|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Rice Thresher
Phone:
|
by Leslie Liu thresher editorial staff
That was in July 1995. Now, with yearly revenues of over $2 billion, 7,000 employees and 23 million customers worldwide, as Bezos would say, "all is well." More than 200 Rice students, faculty and staff attended Bezos' talk Tuesday morning at McMurtry Auditorium in Duncan Hall. He discussed how Amazon.com began, what he's learned as an Internet entrepreneur and what he thinks about the future of electronic commerce. Bezos graduated from Princeton University in 1986 with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science. He came up with the idea for Amazon.com in 1994 when he heard that Web usage was increasing at an astounding rate of 2,300 percent each year. "The question was, 'What could you do?'" Bezos said. He started a list of things that would sell well on the Internet based on what people like to buy from mail-order catalogs. However, Bezos said, books were actually pretty far down the list because you can't have a big enough catalog on paper. "It was very clear that there was no way to build a million-title bookstore or bigger," Bezos said. "... [The] true need of the Internet is its ability to have shelf space." Bezos left New York City and a job on Wall Street for Seattle and his startup dream. Bezos said some people ask him how he made that kind of life decision. He said he used the "regret-minimization framework, which is just a nerd's way of saying you don't want to regret things later in life." He thought about it and decided that when he was 80 years old, he wouldn't regret using a few years of his life trying his hand at an Internet startup. To this end, he began looking for people to help him reach his goal. "No rational people would do this, yet you have to start with rational people," Bezos said about hiring his first key employees. The company first worked out of the garage of a rented suburban home, battling the threat of overloading the house's electrical circuits. The startup finally had to rent a 400-square-foot space out of a warehouse. "It's very, very different from the founding vision," Bezos said. "In fact, when I was making our business plan, I was building a small, profitable company. But it turned into a large, profitable company," he laughed. "I am the most surprised person in the world that this has succeeded," Bezos said. He stressed the importance of Amazon.com's business model, which involves putting customer experience above everything else. "Something is different on the Internet than the outside world," Bezos said. "That is, word of mouth is more widespread." So, he said the best way to gain customers is to get current patrons to spread the word. "Our best marketing dollars are spent on things like new distribution centers," he said. "Those are the kinds of things that surprise customers and turn them into evangelists. ... The company that succeeds the most is the one that does the best for the customers." When bookstore chain giants Barnes & Noble and Borders opened their own Web sites, Bezos said he was not too worried about the competition. "I told people ... to be terrified, but not of our competitors," he said. "Be terrified of our customers. They're the ones that send us money." But there has been speculation about the online retailer's inability to profit thus far, and Bezos' company has been called many things. "We were called my favorite, 'Amazon.org,' because we're clearly a not-for-profit company," Bezos said. He said the decentralized culture of the Internet startup helps direct attention to customer satisfaction, as opposed to the culture of chain stores whose company doesn't want a store manager to show initiative - the company wants the stores to be uniform. "We have a culture that demands decentralization and people that can make their own decisions," Bezos said. Bezos said he genuinely believes that the Internet will be the most profound innovation of the 20th century. And, as for e-commerce, he said he believes the industry is just now realizing its potential. With dot-coms popping up every day, Bezos said there will be thousands of successes and thousands of failures in the e-commerce game. "The biggest myth about the Internet is that there will only be a few winners," he said. "The Internet is not a vertical industry, it is a horizontal-enabling layer. "I firmly believe that this is the Kittyhawk era of e-commerce. Charles Lindbergh hasn't even been born yet," Bezos said. "I think for the industry as a whole, it is still day one." Electrical computer engineering graduate student Mike Wakin said he thinks Bezos seemed very likable. "I think he seems like a very down-to-earth person," Wakin said. "I think that there's a lot of bitterness out there about the company because it's not profitable, and one of his most important jobs right now is to put the company in a positive light, and he's got a great personality with which to do that." Hanszen College junior Evie Zambetakis said she felt students could relate to him easily. "I thought he was very personable, and I liked the way he brought up all the anecdotes about the beginning," Zambetakis said. " I think he definitely has the right attitude for starting a company like this. He looks at it in a realistic manner, much like the way college students would look at it." Bezos' speech was also telecast to a room in Herring Hall. President Malcolm Gillis introduced Bezos, whose talk was sponsored jointly by the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management and the George R. Brown School of Engineering.
- back - |
|||
|
Search the Thresher pages:
This document may be distributed electronically, provided that it is distributed in its entirety and includes this notice. However, it cannot be reprinted without the express written permission of: The Rice Thresher, Rice University MS-524, PO Box 1892, Houston, TX 77251-1892, USA. The Thresher Online Project -- ethresh@listserv.rice.edu |
