speaker 1: he wants the sales on the store to be heavily
Speaker 1: driven by consumer reviews, you know. And you can see
Speaker 1: this as kind of him branching off from this idea
Speaker 1: he has for an algorithmically curated news service. He wants
Speaker 1: people reviewing products to have an influence on how often
Speaker 1: those products show up when other people go to the
Speaker 1: site and he wants that to drive people to buy things,
Speaker 1: like the reviews of customers, you know, and that is
Speaker 1: again really new at this point because the internet, like
Speaker 1: you have to think, if you're if you're shot, if
Speaker 1: all of your shopping is like going to a mall
Speaker 1: or a store, you're not buying things generally because like
Speaker 1: of a review. You know, if you get a review,
Speaker 1: it's like someone whose job, who works at Wired or whatever,
Speaker 1: whose job is to review products, as opposed to anyone
Speaker 1: who buys a product being able to leave a review
Speaker 1: online and you can see, oh, eight hundred people gave
Speaker 1: this a five star rating, and you know that means
Speaker 1: it's probably good. Um. That's the big idea that Jeff has. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he grows obsessed with this idea of the everything store. Um.
Speaker 1: He starts to feel like, in the mid nineties, it's
Speaker 1: probably time to do this, So he quits his high
Speaker 1: paying job, so does Mackenzie, and he and his wife
Speaker 1: drive to California. Um because they initially right, you know,
Speaker 1: that's where most people would would start a tech business
Speaker 1: in both this period and now, But he decides taxes
Speaker 1: are too high. Um. Because the thing about e commerce, right,
Speaker 1: and this is the way it's it works, or at
Speaker 1: least it worked for a while. I think there's been
Speaker 1: some changes. But um consumers at the time where you
Speaker 1: would only have to pay taxes on whatever the like,
Speaker 1: the business would only have to pay taxes based on
Speaker 1: like the state that it resided in, you know. UM.
Speaker 1: And so he winds up taxes in California are too high,
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense. He goes to Washington State because it
Speaker 1: has good infrastructure, UM. But it has a tiny population.
Speaker 1: So Washington does have sales tax. But um, because it's
Speaker 1: not a populous state. It means every state other than
Speaker 1: Washington that people buy from in this story he's going
Speaker 1: to be creating don't have to pay sales tax. So
Speaker 1: this is kind of his way of minimizing the number
Speaker 1: of customers who might have to pay sales tax on
Speaker 1: products for what's going to become Amazon. UM. And he
Speaker 1: starts with the plan to sell books UM. Mainly because
Speaker 1: all books come from one or two there's one or
Speaker 1: two companies in the United States that distribute all of
Speaker 1: the books everywhere. You know, they sell the books to
Speaker 1: the stores. They're the ones who actually they're not producing
Speaker 1: the books, but they're the ones who are like gathering
Speaker 1: them and putting them in warehouses and shipping them out
Speaker 1: to where they need to go. So he sees, like
Speaker 1: the book industry already has pretty good infrastructure. It would
Speaker 1: make it easy for me to order books anywhere in
Speaker 1: the kind tree and get them shipped to anywhere in
Speaker 1: the country. Um. So he starts. He decides that I'm
Speaker 1: going to start by selling books online, all books, so
Speaker 1: it's like a bookstore. And again, this is a really
Speaker 1: new idea at the time. You don't have to like
Speaker 1: go to the bookstore and see if you can find something,
Speaker 1: or like have them special orders something. Everything is just
Speaker 1: available all the time. Um. They wanted to call it
Speaker 1: Cadabra at first, and then make it so dot com
Speaker 1: because again he's a big star trek nerd um. But
Speaker 1: their friends thankfully talk them out of most of these things.
Speaker 1: They go through a bunch of different names, um and
Speaker 1: relentless dot Com I think is Jeff's favorite. You can
Speaker 1: actually still go to relentless dot com today if you
Speaker 1: type it in, it will take you to Amazon. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so they they they start this business. They
Speaker 1: eventually land upon Amazon as a name, and it's worth
Speaker 1: noting that like when this business uh, when when he
Speaker 1: starts this company he puts ten grand of his own
Speaker 1: money in it, which is a significant amount of money
Speaker 1: in like uh, but it's also primarily funded by eighty
Speaker 1: four thousand dollars in interest free loans UM, some of
Speaker 1: them from his first employees who are people he met
Speaker 1: in the financial tech industry UH, and pour money into
Speaker 1: it UM and a lot of it comes from his parents,
Speaker 1: and in fact, they eventually invest a hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: of it in UM of their own money. So it
Speaker 1: is this thing. It's the same deal with Elon Musk
Speaker 1: really um where he gets his business. First business gets
Speaker 1: started because of money that his dad UM, and his
Speaker 1: mom and dad pump into the business. So remember, kids,
Speaker 1: the moral of the story here is if you want
Speaker 1: to make it big in business, all we have to
Speaker 1: do is have rich parents. That's it. Jeff tells them
Speaker 1: there's a seventy chance they're going to lose it all. Uh.
Speaker 1: The fact that they're willing to invest that in him
Speaker 1: says a lot both about their level of financial um
Speaker 1: privilege and about you know, just they believe in their sons.
Speaker 1: So it's this mix of like, well, that's very sweet.
Speaker 1: But it's also this continuing story where it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: part of why Jeff Bezos is so successful is he
Speaker 1: got every lucky break a motherfucker can get. You know.
Speaker 1: It's this this consistent story with these these big tech
Speaker 1: founders where they all have part that they all have
Speaker 1: the best fucking luck they could possibly have had, you know,
Speaker 1: jobs Gates musk Uh. It's it's a very consistent story
Speaker 1: where it's like, yeah, you were rich, you had all
Speaker 1: of the educational resources, you had, all of the backing
Speaker 1: of your family, you had, um, you know, everything about
Speaker 1: your life up to this point was geared at clearing
Speaker 1: a path to you and making it easy. And again,
Speaker 1: I think it's easy for them to miss that. I
Speaker 1: think it's easy for a guy like Bezos to miss
Speaker 1: that because you're still working hard. You know, um, you're
Speaker 1: still putting in a lot of hours. But motherfucker, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people who work just is hard and
Speaker 1: don't have parents who can throw a hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: that their business idea. You know. So Amazon, there's a
Speaker 1: couple of sneaky things that they start to do early on.
Speaker 1: One of them is that this this this. These book
Speaker 1: distributors have a rule where you have to order ten
Speaker 1: copies of a book at a time for them to
Speaker 1: ship it to you. You know, because they're selling two bookstores,
Speaker 1: they're not selling to individuals. Amazon is not that big
Speaker 1: at this point, so it's it would be a huge
Speaker 1: waste of money for them to order ten copies of
Speaker 1: of a single book UM or ten copies of books.
Speaker 1: You have to order tin books at a time basically,
Speaker 1: and they don't have enough volume initially. So what they
Speaker 1: do is they'll order like the books that they have
Speaker 1: orders for from their customers, and then they'll fill out
Speaker 1: the rest of the tin with copies of books they
Speaker 1: know are out of print, and those out of stock
Speaker 1: orders get auto canceled, but the company will ship the
Speaker 1: two or three orders that aren't out of stock UH
Speaker 1: to Amazon anyway, and that saves Amazon a lot of
Speaker 1: money kind of at the expense of these distributors that
Speaker 1: they're working with. Um. They get another hundred and forty
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars from his parents a year or so later,
Speaker 1: because you know, it's an early company, it's it's burning
Speaker 1: money very quickly. It loses three thousand dollars and ninety five. UM.
Speaker 1: But you know, he Jeff does kind of say, hey,
Speaker 1: this there's a good chance this will fail. Mom and dad.
Speaker 1: Now you've put a quarter of a million bucks in.
Speaker 1: But he also starts to investors projecting net sales of
Speaker 1: seventy four million dollars by the year two thousand, um.
Speaker 1: And he is way off because his actual net sales
Speaker 1: by two thousand or one point six four billion. UM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Amazon grows really fucking quickly. Uh. There's all these sort
Speaker 1: of attitudes from the early days. You know, every big
Speaker 1: tech company kind of mythologizes it's early days. Um. Amazon's
Speaker 1: first company motto is get big fast. UM. They have
Speaker 1: an I p O in nine seven. They have this
Speaker 1: legal fight with um um, with Barnes and Noble. And
Speaker 1: while they're kind of doing this in these in these
Speaker 1: early days, Jeff's writing his first letter to shareholders, you know,
Speaker 1: because they have their I p O in nineties seven.
Speaker 1: And one of the things he writes in this letter is,
Speaker 1: this is day one for the Internet and if we
Speaker 1: execute it well for Amazon dot com. And day one
Speaker 1: is like a religious thing in Amazon. UM. Day one
Speaker 1: thinking is they is the way they kind of talk
Speaker 1: about it like you need to be thinking like it
Speaker 1: is day one, you know, for the for the future,
Speaker 1: for the Internet, for whatever it is you're working on.
Speaker 1: You have to have this this um acceptance of kind
Speaker 1: of infinite possibility. That's the attitude that he tries to
Speaker 1: inculcate within his employees. UM. People work very very hard
Speaker 1: at Amazon. They do not have initially, like they have
Speaker 1: just a couple of warehouses at first, for like the
Speaker 1: first big Christmas rushes they have UM. And he forces
Speaker 1: his employees during one of these Christmas is to leave
Speaker 1: their homes and families for two weeks and spend time
Speaker 1: either working customer service lines or working in warehouses to
Speaker 1: distribute books. UM. He keeps his workers to to a
Speaker 1: hotel room. UM. And it's this you know, it's an
Speaker 1: early version of what will happen later where uh yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he doesn't you know, whatever has to happen to
Speaker 1: keep the warehouses most efficient is what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: And he's kind of you see, from the beginning, there's
Speaker 1: not a whole lot of belief that Bezos has that
Speaker 1: you ought to that your family life is more important
Speaker 1: than Amazon shipping out products. Right, it's certainly not to him,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't feel like it should be for anyone else.
Speaker 1: And that's okay when you've got this tiny startup company
Speaker 1: and everybody involved has some equity, and everybody involved is
Speaker 1: the same kind of crazy. But as it gets bigger
Speaker 1: and bigger, these warehouses get bigger and bigger, and these
Speaker 1: people aren't cut into the profits. These people don't have
Speaker 1: any kind of um buy into the organization. But he
Speaker 1: still has the same attitude that like, well, you shouldn't
Speaker 1: have a life outside of this if if that's going
Speaker 1: to at all reduce the efficiency of the warehouse. It's
Speaker 1: It's interesting because from the very early on you saw
Speaker 1: what was just basically now the reason there is so
Speaker 1: much bad US on Amazon, the reason um the Mega
Speaker 1: code this podcast even exists, it started very early on,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It starts at the very beginning.
Speaker 1: There's stories that are told almost as like pride of
Speaker 1: like employees weeping at their desks because they're so overworked. Um,
Speaker 1: and that that's in line with like his the the
Speaker 1: motto that he wants his employees to have is I'm peculiar,
Speaker 1: which basically means like I'm willing to work like a
Speaker 1: crazy person and and cut years off of my life
Speaker 1: in order to make this company a success. UM. He
Speaker 1: comes up with this list of fourteen rules UM that
Speaker 1: are you know, his attitudes on on business and whatnot.
Speaker 1: They're kind of like the religious founding of Amazon corporate culture. UM.
Speaker 1: A lot of it's just kind of stuff like higher
Speaker 1: and developed the best, which I think every company agrees
Speaker 1: is important. But he also wants employees to exhibit ownership
Speaker 1: of of the chunk of the business they're working on
Speaker 1: UM and do deep dives to like find things that
Speaker 1: are problems and fix them. And that is that is
Speaker 1: that attitude of ownership I think goes both ways. He
Speaker 1: wants employees to act as if they own the part
Speaker 1: of Amazon that they're working on, so it's very personal
Speaker 1: to them UM. But he also is going to act
Speaker 1: as if he owns you, you know, like that's that's
Speaker 1: his attitude, and yeah, you're a product. And there's this
Speaker 1: very They developed this very mechanical method of analyzing employee
Speaker 1: UM success or failure. They have these like fifty sixty
Speaker 1: page long employee evaluations that have these that are filled
Speaker 1: with numbers that are kind of like statistical uh derivations
Speaker 1: of like how that employee is doing or this employee
Speaker 1: is doing. Um. And employees are expected to like memorize
Speaker 1: these different numbers that are put together by the company
Speaker 1: to explain their success or failure and be willing to
Speaker 1: like be able to recite them when like their manager
Speaker 1: calls them and asks about a number. You have to
Speaker 1: be able to have an answer to that kind of stuff. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's not And and Bezos become like is kind
Speaker 1: of famous for his temper um. He's he's very commonly
Speaker 1: screams at people in meetings. He likes to mock and
Speaker 1: to ride employees when they when they fail or when
Speaker 1: they say something that he doesn't think is like a
Speaker 1: good enough answer. Um. He's very kind of like infamous
Speaker 1: for breaking people down during meetings uh and attacking them. Um.
Speaker 1: There's also this kind of early on attitude Amazon has
Speaker 1: that like, if you're a woman, um, you haven't a
Speaker 1: kid or anything is not like an excuse for uh.
Speaker 1: And it's not even that, it's that there's this story
Speaker 1: this woman Elizabeth Willett, who's like a former army captain
Speaker 1: who gets a child and because she has a kid
Speaker 1: now she wants to leave come to work earlier and
Speaker 1: leave earlier so she can pick her baby up and
Speaker 1: then go work at home like she's working the same
Speaker 1: hours as everyone else. She just alters her schedule, but
Speaker 1: she gets in trouble because it looks like she's leaving
Speaker 1: earlier to her employees who are coming in later. Um,
Speaker 1: and her boss is like, I'm not going to defend
Speaker 1: you because it doesn't look good to your peers. And
Speaker 1: this is this is you. Hear a lot of stories
Speaker 1: like this at Amazon where um, because so much of
Speaker 1: the employee evaluations are your coworkers, You're you're supposed to
Speaker 1: kind of attack and poke holes in the performance of
Speaker 1: your co workers. It's very competitive. Um, there's this really
Speaker 1: abusive attitude towards people who you know, anything goes wrong
Speaker 1: in their lives. If you get sick, you know, if
Speaker 1: you have a death in the family. Um, even if
Speaker 1: that doesn't actually impact your your actual work performance. If
Speaker 1: you like miss a day, everyone who works with you
Speaker 1: is going to attack you for it, and that's going
Speaker 1: to be in your performance review. And so it leads
Speaker 1: to people like breaking down again. This people weeping at
Speaker 1: their desks is incredibly common. People just having these like
Speaker 1: emotional collapses. Um, and a lot of it's driven by,
Speaker 1: you know, because Jeff is the kind of guy who
Speaker 1: too employees faces, will insult them and attack them and
Speaker 1: give these very detailed breakdowns of like why they've failed him.
Speaker 1: And he builds a system with an Amazon that is
Speaker 1: supposed to spread that attitude out to everyone else. Like again,
Speaker 1: Amazon is This is kind of I guess the most
Speaker 1: important point and maybe even like the penultimate point I
Speaker 1: want to make here. Amazon is. The way that it works,
Speaker 1: the way that it treats people is an extension of
Speaker 1: how Jeff Bezos treats people. Like he built it to
Speaker 1: work that way. It is everything that is kind of
Speaker 1: abusive an anti human about the company's labor practices is
Speaker 1: that way because it's how Jeff thinks people should be
Speaker 1: treated um, and it's how he treats people in person.
Speaker 1: You know, these big, impersonal robotic systems are a reflection
Speaker 1: of how he treats individuals who work for him, including
Speaker 1: people who he's known for years. He's very famous for,
Speaker 1: like somebody will like spend years and years working eighty
Speaker 1: hour weeks and be integral to the company's success, and
Speaker 1: then the instant they stumble, he fires them and replaces
Speaker 1: them with someone else. There's no understanding of like and
Speaker 1: you know, there's plenty of failures that Bezos makes. He
Speaker 1: never has to pay for them, right, like him missing
Speaker 1: out on Apple Music and you know, failing to understand
Speaker 1: that that's an area for Amazon. He doesn't get fired
Speaker 1: for that, but he lets people go where edges them
Speaker 1: out and replaces them with someone younger for much smaller
Speaker 1: snaffoos um. And it's yeah, it's it's I think that's
Speaker 1: kind of the best point to end on is that
Speaker 1: when you think about the things that are anti human,
Speaker 1: that are really fucked up about how Amazon functions, those
Speaker 1: things are fundamentally reflections of how Bezos treats the people
Speaker 1: in his own life. This company is a direct reflection
Speaker 1: of his personal morally. It was Robert Evans going into
Speaker 1: the details of Jeff Bezos and how he formed Amazon
Speaker 1: in his own image. In the next episode of Megacorp,
Speaker 1: will be looking into how Amazon screwed over its flex drivers.
Speaker 1: Megacorp is made by my production company H eleven for
Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. It's written, researched, and produced by myself,
Speaker 1: Jake Hanrahan. It was also produced by Sophie Lichtman. Music
Speaker 1: is by some black graphics by Adam Doyle and sound
Speaker 1: engineering by Splicing Block. If you want to get in touch,
Speaker 1: follow me on social media at Jake Underscore Hanrahan. That's
Speaker 1: h a n a A h a n