[PaulDavisThe1st]

> There were hundreds of well-funded efforts to build online retailers before Amazon happened

Maybe hundreds. Maybe not. We (the initial amzn team of bezos, myself and shel kaphan) were certainly not looking at any others that I recall besides bookstacks who had a telnet-based online bookstore.

I think people overlook the role of luck here. Bezos was simultaneously very smart but also incredibly lucky to be "the guy who was doing books on the web". It really was the ideal product for the first large scale online retail, and Bezos brought a lot of imagination and energy to the effort. But if it had not have been him, it would have been someone else, who likely would have been more or less as successful.

Personally, I think that Bezos' relentless focus on customer service was the biggest factor in amzn's early success, combined with his near-insane quality standards for the people he was willing to hire.

[kragen]

What was the "lucky" part? The article claims that Bezos learned that web usage was growing 2300% a year (public knowledge), decided to sell stuff on the web, made a list of 20 potential products, and decided that books were the one where an online store could best compete. Is that wrong? It makes it sound like the particular way Bezos was lucky was by happening to be smart, smarter than the rest of us who were paying attention to what was going on. But it sounds like you're saying there was some other form of luck involved. What was it?

[PaulDavisThe1st]

What I mean by luck is that I don't think that Bezos (or the rest of us) had any special qualifications or experiences that meant that we were the only ones who could have made amzn work. He was lucky in that his situation at D.E. Shaw allowed him to do the market research that led him to the book store concept (notably after Shaw rejected it). He wasn't smarter than the rest of us. Had Shaw not asked him to research possible online opportunities, he may never have come up with the concept at all. And it wasn't Shaw either, given that he turned down most of the ideas Bezos presented, most of which went on to become pretty huge.

[kragen]

I see! So the luck was in happening to be paying attention to the right things, and happening to bet on them even though other equally smart people (like David Shaw) decided not to, given the same information? Thank you for explaining.

[immibis]

"Luck is when preparation meets opportunity." You need both, and a good dice roll as well.