Word: muchness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...incredibly risky. How elastic is the Amazon brand name? How much can you stretch it until it simply explodes and becomes meaningless to consumers? And how long can the money hold out? Bezos has already burned through a bank's worth of cash with no sign of slowing down. If anything, he's upping the ante--according to estimates, the company's net loss could be $350 million this year alone...
...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 the office, it seemed a shame to waste it all on Wall Street. It made sense to pursue other businesses too. During much of his four years at Shaw, Bezos "was sort of an entrepreneurial odd-jobs kind of a person," Shaw recalled recently...
Bezos & Co. conceived an entirely new way of thinking about the ancient art of retailing, from creating a "flow experience" that keeps customers coming back to Amazon's website to read product reviews or one another's "wish lists," to automating as much as possible a complex process that starts when you hit the patent-protected "1-Click" buy technology and ends when your purchase is delivered to your door. The Coffeyville center, for instance, is part of a nationwide distribution network specially designed to handle e-commerce. Half a dozen warehouses like it have been strategically placed...
...beta testers to spread the word. During the first 30 days, without any press, Amazon sold books in all 50 states and 45 other countries. "Within the first few days, I knew this was going to be huge," says Bezos. "It was obvious that we were onto something much bigger than we ever dared to hope...
...some point," he says, giving MacKenzie a hug as the two of them stand around in the kitchen, "we want to figure out how to do philanthropic work that's highly leveraged. It's very easy to give away money ineffectively. But doing it well requires at least as much attention and energy as building a successful company...