There were times when Jeff Bezos was a visionary businessman, one of the people who recognized from the first moment the dynamics of a new medium, they said internet, and decided to take advantage of it to sell books to the world.
And Brad Stone was one of those journalists who “discovered” the demonic mind of the internet early on, taking his first big media interviews (Newsweek).
But the years passed and Brad Stone became the man who would give us the opportunity to take a secret look at the sanctuaries of his life, but also of the spiritual child, Amazon.
His revealing book «The Everything Store» was released in 2013 and suddenly changed the image that people had of Bezos.
Brad Stone recently struck again (May 2021) with a new effort for the boss of the giant in the e-commerce industry, the «Amazon Unbound».
And it gives us again an eye-popping picture of Bezos’ unthinkable wealth, but also exactly how he acquired it…
What is Jeff Bezos?
On the one hand, he is undoubtedly a great visionary. A true innovator, a business mind with passion, or rather obsession, with customer service.
On the other hand, of course, he is a medicinal enemy of trade unionism, one of the first instigators of modern monopoly practices, but also a tycoon who shows no mercy when it comes to the ouster of his thousands of employees.
Brad Stone aptly observes how the last few years the image of the terrible businessman retreats, to emerge in all its dark grandeur the image of the evil boss.
“This is clearly not the good old Jeff,” observes Brad Stone, a man who knows him better than anyone. And so he felt the need to write a book for the last 8 years of Amazon, having covered the first 18 years of operation in his first book.
Bezos’ transformation is not a new story, Stone tells us, it has been on the road since “The Everything Store” hit the shelves of bookstores. However, he lost all sense of proportion when his fortune began to grow exponentially.
Bezos of 2017, with almost half of that fortune of the 187.5 billion dollars he has today (Forbes estimate), would hardly recognize Bezos of 2021.
THE Brad quotes the words of an Amazon executive, who wonders “how did one of the most disciplined people in the world find himself in such a situation?”. He was referring to the National Enquirer scandal in 2019, which brought the divorce from Mackenzie and a young woman into his life.
Stone follows him in the recent adventures of his life. The once secretive croissant is now a soap opera caricature, he tells us. Even the most expensive boat in the world now wants it in his hands, in an effort to show off his unparalleled wealth.
And Bezos, of course, has not forgotten Brad Stone’s former friend. Of course he hated “The Everything Store”, both himself and his then wife. Book reviewer Mackenzie had typically given him an asterisk in her review.
And Bezos, of course, refused to talk to Stone about the needs of his new book. He would not cheat on her again. He is also no longer the CEO of AmazonSo what did a book about the internet giant mean to him?
But let’s see what he writes in the incendiary book about the last years of both the colossus, which some call “deceitful”, and at least his special boss…
How do you become the richest man in the world?
It is no secret how Jeff Bezos acquired his terrifying fortune. Of course, this is not from the salary he received as CEO of Amazon for 20 whole years, an amount that reached only 81,840 dollars a year (!).
But it owns a stake in Amazon, that 16% that is worth over $ 100 billion.
It is also no secret how Amazon managed to become a company worth 1 trillion. dollars. It wasn’t just innovation, cloud computing, Amazon Web Services and the ad that made it a colossus, but also the Marketplace.
Stone likens it to the “Wild West,” citing complaints from people who have been active in the Amazon Marketplace for years. “It’s like being invited to Thanksgiving dinner and discovering that you are the turkey,” one characteristically told him.
The sellers are talking about thousands of cheap imitation products from China that have flooded Amazon’s electronic shelves, overtaking products with which they share suspicious similarities.
His executives have tried to talk about it to Bezos, according to Brad. He even cites a corporate meeting for Amazon’s clothing division, where he was asked if they should give priority to well-known and good brands, leaving “monkey” products in second place.
“I think we should target anyone who wears clothes,” he replied with his characteristic irony, “I have not seen many people naked in recent days.”
Brad goes into depth in his analysis, but does not care at all about the starvation wages that Bezos gives to his thousands of employees.
Or the fact that distributors and warehouse workers are forced to urinate in plastic bottles, so that deliveries are not deprived of the precious minutes one needs to do one’s need as a human being.
The Amazon warehouses are like prisons and reports come in by the thousands. Especially when we talk about a boss who cut it insurance for its 1,900 seasonal employees, an amount he makes in… 6 hours.
According to Fortune, Bezos boasts that he is a tax evader. The magazine tells us that the thing has gone too far to avoid the taxes due to it. That’s why he chose Washington as the headquarters of Amazon and not the “hot” in terms of California tech industry, to avoid the heavy taxation of the state.
Atlantic revealed that in 2017 Amazon made a net profit of $ 5.6 billion and did not give one in federal taxes.
Of course, Stone told us this in his “The Everything Store” and he obviously had no reason to repeat it.
There he writes about the way Bezos treated the publishers in the first days of his e-bookstore, like “sick gazelles”.
The fiasco with the conquest of Space
Η Blue Origin, the space company of Jeff Bezos, was founded two years before Elon Musk’s competitive SpaceX and could undoubtedly have monopolized the industry.
But as history has shown so far, Bezos’s initiative has lagged far behind SpaceX, an awkward situation that has led it to mimic Musk’s manipulations in everything (such as government contracts and launching satellites to get the expenses).
And she was left behind despite the fact that Bezos endows it out of his own pocket with $ 1 billion a year, taking care to steal a few hundred minds from the competition.
Blue Origin is at such a point today that some of these hundreds of minds have told Stone that the company is “the provincial club you go to to calm down after working hard in SpaceX».
According to “Amazon Unbound”, the atmosphere created by Bezos at Blue Origin is such that when he presented to his colleagues the heavy space award received by a high-ranking employee, no one applauded.
Maybe they were holding a grudge against him for the now legendary insults he launches at his employees: “Are you lazy or just incompetent?”, Or the other “you have to apply a little human intelligence to this problem”.
The Hollywood Adventures
As Stone penetratively observes, it is one thing to be successful in retail and another to obviously apply the same recipe in space. Or in the cinema.
The reason for Amazon Studios, another activity of Bezos who decided to rule alone. Nothing good has come out of it, in terms of content. The only thing that came out is this gang of accusations of sexual harassment, within the #MeToo movement.
“I know what it takes to make an amazing series,” said the boss, who made the creators work like Amazon executives.
To get a series to his office, he had to have completed an Excel file with what he had predetermined. Does the series have a “heroic protagonist who experiences growth and change?”. If not, goodbye series.
Brad also says that Bezos was focusing more and more on Hollywood parties than on the work they do in Hollywood. He went out every day leaving Mackenzie at his huge mansion in Los Angeles.
At such a party, he also met the stone of scandal, the woman who ruined his marriage and his current partner, Lauren Sanchez, the wife of a major producer at the time…
How do you become a target for scandals?
Bezos has always been a secretive croissant, keeping his personalities out of the limelight. Ever since Sanchez came into his life, discretion has come out the window.
A year before his divorce, he was seen dating and publicly flirting with his lover in expensive Hollywood restaurants. Ignoring the paparazzi who lurked at every step.
This went to the advantage of his mistress’s brother, Michael Sanchez, by sending messages and photos exchanged the illegitimate couple in the scandalous National Enquirer, firing a thriller of epic specs. And an attempt at blackmail, alas.
No one knows why he cared so little about the harm he did to his wife by maintaining an extramarital affair for a whole year before the divorce.
Maybe because “this is clearly not the good old Jeff”…
Donald-43Westbrook, a distinguished contributor at worldstockmarket, is celebrated for his exceptional prowess in article writing. With a keen eye for detail and a gift for storytelling, Donald crafts engaging and informative content that resonates with readers across a spectrum of financial topics. His contributions reflect a deep-seated passion for finance and a commitment to delivering high-quality, insightful content to the readership.
