I have a hunch a lot of founders actually have a Bezos-like story, then make up some apocryphal story that fits the narrative everyone expects to hear
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Lambda School is kind of that way. Of course I have endless stories about incredibly smart friends with crappy jobs, but honestly it was seeing a very broken but huge market I thought we could wedge our way into and win that made me take the leap.
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If a market is big enough you’ll be surrounded by its broken-ness. You don’t have to have huge personal medical bills to know how broken the healthcare industry is and to want to fix some small piece of it.
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How madly are you studying Amazon? I'm seeing a pattern of insights you share from Amazon story.
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I read everything I can get my hands on
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What are your favorite sources.
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@zackkanter and@BenedictEvans have written some good stuff https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/14/why-amazon-is-eating-the-world/ … https://a16z.com/2014/09/05/why-amazon-has-no-profits-and-why-it-works/ … then “the everything store” -
Would love to hear if either of them had other recommendations. Oh also all the shareholder lettershttps://medium.com/@austenallred/every-amazon-shareholder-letter-as-downloadable-pdf-4eb2ae886018 …
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There isn’t much that’s directly about Amazon. A good place to start is the shareholder letters and
@AustenAllred’s links above. Past that, it’s more about abstract theory: - The Outsiders by Thorndike - Origin of Wealth by@EricBeinhocker - The Goal by Goldratt -
Thanks Austen and Zack, will check those out. Going to start with the shareholder letters.
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They're sooooo good. I recommend rereading the first one every year, it's mad inspiring.
@stratechery's stuff on Amazon is also pretty good, and if you read it in chronological order you get to see Ben make a wrong call and correct it, which is neat - 2 more replies
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This is not unusual for new platform plays. New platforms like PCs, the Internet, mobile. It’s basically “gold rush” mentality - everyone is going to have one of these, and I’ll sell them X for it.
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cougheverythingblockchaincough
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Problem is finding something the blockchain lets you do better
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It can do solutionism so well
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Also criticism. Really good for that too.

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#slapsroofofbuzzword this baby can fit so much drama in it
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Only 10% of the problems I have could inspire a product, and only 1% of those products could germinate a great long run business. A lot of investors seem to evaluate co’s using a bizarre set of old wive’s tales.
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When / where can we learn more about the co you’re starting?
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I’m probably never going to associate this account with the company publicly.
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This statement is the future - so interesting
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