Word: mightly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Thinking up business possibilities, in fact, was Bezos' job at D.E. Shaw, an unusual firm that prides itself on hiring some of the smartest people in the world and then figuring out what kind of work they might profitably do. David Shaw, a former professor of computer science at Columbia University, had been wooed to Wall Street by Morgan Stanley, where he specialized in the arcane field of quantitative analysis--using computers to spot trends in the market. He formed his own company in 1988, initially to carry on that kind of work, but with so much brainpower around...
...white, and the endless rows of stock shelves shine in fluorescent yellow--the better to see the billboard-size banners that festoon the aisles and walls. "Our vision," reads one, "is the world's most customer-centric company. The place where people come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online." Another banner floats above one of the aisles and lists the company's Six Core Values ("customer obsession, ownership, bias for action, frugality, high hiring bar and innovation"). It's like the Cultural Revolution meets Sam Walton. It's dotcommunism...
...still immature Internet, and he found a site that purported to measure Net usage. Bezos couldn't believe it: the Internet was growing at a rate of 2,300% a year. "It was a wake-up call," he says. "I started thinking, O.K., what kind of business opportunity might there be here...
...constantly told not to get too attached to our office," says Marcus, who has moved nine times in three years. Resettling in the suburbs might make sense, but the troops keep voting it down, clearly dreading Seattle's horrendous traffic. Instead they huddle outside PacMed in a chilly dusk drizzle, awaiting one of the vans that crisscross the city from one Amazon outpost to another. "Imagine how much they're paying us," a shivering woman complains, "to stand here waiting for a ride...
...Meanwhile, the site's revenues kept doubling: they were $2,500 the second month, then $5,000, then $10,000. Omidyar eventually had another insight. "I said O.K., I've got a hobby that's making me more money than my day job," he recalls. "So it might be time to quit...