<story><title>Jeff Bezos convinced 22 investors to back his new company Amazon in 1994 (2018)</title><url>https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2143375/1994-he-convinced-22-family-and-friends-each-pay</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>PaulDavisThe1st</author><text>Robert Spector documented a lot of the earliest stuff in 
his book &amp;quot;Get Big Fast&amp;quot; (he even managed to speak to quite a few of the actual people involved).&lt;p&gt;One of the problems with properly documenting the first year or so is that the people involved mostly don&amp;#x27;t want to talk about it, or want to turn it into the stuff of legend.&lt;p&gt;The one person who was there for the full first 5 years besides Jeff (and Mackenzie, to whatever extent she was deeply involved, which I never sensed was a lot, but I may be wrong about that) doesn&amp;#x27;t like talking about Amazon publicly (though he did a little for a recent PBS documentary). Lots of other people came and went during that time (including me), and we&amp;#x27;re all a bit like the blind folk feeling out the elephant: we know part of the story, but not the full picture.&lt;p&gt;Jeff himself doesn&amp;#x27;t seem very interested in talking about the early period, or if he does, it seems important to him that the story describes a trajectory that obviously connects with what was to come (which is not entirely unfair).&lt;p&gt;The people who stayed for the long haul generally don&amp;#x27;t want to talk, it seems; the people who left mostly have not-so-positive stories to tell at this point (partly because of the behemoth that the company has become).&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think that Amazon&amp;#x27;s complete failure to take the high road in creating the model of retail in the 21st century is the more important story than details from the early days. The appalling treatment of employees, the conflicts between operating a marketplace and being a seller within that marketplace, and the general emphasis on our lives as consumers instead of the more important roles of citizen and employee .... this is what&amp;#x27;s really important about the Amazon story in my opinion.&lt;p&gt;Oh wait, it&amp;#x27;s HN. You want to hear about how I pushed and pulled C++ objects to and from Oracle in 1994, and how integrated that into NSAPI, amirite? :)</text></item><item><author>simonebrunozzi</author><text>Seconded. Please. Share as much as you can.</text></item><item><author>WalterBright</author><text>&amp;gt; I was the 2nd employee at the company&lt;p&gt;I encourage you to write down everything you remember of your experience there. You don&amp;#x27;t have to publish it, but future historians will surely find it very interesting.&lt;p&gt;People are always eager for anecdotes about the early days of Apple and Microsoft, but surprisingly there&amp;#x27;s very little about Amazon.</text></item><item><author>PaulDavisThe1st</author><text>I persuaded my (then) in-laws not to invest in Amazon at this stage (I was the 2nd employee at the company). They would have certainly put in $50k or so. Fortunately, they are lovely Quaker people and as far as I know have never held a grudge against me because of this (incorrect) advice.&lt;p&gt;There are some inaccuracies in this article, too. Most of the investment window described here actually took place in 1995 - Jeff had enough cash to see things through the end of 1994. He and Mackenzie did not live in a 1 bedroom apartment that they &amp;quot;rented when they moved to the city&amp;quot; - they rented a house in Bellevue and the already-converted garage was the first Amazon office. They may well have moved to 1 room apartment later, as it became clear that the company would definitely be in Seattle itself.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>simonebrunozzi</author><text>&amp;gt; Oh wait, it&amp;#x27;s HN. You want to hear about how I pushed and pulled C++ objects to and from Oracle in 1994, and how integrated that into NSAPI, amirite? :)&lt;p&gt;No. In fact, everything you shared is really interesting.&lt;p&gt;By the way, I was at AWS from 2008 to 2014, I started when the team was about 150 people or so. It&amp;#x27;s now in the ballpark of 50k I think, or even north of that.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s interesting how the &amp;quot;beginnings&amp;quot; of a business that eventually gets big are always &amp;quot;adapted&amp;quot; to current times.</text></comment>
<story><title>Jeff Bezos convinced 22 investors to back his new company Amazon in 1994 (2018)</title><url>https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2143375/1994-he-convinced-22-family-and-friends-each-pay</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>PaulDavisThe1st</author><text>Robert Spector documented a lot of the earliest stuff in 
his book &amp;quot;Get Big Fast&amp;quot; (he even managed to speak to quite a few of the actual people involved).&lt;p&gt;One of the problems with properly documenting the first year or so is that the people involved mostly don&amp;#x27;t want to talk about it, or want to turn it into the stuff of legend.&lt;p&gt;The one person who was there for the full first 5 years besides Jeff (and Mackenzie, to whatever extent she was deeply involved, which I never sensed was a lot, but I may be wrong about that) doesn&amp;#x27;t like talking about Amazon publicly (though he did a little for a recent PBS documentary). Lots of other people came and went during that time (including me), and we&amp;#x27;re all a bit like the blind folk feeling out the elephant: we know part of the story, but not the full picture.&lt;p&gt;Jeff himself doesn&amp;#x27;t seem very interested in talking about the early period, or if he does, it seems important to him that the story describes a trajectory that obviously connects with what was to come (which is not entirely unfair).&lt;p&gt;The people who stayed for the long haul generally don&amp;#x27;t want to talk, it seems; the people who left mostly have not-so-positive stories to tell at this point (partly because of the behemoth that the company has become).&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think that Amazon&amp;#x27;s complete failure to take the high road in creating the model of retail in the 21st century is the more important story than details from the early days. The appalling treatment of employees, the conflicts between operating a marketplace and being a seller within that marketplace, and the general emphasis on our lives as consumers instead of the more important roles of citizen and employee .... this is what&amp;#x27;s really important about the Amazon story in my opinion.&lt;p&gt;Oh wait, it&amp;#x27;s HN. You want to hear about how I pushed and pulled C++ objects to and from Oracle in 1994, and how integrated that into NSAPI, amirite? :)</text></item><item><author>simonebrunozzi</author><text>Seconded. Please. Share as much as you can.</text></item><item><author>WalterBright</author><text>&amp;gt; I was the 2nd employee at the company&lt;p&gt;I encourage you to write down everything you remember of your experience there. You don&amp;#x27;t have to publish it, but future historians will surely find it very interesting.&lt;p&gt;People are always eager for anecdotes about the early days of Apple and Microsoft, but surprisingly there&amp;#x27;s very little about Amazon.</text></item><item><author>PaulDavisThe1st</author><text>I persuaded my (then) in-laws not to invest in Amazon at this stage (I was the 2nd employee at the company). They would have certainly put in $50k or so. Fortunately, they are lovely Quaker people and as far as I know have never held a grudge against me because of this (incorrect) advice.&lt;p&gt;There are some inaccuracies in this article, too. Most of the investment window described here actually took place in 1995 - Jeff had enough cash to see things through the end of 1994. He and Mackenzie did not live in a 1 bedroom apartment that they &amp;quot;rented when they moved to the city&amp;quot; - they rented a house in Bellevue and the already-converted garage was the first Amazon office. They may well have moved to 1 room apartment later, as it became clear that the company would definitely be in Seattle itself.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>henvic</author><text>Would you have any advice to share for someone working on building an online store &amp;#x2F; e-commerce system for small businesses (not a marketplace, one a store could conceivable pay as a SaaS solution or deploy themselves with no strings attached - not even through licensing)?</text></comment>