We don’t really know how impressive it is, a lot of founders made it huge in that golden time period even for terrible ideas that died shortly after, and network effects always crown one or two as massively disproportionate winners in each area.
If you acknowledge that timing, connections, background and network effects dominate the equation (if Bezos was 2 years late, is there any doubt there’d be a “different” one?), you realize there’s something gross about how wealth is distributed.
There’s definitely doubt about another Amazon appearing!
Sure we might get a dominating e-store that sells goods, that’s easy to imagine. But that same company also creating the largest cloud provider, being the largest distributor, going international, creating the kindle, now property acquisition, and so on. Yeah I do doubt there’d be another Amazon.
AWS wasn't Bezos, it was a whole squad of Amazon execs and employees and an idea that formed over a long time period through many people, if anything it proves the opposite point that he deserves outsize rewards. The rest of the success makes a ton of sense in context (Kindle and distribution from becoming the network-effect winning e-commerce store/bookstore).
If you acknowledge that timing, connections, background and network effects dominate the equation (if Bezos was 2 years late, is there any doubt there’d be a “different” one?), you realize there’s something gross about how wealth is distributed.
reply