Synopses & Reviews
Amazon's business model is deceptively simple: Make online shopping so easy and convenient that customers won't think twice. It can almost be summed up by the button on every page: "Buy now with one click."
Why has Amazon been so successful? Much of it has to do with Jeff Bezos, the CEO and founder, whose unique combination of character traits and business strategy have driven Amazon to the top of the online retail world.
Richard Brandt charts Bezos's rise from computer nerd to world- changing entrepreneur. His success can be credited to his forward-looking insights and ruthless business sense. Brandt explains:
- Why Bezos decided to allow negative product reviews, correctly guessing that the earned trust would outweigh possible lost sales.
- Why Amazon zealously guards some patents yet freely shares others.
- Why Bezos called becoming profitable the "dumbest" thing they could do in 1997.
- How Amazon.com became one of the only dotcoms to survive the bust of the early 2000s.
- Where the company is headed next.
Through interviews with Amazon employees, competitors, and observers, Brandt has deciphered how Bezos makes decisions. The story of Amazon's ongoing evolution is a case study in how to reinvent an entire industry, and one that anyone in business today ignores at their peril.
Review
"Author and technology journalist Brandt provides an in-depth look at famously brainy Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, whose radically positive "do no evil" corporate philosophy has achieved astounding success. Though competitors and copyright lawyers may not trust them, one insder goes so far as to say, "never once...[have] they failed to make the correct moral decision." Brandt follows the genesis of Google during the duo's Stanford years through their impressive entrepreneurial trajectory to current operations. Hiring and managing policies are trusting and aspirant; they look for employees with a "slight disdain for the impossible", and give their engineers and scientists a day a week to work on their own ideas. One chapter focuses on a joint project between Googel Book Search and Oxford University to digitize a collection of more than one million 19th century books, concluding that "there is logic behind most of the company's...diversification. Put at the top of the list 'Because they can.'" In this must-read for anyone who deals seriously with cyberspace, Brandt has a remarkable profile in present-day innovation and potential."
-Publishers Weekly
Review
“Richard Brandt compellingly profiles one of the greatest Internet executives of the era.”
—Stephen Leeb, author of The Oil Factor and Red Alert
“Brandt is an award-winning magazine writer and he has the classic U.S. journalist’s approach—meticulously researched and with breathless, pithy commentary . . . a good story well told. If you want to understand the Bezos phenomenon, this is an easy and efficient way to do it—just like shopping on Amazon.”
—Management Today
Synopsis
Amazon’s business model is deceptively simple: Make online shopping so easy and convenient that customers won’t think twice. It almost can be summed up by the button on every page: “Buy now with one click.”
Why has Amazon been so successful? Much of it has to do with Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO, whose unique combination of character traits and business strategy has driven Amazon to the top of the online retail world. Richard Brandt charts Bezos’s rise from computer nerd to world-changing entrepreneur.
Through interviews with Amazon employees, competitors, and observers, Brandt has deciphered how Bezos makes decisions. The story of Amazon’s ongoing evolution is a case study in how to reinvent an entire industry, and one that businesses today ignore at their peril.
Synopsis
How much do you really know about Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin? The Google Guys skips past the general Google story and focuses on what really drives the company's founders. Richard L. Brandt shows the company as the brainchild of two brilliant individuals and looks at Google's business decisions in light of its founders' ambition and beliefs.
Larry is the main strategist, with business acumen and practical drive, while Sergey is the primary technologist and idealist, with brilliant ideas and strong moral positions. But they work closely together, almost like complementary halves of a single brain.
Through interviews with current and former employees, competitors, partners, and senior Google management, plus conversations with the founders themselves, Brandt demystifies the company while clarifying a number of misconceptions.
About the Author
Richard L. Brandt is an award-winning journalist who has been writing about Silicon Valley for more than two decades. He is well known throughout the technology community as a former correspondent for
BusinessWeek, where he won a National Magazine Award. He lives in San Francisco. Visit richardbrandt.com