The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 51 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Rosenthal: AWS was built to scale, not to monetize excess seasonal capacity
“The excess capacity story is a myth. It was never a matter of selling excess capacity. Actually, within two months after launch, AWS would have already burned through the excess amazon.com capacity. Amazon Web Services was always considered a business by itsel…”
Rosenthal: Amazon's engineering team in Cape Town built the original EC2
“That becomes EC two. It's that team in South Africa that builds EC two.”
Gilbert: Amazon will inevitably surpass Walmart in total global revenue
“If you look at the gap that Amazon closed in total revenue since the time they were founded to Walmart, they're going to catch them.
No doubt about it.”
Gilbert: Massive AWS data center investments drove Amazon free cash flow negative
“They just invested so much in building out new data centers for AWS, they actually took Amazon cash flow negative. Their free cash flow is massively negative over the last 12 months because of these continued, unbelievably large investments.”
Gilbert: Migrating to Linux and HP servers saved Amazon from bankruptcy
“I mean, in 2000, they almost went out of business because they were so tight on cash and they were spending so much on infrastructure that this sort of moved to the open source ecosystem and doing a massive rewrite of all of Amazon.com to run on Linux and run …”
Amazon followed John Malone's playbook of maximizing cash while minimizing profit
“When you sort of look at their tax strategy, the fact that they're generating all this free cash flow, but somehow never reporting a gap profit, and they're never paying corporate income tax because they have no corporate income, and yet somehow they're a tril…”
Rosenthal: Amazon will soon pass Walmart in total revenue
“The only larger one being Walmart, which Amazon will almost assuredly pass very soon.”
Dimon met with Jeff Bezos about becoming Amazon president
“I went to visit Jeff Bezos, who was looking for a president at the time. He and I hit it off. We've been friends ever since. He's an exceptional human being.”
Jeff Dean built Google's first ad test using Amazon affiliate links
“Jeff Dean codes it up so that dynamically, as users are searching, if there's a query that is related at all to Any book in the Amazon library catalog, Google will dynamically generate a text ad saying, go buy this book at Amazon, insert an Amazon affiliate li…”
A 2001 coffee with Jim Sinegal inspired Amazon's core low-price philosophy
“Jeff has this coffee with Jim, and Jim explains this philosophy to Jeff. Jeff comes back to Amazon HQ the next day and is like, I'm reversing the policy, and says exactly what you just said. There are two types of companies in this world. Companies that work h…”
John Doerr won deals personally before delegating board seats to junior partners
“He aggressively came in to try and court the deal, win the deal, and then he would try and pass off the board seat to a junior partner. And Jeff, of course, didn't let that happen, but many entrepreneurs did.”
Rosenthal: AWS has over $100 billion in contracted revenue backlog
“That backlog of committed contractual signed revenue is over one hundred billion dollars.”
Rosenthal: As of 2022, AWS was on an $80B annualized revenue run rate
“AWS today is on an. Eighty billion dollar revenue run rate eight zero.”
eBay executives pitched Bezos on outsourcing Amazon's marketplace to eBay
“In the fall of 2000, Meg Whitman and Jeff Jordan fly up to Seattle and they pitch Bezos on the opposite idea. EBay takes over the failed Amazon auctions and all of third party sellings.”
Gilbert: Amazon quickly became Oracle's largest database instance ever by traffic
“One thing they did do right in the infrastructure though, because by the way, very quickly they became Oracle's largest ever instance by traffic. The Oracle people were like, oh my god, we can't help you. No one else is seeing this many reads or writes per sec…”
First CFO Joy Covey co-architected Amazon's profit-reinvestment growth strategy
“And of course, as we talk about Amazon, really the playbook of how they got big, we'll talk a lot about Them reinvesting every single dollar of profit they had to plow it back in to grow the business. That is, of course, attributable to Jeff, but is in large p…”
Rosenthal: Amazon bought Accept.com primarily to block eBay from payments
“Amazon steals the deal and acquires accept.com mostly so that eBay doesn't get it.”
Rosenthal: Audible holds 40%+ share of the growing $5B audiobook industry
“Right after the Kindle launch, they buy Audible. Amazon buys Audible for three hundred million dollars. Today, Audible has a 40 plus percent market share of audiobooks, which is a five billion dollar industry growing 25%.”
Gilbert: 57% of Amazon sales come from third-party sellers
“57% of Amazon sales right now are from third-party sellers, where Amazon's just collecting margin dollars and holding no inventory.”
Gilbert: Amazon Maintained Gross Margin Profitability and Solid Unit Economics
“Amazon always was gross margin profitable. They always had solid unit economics, but they would choose to super aggressively reinvest in something”
Rosenthal: Amazon reached 50 states and 45 countries within four weeks
“So we're just four weeks after launch here. They have sold books to people in all 50 states in the country and 45 countries around the world there. By the end of those two weeks, they are doing 20,000 in sales a week on books.”
CFOs Joy Covey and Warren Jenson saved Amazon with $2B debt raise
“Joy first. And then Warren too, they orchestrate raising about two billion dollars in convertible debt on the debt markets, which totally saves Amazon skin.”
Gilbert: Amazon makes over $20B per year from Prime subscriptions
“I think they do make over twenty billion dollars in revenue per year on just Prime subscriptions.”
Rosenthal: Walmart's 1998 Amazon trade-secret lawsuit settled with no damages
“In late 1998, Walmart sues Amazon for trying to steal trade secrets. The case settles with no damages, but there was damage. It happened. That DNA came right out of Walmart and right into Amazon.”
Amazon and JPMorgan Chase control three of five payment network parties
“JPMorgan Chase is the merchant bank and JPMorgan Chase is one of the largest issuing banks for cards in the world, and so the Amazon Chase credit card that I have and I do all my shopping on Amazon with and all my shopping at Whole Foods with is able to give m…”
Costco is the third-largest retailer in the US behind Amazon and Walmart
“And you're the third biggest player in the largest market, you know, America, behind Amazon and Walmart.”
Rosenthal: Only eight people attended Amazon's 2002 AWS launch conference
“They hold a conference for developers in 2002. A total of eight people attend the conference. They announced to the world the launch of this new division within Amazon. That is called Amazon Web Services.”
Rosenthal: Andy Jassy's 2003 AWS vision document requested hiring 57 people
“In the document, there is an ask, a proposal to hire 57 new people to go pursue this initiative.”
Gilbert: Early Amazon enforced a two-month holiday code freeze
“So much so that for the first, at least five years of the business, there was a rule in November and December that you could not commit new code to production.”
Gilbert: AWS operating profit exceeds Amazon retail despite being 15% of revenue
“AWS's revenue is only about 15% the size of Amazon's massive retail business, but their profits, or the operating income, to be specific, from AWS Are in total the same, if not more than their e-commerce store. I think it's the case that every year since 2015,…”
Gilbert: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google hold 40%, 22%, and 10% cloud share
“Amazon's got 35, maybe 40%. Microsoft's got 20 to 22%. Google's somewhere around 10%.”
Rosenthal: Amazon ran Target's website and announced deal on 9/11
“So they do it with Target. They literally ran Target's website for years, which ominously, they announced that deal on September 11th, 2001.”
Rosenthal: Only two major distributors held US physical book inventory
“Two, there are only two major actual distributors of physical books in America. There are many publishers, but distributors who actually, like, have the inventory, the books. Ingram and Baker and Taylor.”
Gilbert: Amazon employs 1.6 million people, mostly in logistics
“I mean, the company employs 1.6 million people, most of which do this.”
Amazon reached $1.1B revenue and $5M GAAP net income in Q4 2001
“In Q four of 2001, they do 1.1 billion of revenue, fifty nine million of operating income, thirty five million of pro forma Adjusted net income, excluding stock-based comp and other, you know, non-cash expenses, which Wall Street's like, yeah, yeah, blah, blah…”
Gilbert: Amazon grew revenue 15x year-over-year before going public
“They had this product market fit, an unbelievable 15 X year-over-year growth in revenue dollars, not like usage, revenue, and customer retention was increasing.”
Rosenthal: Amazon's advertising business is at a $30B to $40B run rate
“At a certain point, they're gonna have to break out advertising, you know, it's 30, forty billion dollar run rate. Business at this point.”
Gilbert: Barnes & Noble and Borders held under 12% market share each
“Also worth noting, Barnes and Noble and Borders each only had less than 12% of the retail market each. So it's not like there was somebody who already had 80% market share that you had to go fight.”
Rosenthal: 1992 Supreme Court ruling exempted out-of-state retailers from sales tax
“In 1992, the Supreme Court has ruled on a decision that retail companies do not have to collect sales tax in states where they don't have physical presence, like operations.”
Rosenthal: Amazon grew revenue from $500K in 1995 to $15.7M in 1996
“Remember they did half a million in revenue for the half year of 1995 that they were live. They do 15.7 million in revenue in 1996.”
Rosenthal: Bezos Set Goal for Amazon Profitability by Q4 2001
“So he announces internal company goal that he announces to the whole company, part of the get our house in order mantra that they will be profitable by the fourth quarter of 2001.”
Rosenthal: Amazon 10xed revenue in 1997 to nearly $150M
“For the full year of 1997, they do just a hair under a 150 million dollars in revenue. So that's 10 X the year before.”
Rosenthal: Amazon capitalized initially with $200k from Bezos, Kaphan, and parents
“Jeff and Mackenzie had done great at D Shaw. So they put in 95,000 dollars to start. Shell himself puts in 5000 dollars. This takes me back to the Walmart episode and gosh, so smart of like having your employees Actually invest dollars in the business. Jeff's …”
Harry Potter's universal appeal broke early Amazon recommendation algorithms
“Harry Potter, by the way, broke a lot of Amazon's algorithms. I was listening to a couple interviews with early engineers who were saying like the, you may also like, or people who like this also like, basically everyone liked Harry Potter. And so they would h…”
Gilbert: Amazon held over $2B in balance-sheet debt around 2000
“I mean, at this point, they've got over two billion of debt on the balance sheet. I think it actually increased from 2000 to 2001 and 2001 to 2002.”
Bezos took nearly a year and 60 meetings to raise Amazon's first $1M
“Jeff ended up taking the better part of a year to raise one measly million dollars over 60 meetings ultimately from 22 different investors to sell 20% of the company in order to raise that first million.”