Amazon
also referred to as: amazons
includes Amazon Web Services
44 statements across 31 episodes · 9 bullish · 15 bearish · 7 people on the record · first statement Jul 31, 2023 by Sam Lessin · across every show →
Everything said about Amazon, oldest first
Jul 31, 2023 negative
Sam Lessin: Amazon Takes a 70% Cut on Kindle E-Books Over $10
“They make it impossible to charge anything between, like,
10 and 30 dollars for a book.
It's hilarious because the way it's set up is you can set it up so you get like 70% of the money up to 10 dollars, but then after that you have to get 30% of the money.
So …”
Aug 4, 2023 bearish
Sam Lessin: Commerce curation will shift from platforms to trusted creators
“So it's like in the end of the day, whether it can't be Amazon because it's too diverse and heterogeneous, right? Like it's not going to be the Apple app store, even if they want to rep privacy or something, right? Like, it's going to be individual people in a…”
Aug 4, 2023 bearish
Sam Lessin: Consumers will pay brand premiums as marketplace trust collapses
“I think we went through an era where the internet was like, ah, marketplaces, buy anything from anywhere, Amazon kind of lightly reps that this is like, okay, because you're buying it, and like, you're like, fuck, I don't care, it's some knockoff, it's fine. N…”
Aug 4, 2023 neutral
Aug 18, 2023 bearish
Sep 22, 2023 neutral
Jessica Lessin: Former Flexport CEO Dave Clark Will Return to Big Tech
“Well, I, it's interesting because like Dave Clark, the who ran Amazon e-commerce left to go to Flexport and is now on the market. It's a big question where he's going to end up, but I think he's going to end up at like, One of the exact same companies.”
Sep 22, 2023 bullish
Sep 22, 2023
Jessica Lessin: Amazon Poached Microsoft's Chief Product Officer for Hardware
“Yeah, well, we know where Sam thinks, but also for those who like such intrigue, Amazon poached Microsoft's chief product officer as their new head of hardware, so I think that's always funny to me, these big companies poaching from each other.”
Sep 29, 2023 positive
Sep 29, 2023 negative
Morin: Amazon antitrust lawsuit is the most textbook big tech case
“Of all of the antitrust cases to me, this is the one that is the most textbook, right? Like here you've got Amazon, I think in the most basic way you know, interfering with the market you know, releasing products to undercut the price of other products in thei…”
Oct 27, 2023 neutral
Nov 22, 2023 bullish
Dec 8, 2023 bearish
Jessica Lessin: Amazon disrupted Google search by capturing commerce queries
“I mean, the thing that's disrupted the Google search box and the experience has really been Amazon because people stop searching or they search less for commerce queries on Google because they search on Amazon, right? And that hits Amazon, that hits Google's c…”
Feb 2, 2024 neutral
Apr 5, 2024 negative
Jun 21, 2024 neutral
Gil: Foundation model funding is mostly strategic hyperscalers, not VC
“Most of the money funding foundation models is strategic, right? Versus venture capital. Venture capital maybe funds things into the hundreds of millions, and then it gets handed off to Google and Amazon and Facebook and all the other folks to invest billions …”
Jun 28, 2024 positive
Sam Lessin: Simple API authentication drove OpenAI's massive developer adoption
“What they got right was basic auth. Huge business. It's like hilarious because like this goes back to the whole thing. It's like this. I think sometimes big companies get this really wrong and like open AI actually to your point about Stripe kind of gets it be…”
Jul 26, 2024 negative
Aug 9, 2024 neutral
Sep 20, 2024 positive
Oct 11, 2024 neutral
Dave Morin: Magnificent Seven Acquisitions Are Now Scale-Equivalent to IPOs
“This is actually kind of my point, is that Magnificent Seven are now Actually kind of an IPO. Like the scale of the liquidity in these seven companies is so large that selling to one of these companies is as, you know, the scale of it is almost the same as, I …”
Oct 18, 2024 neutral
Lessin: Amazon grows because reordering cheap items beats searching the house
“Yeah, I think this is actually one of the deep secrets to Amazon, is like, for low-cost items, I had this problem with a screwdriver the other day, it's so fast, That it's like just easier to order another screwdriver than to find the screwdriver you already o…”
Oct 18, 2024 bullish
Dec 6, 2024 negative
Levie: FTC scrutiny is hyper-targeted at just four or five Big Tech firms
“I think if you look at the actual track record it, you know, this is probably, you know, unfortunately, a negative on, on the FTC environment, but it does seem hyper targeted at four or five companies. You know, Splunk was acquired for thirty billion dollars b…”
Dec 6, 2024 positive
Levie: Restricting tech M&A halts the full cycle of innovation
“I probably favor more allowance for M&A to happen. I think there's been some kind of, you know, dubious cases around, you know, why can't iRobot get, get bought by Amazon? Why can't Facebook buy Meta, buy, buy the Giphy or whatever, the 50 person VR company? L…”
Dec 6, 2024 bearish
Levie: Google is the most threatened Big Tech company by AI
“Google is, is in, you know, singularly the trickiest spot, I think of the big tech players. Cause you know, this is not particularly disruptive to Meta. It's basically all upside. It's all kind of like an adjacent side business to AWS and Amazon. It's all net …”
Dec 20, 2024 neutral
Jan 10, 2025 neutral
Lessin: Meta, Amazon, Apple, and Musk are aligning with Trump
“Clearly Meta and Amazon and Apple, to a lesser degree, Google, Definitely Empire Elon are all quite in alignment with Trump, right? And I think, like, have decided to really, like, lean in in every way to this administration from, like, you know, the money the…”
Mar 21, 2025 bearish
Apr 4, 2025
Jun 6, 2025 negative
Jun 13, 2025 positive
Jun 13, 2025 bearish
Aug 8, 2025 neutral
Aug 8, 2025 neutral
Oct 10, 2025 neutral
Oct 24, 2025 neutral
Lessin: Markets ignore one-time outages, caring only about systemic risks
“The whole thing about one-time hits, they don't really matter. Like anyone, it's like, I think this is the same thing with like, these outages, a lot of things is like, systemic things people care about. One-time hits, it doesn't, whether you're spending a hun…”
Oct 24, 2025 negative
Lessin: Custom AI Chips Do Not Need to Match NVIDIA's Performance
“They make a mistake thinking that a TPU or a Tranium or from Amazon or something a company develops itself has to be as good as NVIDIA. It doesn't because NVIDIA's margin is so big. It can actually be a fraction of as good as NVIDIA and still cost effective.”
Nov 7, 2025 neutral
Dec 19, 2025 neutral
Dec 19, 2025 neutral
Dec 19, 2025 bullish
Brit Morin: Users will adopt a unified cross-platform AI agent in 2026
“And similarly, I think each of us is going to have like one primary agent That's not just like your open chat GPT. It's connected into more than one platform. So into like Amazon and GPT and your health data and something that is your primary agent. That start…”
May 8, 2026 neutral
Aug 14, 2026 bearish
Wolfe: AI infrastructure debt has a dangerous duration mismatch
“And then you have like duration mismatch between like the hard assets and the financing. So like the chip, depending if you look at meta or Amazon debate, whether it's a three year or five year depreciation, but it's, you know, called three, the debt, Amortize…”