0:00

M. This

0:02

is Mesters in Business with Very

0:04

Renaults on Bloomberg Radio.

0:07

Here this

0:09

week on the podcast, I have a special

0:11

guest. Brad Stone is the

0:14

editor at Bloomberg News who covers technology

0:17

and the author of a number of books. The

0:19

one that just came out, Amazon Unbound,

0:22

Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire

0:25

really quite fascinating. I had

0:27

previously read his um

0:30

his first book on Amazon, The Everything Store,

0:33

and when that had come out, I think it was Amazon

0:37

was still a

0:39

successful company, but not

0:42

the dominant juggernaut it's

0:44

become. And this book

0:47

really is, you know, the sequel

0:49

to that that talks about how

0:52

from the low point in when

0:56

Amazon actually had a pretty

0:58

substantial negative year in the stock

1:00

market down over all

1:04

of these new drivers of revenue

1:06

and growth, we're just teeing

1:09

up. And what ends up

1:11

happening is the

1:13

company just starts to hit on

1:15

all cylinders. And that's before

1:18

the pandemic, and then the pandemic

1:20

essentially doubles so many different

1:22

sectors within Amazon. They

1:24

were a company that was made for

1:27

a work from home lockdown situation,

1:30

UH, perfectly positioned and took

1:32

full advantage of it. Over

1:34

the course of those years, Amazon became

1:37

the second largest employer in

1:39

the country behind Walmart. Bezos

1:42

became the wealthiest man in the world. And Amazon

1:45

just dominates so many

1:47

areas of our everyday lives, from

1:50

uh supermarkets and

1:52

and delivery of just about everything

1:54

to Amazon web servers

1:56

too. You you just go

1:59

through everything they do, Amazon Prime, in Amazon

2:01

Video, and it's it's just endless.

2:03

They have changed the fabric

2:06

of our society and our economy,

2:08

and Stone does a fantastic job

2:11

telling the story of how that happened. I really

2:13

enjoyed the book, and I think you'll really

2:15

enjoy our conversation. So, with

2:18

no further ado, my interview

2:21

with Amazon Unbound author

2:23

Brad Stone. This

2:27

is Mesters in Business with Very

2:29

Results on Bloomberg Radio.

2:34

My special guest this week is Brad Stone.

2:37

He is the senior executive

2:39

editor for Technology at Bloomberg

2:41

News. Previously, he

2:43

was the Business Week writer covering

2:46

tech in Silicon Valley,

2:48

and before that he was the tech correspondent

2:51

for The New York Times and Newsweek.

2:53

He is the author of four books,

2:55

including The Everything Store, Jeff

2:58

Bezos, and The Age of Amazon From.

3:01

His most recent book is Amazon Unbound.

3:04

Jeff Bezos and the invention of

3:07

a global empire. Normally,

3:09

at this point I would say, brad Stone,

3:12

welcome to Bloomberg. But since you worked

3:14

for Bloomberg, let me just

3:16

say welcome to Masters in

3:18

Business. Thank you very great

3:20

to be here. So I have to start

3:23

off with the simple question,

3:25

and I know you define this in the

3:28

earlier book, Bezos

3:31

or Bezos? How do you pronounce his name?

3:34

It is Bezos, yes,

3:36

and I have encountered uh and I'm

3:38

sure he has as well, numerous

3:41

alternative pronunciations, but indeed

3:43

it is Bezos. Interesting.

3:45

So so let's start out a little

3:47

bit with your background. I mentioned

3:50

you're the senior executive editor

3:53

at Bloomberg News. You were a writer at Business

3:55

Week for ten years, and

3:57

before that the New York Times and

4:00

and Newsweek. How did you

4:02

start covering technology? What led

4:04

you into that space? Yeah,

4:06

well, Verry, I was way back before

4:09

the New York Times. I was had a once

4:11

proud magazine known as Newsweek,

4:13

and um, I was a

4:16

junior reporter kind of just looking

4:18

for an avenue, um, something

4:20

that I could you know, write about, where

4:23

my my articles would appear and what was a very

4:25

competitive magazine at the time.

4:28

For for journalists. And

4:30

this was the nineties and the Internet was becoming

4:32

more popular. And I had, you know, used

4:35

the Internet and become familiar with it

4:37

while I was in a college and

4:40

I just started writing about it. And then they moved me out

4:42

to Silicon Valley in good

4:45

timing, just just in time for the crash.

4:47

So I read, I read a

4:49

bunch of your New York time pieces.

4:52

Um, but they were YouTube

4:55

and iPads and Google

4:57

Search. How did you ultimately

5:00

you happened on to Amazon as

5:02

a subject matter. I

5:04

was covering Amazon at the time.

5:07

Um, it was it was

5:09

a little bit overlooked. If we go back

5:11

to two thousand and six, two seven, you

5:13

know, the eBay market cap was larger

5:15

than Amazon's at the time. It's really remarkable

5:18

to remember that the Amazon was stopped

5:20

as maybe haven't picked the wrong business

5:22

model for the Internet age. You know, Google

5:25

was a much more high profile and

5:27

interesting company, it seemed like. And

5:29

yeah, I remember doing a couple of stories about

5:32

the introduction of prime and fulfillment

5:34

by Amazon and and

5:36

and Amazon Web Services. And

5:39

I mean I basically I was I would talk

5:41

to Bezos. Um. When when Amazon

5:43

got into the fight with the book publishers

5:45

around kindle pricing. He was.

5:48

He was on the phone quite a bit arguing

5:50

Amazon's case, and I was always fascinated

5:52

by the company. I was fascinated by Bezos.

5:55

And then when I went over to Business Week and wrote a

5:57

couple of stories about Amazon there it

5:59

was it was really just sort of opportunistic

6:02

writing my first book. I felt like nobody had

6:04

really done the great Amazon story,

6:06

and books had been devoted to the other big

6:08

tech companies. Of course, I had no idea

6:11

what kind of juggernaut it was still to become,

6:14

but it seemed to me that it had been a little bit overlooked.

6:16

And that book really I read

6:18

it on vacation. I think in like it

6:22

was a good read, and you had

6:25

fairly decent access to

6:28

Bezos prior to

6:30

that. How cooperative was he for the

6:34

book Everything Store Right. I

6:36

can't quite remember the timeline, but I went in there

6:38

to meet with him to pitch the book, and

6:41

he was very receptive. You know, Amazon

6:43

has this weird cultural ritual

6:47

where they start every meeting with a dot with by

6:49

reading a document. So I brought him

6:51

a document to read and spiking

6:53

the book and yeah, and he read it in sort of

6:56

silence, and then he said, you know, it's too

6:58

early to write the Amazon book. I

7:00

did talk to him a couple of times on news things

7:03

while I was reporting on it, and he allowed me to

7:05

talk to his parents and friends and employees,

7:07

but he was pretty distant. It was limited

7:10

access for the first book. Uh that

7:12

that's really kind of interesting. So

7:14

tell us a little bit about your research and writing

7:17

process. The new book, Amazon on

7:19

Bound is very much

7:22

told chronologically. How

7:25

do you go about putting together this

7:27

monstrous

7:30

right? Well, let me continue the story.

7:32

So after after the last book, the Everything

7:34

Store comes out in twos and thirteen, and Bezos

7:37

does not like it very I don't know if you recall

7:39

this, but he had his wife at the time,

7:42

Mackenzie Um and some employees

7:44

like including Andy Jafsey, the

7:46

new CEO. They all wrote one star

7:48

reviews, and I thought,

7:50

I thought Amazon was wasn't aren't

7:52

they against people buying reviews

7:55

that that violates their policies? I

7:57

guess it was on the arm, So right

8:00

they been, and they bought it and read it, I guess.

8:02

Um. So anyway, there was a chill, and

8:05

and a couple of years went by, and

8:08

and then I and then at some point I realized

8:10

that, you know, the books took off and had

8:13

come to be seen as kind of the definitive history

8:15

of early Amazon. But I realized

8:17

that so much had happened Alexa and the

8:20

global marketplace and Bezos becoming

8:22

the wealthiest person in the world, that there were simply

8:24

more story to tell. And so I went

8:26

back to Amazon, probably a

8:29

little cheekily and just told them that

8:31

I was going to do it. And this time there was

8:33

no meeting with Bezos, but they

8:35

did allow they did allow me to talk to more

8:38

more than a dozen senior executives,

8:41

members of the Senior Leadership team, the FES

8:43

team. Yeah, and and they basis a lot

8:45

of going to talk to friends, and so

8:48

the access wasn't all that different. But the foundation

8:50

of the book of both books really were

8:52

the employees who had been

8:54

there, had participated

8:56

in key projects, and then who had left

8:59

or were there. But we're willing to sort of talk carefully

9:02

because obviously Amazon and most

9:04

companies these days they try to lock up

9:06

former employees or current employees and nondisclosure

9:09

agreements. I'd like to say that Amazon

9:11

has a lot of surface area, right more

9:13

so than a lot of other companies. It does

9:16

so many things, and there's actually

9:18

very few people with any kind of a bird's

9:20

eye view over it. Maybe really

9:22

just Jeff Bezos, I mean Andy Chassis

9:25

and Jeff Wilkie, the former head

9:27

of the retail business, you know, certainly,

9:29

but they're extremely disciplined and

9:32

careful in what they say. So it's really

9:34

just it was almost like aggregating

9:37

enough interviews, enough conversations

9:39

that I could start to piece together enough

9:42

of a picture of this entire company.

9:44

And then also, and by the way, very

9:46

not just Amazon, put the Washington Post

9:49

blue Origin Bezos and Space company

9:51

his basis, his personal type of the natural

9:53

Enquirer, like lots of different avenues

9:55

to go down. So it's really almost just a sheer

9:58

exercise and talking to as many people as it could.

10:01

And so people went on the record, even fail

10:03

the inner circle of people without giving you

10:05

a lot of pushback.

10:07

Did you find this book

10:09

was a little more challenging because

10:12

it's such a moving target

10:15

Compared to the first version,

10:17

the version that you wrote in Yes

10:20

and no, it was easier,

10:22

and that the Everything Store was kind of a calling

10:25

card so I could talk I

10:27

could reach out to hundreds of

10:29

people, and they instantly knew who I was and what I

10:31

was up to, right and and and

10:33

in some cases I had earned a measure of trust

10:35

by what they saw as a as

10:37

an accurate retelling of the company's

10:40

early years. But it was more difficult

10:42

in that it was it posted an enormous

10:45

organizational and structural challenge.

10:48

So in the Everything Store, it was a

10:50

very linear story. It was

10:53

a group of it was one guy in Wall Street

10:55

and then a group of people in a garage and bellevue

10:57

with an idea to sell books on the

10:59

Internet straight through, you

11:01

know, through the dot com boom, almost cratering

11:04

in the dot com bust, and then a revival. It

11:06

feels iconic that that story in a

11:08

way. And then this story is a sprawl of

11:10

things happening at the same time. I mean, it's

11:12

Alexa at the and the entry

11:15

in the India and Prime Video

11:17

and the marketplace, and the grocery business

11:19

and the logistics operation and

11:22

adds and and all the other stuff

11:24

I mentioned. So it was an organizational

11:26

challenge. But in some ways this story was

11:28

actually the better story. I mean, when you

11:31

think about it from a pure value creation point

11:33

of view, you know, the Everything Store covers

11:35

the creation of about eighty billion

11:38

dollars in market capitalization,

11:41

and this this story covers

11:43

the creation of one point six trillion. So

11:45

in some ways, you know, this was the more dramatic

11:48

business story. Sure,

11:50

just the numbers are just mind blowing, and we'll

11:52

talk about some of the numbers a little later. Any

11:55

chapter stand out as particularly

11:57

challenging to write or particularly

11:59

fun to dive into. I

12:02

started this book in two dozen seventeen,

12:05

so this was before h G two,

12:07

before um the Antitrust

12:09

Subcommittee report into the big tech

12:11

companies, before obviously before the pandemic.

12:14

But the funnest and the most unexpected

12:16

story was bezos is tangled with

12:19

the National Enquirer and Medium

12:21

post about the bodies and the Washot

12:23

post I had never expected. Well,

12:25

let me step back, because you'll appreciate this. Most

12:29

most companies will draw, you

12:31

know, we'll build a spense around the private lives

12:34

of their key executives. Right, it's seen

12:36

as maybe a no go area.

12:38

And Amazon was fiercely is fiercely

12:41

protective of bezos Is privacy, and

12:43

Bezos and is seriously protective

12:45

of his family's privacy. And so

12:47

for this thing to blow up at

12:49

the end of two thousand, a pen as I'm writing the book,

12:52

you know, and an alleged affair,

12:55

a trashy tabloid newspaper

12:58

accusations of political interfere

13:00

inspired the Trump administration, a

13:02

hall of mirrors, of crazy

13:04

characters and private detectives and

13:07

you know, unethical Hollywood characters

13:10

and perhaps mbs. I mean, it was

13:12

beyond anything that I had imagined, so

13:15

in terms of like challenge and and maybe

13:17

entertainment value. And I just

13:19

couldn't sort of couldn't believe that this is where not

13:21

only this is where, you know, something that I had pried

13:24

open, but this is where Bezos had kind of led

13:26

the world and lead his own story.

13:28

Was astonishing to me. Let's

13:30

talk a little bit about that empire

13:33

and put some some flesh

13:35

on the bones. In terms of numbers,

13:38

I like the way you broke the book up

13:41

into three sections, and

13:43

each section starts with four

13:46

data points. Annual

13:48

revenues, number of employees,

13:51

the market cap of Amazon and

13:53

and Bezos is net worth, and

13:56

some of the numbers from just over

13:58

a decade, they were doing thirty

14:00

four billion in sales in and

14:03

then by it's a hundred and

14:05

thirty six billion, and then by last year

14:08

it's two hundred and thirty three billion.

14:11

And along the way, they went

14:13

from thirty three thousand employees to three

14:15

hundred fifty two. Now they have about

14:18

six hundred fifty thousand employees.

14:21

Uh, and Bezos went from a mere

14:24

fifteen billion in net worth today's

14:26

worth well over UM

14:30

was one five. Now he's coming

14:32

up on two hundred billion. And

14:34

by the way, very employees, it's over a

14:36

million now over a million. Yeah.

14:41

Sword So so that

14:43

was the question I was gonna ask, is how much

14:45

of the numbers are pandemic

14:48

related and how much of this is just

14:50

an acceleration of all these trends

14:53

at Amazon that were in place before

14:56

last year even you know began. I

14:59

mean, I think it's both the pandemic

15:01

was an accelerant and that growth

15:03

might have happened, and the pandemic

15:06

just moved everything forward. If

15:08

if people are wondering, doesn't roll back

15:10

to Amazon, let people go, I

15:13

don't think so. I think what the pandemic

15:15

did is that it made people more

15:17

familiar with UM,

15:19

you know, next Amazon's next day delivery,

15:22

UM possibilities, grocery

15:25

shopping. It increased Amazon's

15:28

profits, and what they always

15:30

do with that is they reinvested in the more

15:32

Amazon So it created profilming centers

15:34

closer to major cities, closer to our homes,

15:37

more trucks on the highway, more events in our

15:39

neighborhoods, more data centers. And what

15:41

that means is, you know, Amazon spent the pandemic

15:45

basically capturing more advantages,

15:48

uh, the advantage advantages of

15:50

performance centers close order to our

15:53

homes and faster delivery. And

15:55

it's not going to unline that. And it just means

15:57

that shopping offline for food and

15:59

for everything else is going to be more convenient,

16:01

and that is probably frightening

16:04

for offline competitors

16:06

supermarkets. The other thing Amazon's

16:09

doing is creating physical retail stores,

16:11

so that's still capturing of

16:13

all retail people shopping in actual stores,

16:16

and Amazon itself stamping out these Amazon

16:18

Fresh grocery stores. So it had

16:21

a productive pandemic. You might you

16:23

might say it was sort of perversely lucky because

16:25

it had all the advantages going into it, and

16:28

now it has even more. So

16:30

we're gonna get to some of the acquisitions. We'll

16:32

talk about Amazon Prime and Whole Foods,

16:34

but before we do that. Early

16:37

in the book, you talk about sort of the tens

16:40

low point for Amazon, which

16:43

was October. They

16:46

had kind of stumbled with the Amazon

16:48

Phone and a lot

16:50

of the big growth engines

16:52

were just starting to ramp up. I

16:55

have to ask, who is possibly

16:57

worse at assessing padditors

17:01

then Microsoft, Steve Balmer? Is

17:03

there anybody who is? I

17:06

mean, if this guy, this guy missed

17:09

everything from the iPhone to the

17:11

iPod two

17:13

and and he was dissing Amazon

17:16

in like they

17:18

don't make a profit? Who nobody's interested

17:21

in those guys? I mean, I

17:23

love your usage of him. What attracted

17:25

you to using him as the

17:27

uh, the patsy and as I think

17:29

I call him the contrarian indicator. Um,

17:31

but let me give a little bit of the defense of

17:34

Steve Balmer and lay to us in fourteen.

17:36

Um, he wasn't alone, right, There were

17:38

there were investors like David Einhorn who

17:40

were who were adding Amazon to the to

17:43

the bubble stock basket. Um

17:45

analyts we were mixed.

17:47

At the time. There was a lot of speculation

17:50

about the underlying profitability of Amazon

17:52

Web Services, which the company was disguising

17:54

on its income statement. At the R and

17:57

yet we have to have to understand that Amazon

17:59

is deliberately opaque, and you

18:01

know, in a way that it's sort of surprising the

18:03

sec You know, our other regulatory authorities

18:06

haven't been more aggressive

18:08

in getting the company to reveal more, but

18:11

it is. It doesn't want the world to know how

18:13

profitable a business Amazon Web Services

18:16

is, and it's not showing profits.

18:18

It's disguising its profits on

18:21

its income statement by investing

18:24

in more data centers, more fulfillment

18:26

centers, expansion. At that point,

18:28

the expansion in the India begins, and

18:31

it's spending a billion dollars a

18:33

year at that point a prime video. So no

18:35

one has any idea because Bezos

18:37

is sitting there at the craft table making new

18:40

bets, and you know, Balmer just

18:42

happens to be a bit of a loud mouth and expressed

18:44

it at exactly the wrong time. Because

18:47

you can go back and march the exact moment

18:49

when Amazon has to finally reveal

18:51

a WS as financials and the thing

18:54

starts to take off. Huh. It's

18:57

interesting that it was such a strategic

18:59

advantage, uh, to not

19:01

discuss Amazon

19:04

Web Servers for so long, and

19:06

they were able to to get away with that

19:08

because of um it

19:11

wasn't more than ten percent of the revenues. Is that

19:13

was that the rationale for hiding that. I

19:17

think that's right. That they could another

19:20

business. Another CEO is

19:22

going to want to show that off. It's going to want

19:24

to impress investors, particularly

19:26

because if you look at the stock performance in

19:29

two thousand fourteen, I mean my recollection is

19:32

the stock went down and you

19:34

know, or at least it was embattled, and

19:37

you know, another CEO is going to say, well,

19:39

it's gonna like cater to their own ego, uh

19:42

and to their recruitment needs of their company into

19:44

the image and want to release that. But Basos,

19:46

across the ten years

19:49

of this of a WS growth, you

19:51

know, he thinks long term, he thinks competitively.

19:54

He didn't want to tip off competitors to how

19:56

good of a business this was, and he kept

19:58

it hidden. I mean that takes a little bit of

20:00

a remarkable act of CEO patients

20:02

and bravery to do that. But they

20:05

felt like they had a gold mine there and they

20:07

wanted to mine it for whatever it was worth.

20:10

Let's see in let's

20:14

see what the stock price looks like.

20:16

Bear with me one second while I pull

20:18

this up. Oh

20:20

no, this was this was not a

20:24

good year. They were down for

20:26

the full year, and you're right

20:28

the bottom while there was a low over

20:30

the summer in in May, and then there was

20:33

another low in October.

20:36

But yeah, that doesn't surprise me that

20:39

that bomber nailed the bottom.

20:41

But a lot of people were pretty skeptical

20:44

in an otherwise pretty decent year

20:46

for the market, right

20:49

right, And and when you look back

20:51

at two thousand fourteen, it's so remarkable

20:54

that that there was such skepticism

20:57

because that that is the year that Amazon

20:59

introduces Alexa. It is the

21:01

year that they started preparing to to introduce

21:04

the financials of aws

21:06

UM. I think I think that might have been

21:08

the first year that Amazon Studios originals

21:11

start to come out, So the first batch

21:13

of TV shows that weren't all that good,

21:15

but I think it marked a transformation

21:17

of Amazon Prime into more of a content

21:20

service. So uh and and

21:22

then and then the expansion in the India really

21:24

begins in earnest in two thou fourteen, and

21:26

so they're placing a lot of vests

21:28

there and to the public markets and

21:30

two investors. Everything looks kind of dire,

21:33

but it's really the beginning of probably the most

21:36

impressive wealth creation, maybe

21:38

even in the history of business. I mean, Um,

21:41

it's just it's such a perhaps perhaps

21:44

alongside Apple, you know, the kind of scale

21:46

that we haven't really seen before. Right, So

21:48

so let's talk about some of the big winners that

21:50

are driving that growth.

21:52

Um, Amazon Prime. This

21:55

really turned out to be quite a

21:57

game change or not only making

22:01

clients stickier, but

22:04

really taking Amazon to a whole new

22:06

level. It really has evolved.

22:08

So back into thousan five, you know,

22:11

when they conceived it, Um

22:13

Basis wanted to kind of take shipping charges

22:15

off the table. Like he knew Amazon could compete

22:17

with selection, it could be

22:19

competitive with prices, but the convenience

22:22

just wasn't there to take many days for

22:24

people to get their packages. And at

22:26

the time Amazon had maybe a dozen fu filment

22:28

centers in the US. So taking shipping

22:31

off the table, trying to offset

22:33

it with what was the seventy nine dollar

22:35

a year charge it made

22:37

It made a lot of sense. And then you you wrap

22:39

people up into the Prime ecosystem UM,

22:42

and they spent more. And then

22:44

you fast forward five seven

22:47

years and Basis sees that maybe

22:49

shipping isn't going to be that much of a

22:51

differentiator anymore in a world where

22:53

Amazon has hundreds of fulfilment

22:56

centers around the country where one day or two day

22:58

shipping might be possible even without Prime membership.

23:00

And so we kind of surprises all of his executives

23:03

by saying we're gonna put free TV

23:06

shows and movies into this. And

23:08

now today I would say that's probably more more

23:11

important to the prime to Prime membership,

23:13

the fact that you get access to prime

23:15

video, prime music. I

23:17

mean, they've got I think it's Amazon Music,

23:20

mkindle club. People don't even

23:22

know what it gets to you, and maybe that's part of it. They're

23:24

sort of this hazy, ambiguous

23:26

it's a lot of it. That's a lot

23:29

of things, and people tend to maximize

23:31

the value. It's want to maximize the value

23:33

of any club they belong to. So it's

23:35

a sort of neat psychological trick

23:38

and and and the center of the

23:40

Amazon operating model. And

23:43

and then related to the expansion of

23:45

groceries, but as well as

23:47

coming up with um physical

23:50

locations near I think it was prime

23:53

members was the purchase of whole

23:55

foods, which you discussed in the

23:57

book. You know, remind me a little bit of

23:59

the Google YouTube purchase. The

24:01

increase in stock price essentially

24:04

made the purchase free. To tell us about

24:06

the whole Foods purchase. I

24:09

so I devote a whole chapter to Amazon's

24:12

adventures slash misadventures

24:14

in groceries. And it's really interesting

24:16

because this is one area where Bethos

24:19

wasn't as far sighted as some of his executives.

24:22

He had people advocating

24:24

for an expansion in the grocery delivery as

24:26

far back because two thousand and seven he

24:29

thought that this would be an opportunity

24:31

that would be there for Amazon. Um

24:33

and and executives were writing papers and

24:35

I quote some of them in the book. UM, I

24:38

love the one that was called Amazon's futurist

24:40

crap, which stood for can't

24:42

realize the profits and was a lot of basically

24:45

consumables and grocery store items.

24:47

And it wasn't until Google

24:49

introduces Google Express and instat

24:52

Cart kind of comes unto the scene, starts raising

24:54

torrents of money that he starts

24:57

moving faster. And the

24:59

challenge with fresh food is that is

25:01

that you need to hold different fulfillment network

25:03

refrigerated and rapid

25:05

deliveries Mainly people want

25:07

to be at their homes when they when they get

25:10

when they get their deliveries. And

25:13

um and and nothing that Amazon was trying

25:15

is working very well. There was Prime Now and Amazon

25:17

Fresh, and so Whole Foods comes along in

25:19

two seventeen. It's a distressed asset

25:22

um. John mackew is beset

25:25

on all sides by activists investors clinging

25:27

to his organic selection in an

25:30

age of broader selection

25:32

and prevalent junk food

25:34

and supermarkets. And and

25:37

Bezos buys it. Now. It's

25:39

interesting because amazon s futuring groceries

25:41

isn't necessarily whole food. They're creating these

25:43

Amazon Fresh supermarkets. But I think they realized,

25:46

or Bezos realized, that he was going to need to

25:48

learn a lot about the grocery businesses if

25:51

Amazon was going to fill its potential there. So

25:54

let's talk a little bit about some of their products.

25:56

Um that we're winners, will talk about Kindle,

26:00

go on, Alexa and fire TV. It's

26:02

kind of amazing to think a CEO

26:05

said, I have an idea

26:07

for a reader and we're going to build

26:10

this from scratch. Tell us

26:12

a little bit about the genesis

26:14

of Kindle and what it meant

26:17

for Amazon, whose roots were in book

26:20

selling, right right.

26:22

So we're going back now to to some

26:24

of the material I cover in the Everything Store,

26:27

And this is probably about two four

26:30

and Bezos is basically watching

26:32

Apple vaporized his music business

26:34

with the iPod and itube store,

26:37

and he understands that a digital transformation

26:40

is coming from media and that Amazon's

26:42

brand is still very tightly intertwined

26:45

with the book business, and concludes

26:47

that if Apple were to ever move

26:49

into digital books, that Amazon

26:51

would be vulnerable. And so he basically

26:54

tells his leadership team, the f team, that

26:56

they're going to build a knee reader. At

26:58

the time, Sony had tried to do it and had

27:00

sort of failed with the Sony Reader. And

27:03

there's all sorts of objections because what does

27:05

Amazon at the time know about building devices,

27:07

And Beza says, I know it's hard, We're

27:10

going to do it, and it's a

27:12

three year process. It's actually very similar

27:14

to the Alexis story which I tell him in Amazon

27:16

Unbound. But he drives the initiative,

27:19

he sponsors it, he authorizes all sorts

27:21

of investments, he harangued,

27:23

He gets his his sales folks

27:26

to go to New York City and harangue

27:28

the book publishers and the unlocking more

27:30

of their catalogs for the for the e book

27:32

business. They had been very hesitant because

27:34

it wasn't a major business for them. Amazon

27:37

uses its leverage and strength with the

27:39

publishers to basically get them to

27:41

digitize their books, and then

27:43

they announced the thing into two thousand and seven,

27:45

and that is the beginning. Um that

27:48

is the beginning of Amazon and devices at

27:50

leads to everything from Alexa to the failed

27:52

fire phone, to the fire TVs to all

27:54

sorts of things we haven't seen yet. And it's a

27:56

great illustration of Bezos really

28:00

inventing his company in every turn and

28:02

thinking ambitiously

28:04

in an unbound way about

28:06

what Amazon could become. It wasn't

28:08

just a retailer, it wasn't

28:10

just a bookseller. It wasn't just an

28:13

enterprise software company. When it's cloud business,

28:15

he doesn't he doesn't place

28:18

any limits, it doesn't seem to me, and what

28:20

what Amazon can be, and

28:22

that kind of tease up the Echo, which

28:25

is its own product category.

28:27

If this was a standalone product

28:29

from a new startup company

28:31

that had sold hundreds of millions

28:33

of units, they would be a really

28:35

successful company. Tell us

28:38

how how did the echo come about?

28:41

Well, it's interesting that you see

28:43

the very I don't I don't

28:45

know if it would be. Um,

28:49

Amazon probably sells those units at

28:51

close to cost. And

28:53

and this will get to the origin. You

28:56

know, it's the brains of Alexa

28:58

are in Amazon webster uses and

29:01

and I'm sure it gets a nice wholesale

29:04

rate on that. And that's where Beza

29:06

started with this. He sent an email to his his

29:09

colleagues and late to us in ten we

29:11

should build a computer whose brains

29:13

are in the cloud that's completely controllable

29:15

by your voice. Because he's thinking at

29:17

the time, how does he exploit Amazon's

29:20

advantage in cloud computing, and how

29:22

does he create some consumer facing

29:24

applications. And he's a big science

29:26

fiction fan and he's totally engrossed

29:28

with the possibilities and improvements

29:31

and voice search at the time. And

29:33

that's that email spawns Alexa, and very

29:35

much like the kindle, he gets in

29:37

the in the weeds, and he sponsors it, and

29:39

he authorizes the hiring of all

29:41

sorts of oppressive voice scientists

29:45

and they bring it out into the world and collect

29:47

data in a very surreptitious and interesting way.

29:50

Um and and now it's so tightly

29:53

interwoven into the Amazon empire

29:56

that we don't know if that if it makes

29:58

money. I don't think it's been as evolutionaries

30:00

maybe they have hoped. It's

30:03

certainly not a conversational computer or

30:05

or really a useful every day

30:08

assistant in the way that they hoped. And there's not

30:10

really a productive app ecosystem

30:12

as there is with the iPhone. So

30:14

it's interesting. Um. It certainly has helped

30:16

to change Amazon's image, and they market

30:18

the thing, and I think it helps their their image

30:20

as an innovator. Alexa.

30:23

What's the title of brad Stone's new

30:25

book? I don't have

30:27

an answer. I

30:30

guess Masos is not too happy

30:32

with you these days. I didn't hear. It's

30:34

sorry. I don't have an answer to that. All

30:37

right, we'll go after the get

30:40

get it to fix it. Did you see in the new

30:42

book, I I fleuped

30:44

out the identity of the voice Alex.

30:46

I was very proud of that. Yes, that was

30:48

really interesting. It's a woman

30:50

who's a voiceover artist in Colorado?

30:53

Is that right? What's right? Right? Na?

30:56

Nina Raleigh? And you

30:58

know I had I had recalled that the

31:00

identity of theory had been unveiled

31:02

a couple of years ago, and so I was very curious. Okay,

31:04

who's voice is springing from Alexa?

31:07

And and before we move on from the section

31:10

of of what's been driving Amazon's growth,

31:13

I mean, Amazon Web Services is

31:15

just a monster, isn't it.

31:18

Oh, it's it's it's there's a

31:20

I think it's a fifty billion dollar run rate. Um.

31:24

You know, it's a ten year

31:26

old division and tide Amazon.

31:29

It's in and it's changed the way companies

31:32

and universities and governments compute

31:34

and run their businesses. Um, it's

31:36

it's created, you know, massive new business opportunities

31:39

from Microsoft and IBM and Google.

31:42

It is and and it's showing no signs of

31:44

slowing down. So when you when

31:46

you think about you know, Bethos

31:49

who really had some of the initial ideas,

31:51

and and Andy Jassey's success running

31:53

it over the past ten years. And yes, it's it's

31:55

been remarkable. Earlier we

31:57

were talking about some of the drivers

32:00

of growth of Amazon. There are two other

32:03

areas that help drive growth,

32:05

but not without some problems. And let's

32:08

talk about both of them.

32:10

The first is the third party market

32:13

sort of turning Amazon

32:15

into a quasi eBay

32:18

in some ways tell us a little bit about

32:20

what that did, opening Amazon

32:22

up to basically anyone

32:24

who wants to sell goods on

32:26

their site. I would say

32:28

in the first years it was it

32:31

was it was pretty positive. I mean, um,

32:34

creating a third credit marketplace, added

32:36

selection, and added product categories that

32:38

Amazon wasn't going to touch itself create

32:41

minted a lot of success, particularly in

32:43

the West. And the key turning

32:46

point, and the story that I'm telling in the

32:48

book and the chapter devoted to marketplace,

32:50

is when Amazon quite consciously

32:53

in about two thousand fifteen, started

32:56

pursuing the global selling opportunity

32:58

of basos stalk companies like Ali Baba

33:01

with all the express and a startup called

33:03

wish dot com basically conducting

33:05

a form of geographic arbitrage, allowing

33:08

sellers and manufacturers and China

33:10

and other other parts of the world to sell

33:12

in the West and and to lower lower

33:14

prices and increased selection. And

33:17

they pursued task in a very Amazon like

33:19

way, building systems, self service systems

33:21

and translation tools, aggregating

33:24

inventory and lowering the cost of ship and

33:26

then suddenly the marketplace tilt

33:29

in favor of of overseas sellers,

33:31

and you have a lot of disgradled sellers in the

33:33

West, and an explosion selection

33:36

lower prices and all kinds of casks,

33:38

counterfeits, fraud, exploding cover

33:40

boards, UM, and and perhaps

33:43

a real depreciation and the quality

33:45

of products that are sold on Right. That's

33:47

where I wanted to get to, is that. Look,

33:50

my my first Amazon purchase was

33:53

when my college roommate gave me a

33:55

gift certificate and I

33:57

actually hunted down with that. First purchase

34:00

was in December. UM

34:02

burn Rate was the book. But I'm

34:06

I'm kind of surprised at after

34:09

working so hard to maintain

34:12

quality and to guarantee lowest

34:14

prices and to guarantee

34:17

a very high level of customer service,

34:20

suddenly there's just fakes

34:22

and stuff that's poorly made and falls apart.

34:25

You mentioned the hoverboard. Um,

34:28

a number of houses had burned down,

34:30

and half of the you write in the book

34:32

half the houses that burnt down due

34:35

to hoverboard fires, they

34:37

were purchased on Amazon. How did

34:39

the company respond to to

34:41

this problem? Well, in terms of

34:43

the hoverboard challenge, I mean they stopped

34:46

selling them a little a little bit too late, and now

34:48

they're involved in endless litigation,

34:51

and in terms of the overall problems

34:53

of fraud and counterfeit and fake

34:56

reviews, they've been a very Amazon

34:58

and Silicon Valley type. They've created

35:01

systems, they've they've tried to use technology

35:03

to an artificial intelligence

35:05

to weed out fraud, to increase

35:08

the level of the quality of

35:10

of sellers on the platform, and

35:12

with with I think some mixed results.

35:15

On a related issue to that,

35:18

I recall sending an email to

35:20

to Bezos after I'm

35:23

trying to remember which Michael Lewis book

35:25

it was that had come out.

35:27

Maybe it was Flashboys or

35:29

The Big Short and I always it had

35:31

to be after the Kindle because there

35:33

were all these one star reviews

35:36

of a Michael Lewis book, because

35:38

the Kindle release was

35:40

set by the publisher to take

35:42

place like three months or six months

35:45

later, it was it was after

35:47

the book public It was kind of insane

35:49

that these Kindle fan boys were

35:52

one starring reviews. Since

35:54

then, we've had like a much bigger

35:56

problem with reviews, fake

35:58

reviews, purchase reviews. How

36:01

is Amazon responding to that? My takeaway,

36:05

I just can no longer rely on

36:07

reviews. I just assume most

36:09

of them are nonsense. That's

36:12

true. And as a as an author whose

36:14

sales are are taking place, uh

36:16

predominantly, And I was getting to test

36:19

the I just I just saw

36:21

a I think it was a two star review because

36:24

somebody felt that there were fingerprints smudges

36:26

on the cover. You's

36:29

like, you gotta be getting me but doing

36:33

Yeah, I mean, I think you know. They they've

36:35

done a couple of things. They prioritize

36:38

UM actual purchases, the reviews

36:40

from yeah,

36:42

verified reviews, but they've also i think lowered

36:45

the significance of reviews. And

36:48

when when you think back a couple of years ago,

36:50

and this leads into advertising. Um,

36:52

the search engine was this taxonomy

36:55

of useful products UM that a

36:58

very secretive and is on algorithm

37:01

would order. And one of the big

37:03

variables was the number and the quality

37:05

of reviews that a product got. And of

37:07

course that just opened it up to third

37:10

party sellers gaming the system,

37:12

buying fake reviews, generating their own,

37:15

and you know, and that variable ended up

37:17

being less useful. And now it's basically

37:19

the Amazon Church results are essentially

37:21

pay for play people by

37:24

search ads to appear there, and reviews

37:26

are no longer important. The advertising

37:29

is a little bit of a fail also, because you

37:32

know, I was searching for a lithium battery

37:34

the other day. It's number thirty four fifty

37:36

and up pops during cell and I click it and buy

37:39

it. And it's only after it arrives

37:41

that I realized this isn't

37:43

this is the you know, three thousand

37:46

and twenty three. Why would that show

37:48

up in a search for a very specific

37:51

and so I've I've kind of learned

37:53

be aware of sponsored results,

37:56

and really it's best to start

37:58

your search off of Amazon.

38:01

I never approached Amazon

38:03

shopping that way. Now it's

38:06

look for what you want to get and then if Amazon

38:08

has it, great, But don't begin

38:11

your search on Amazon. I wonder are

38:13

they trading off advertising

38:15

revenues for sales. I

38:18

told the story of the evolution

38:21

of the ad business inside Amazon and

38:23

the decision to move sponsored search

38:26

results up to the top. Sponsored

38:28

listing to the top of search results was a

38:30

very specific decision made by days

38:32

Os, and I think he understood

38:35

how profitable the search business could be

38:37

inside Amazon and simply wanted

38:39

the cash to go, you know, to make

38:41

his investments in Prime video and satellite

38:44

internet access and the other ambitious

38:46

plans that he has. They saw that it

38:48

would lead to a decrease in

38:50

in customer satisfaction. I

38:53

believe that this might even be seen as a turning

38:55

point in Amazon's history. Um

38:57

He judged that the

39:00

impact on customer satisfaction would

39:02

have to be so large as to outweigh

39:05

the benefit that AMA Amazon would be getting.

39:07

I call this the gold mine in the back gyard. But I

39:09

do think there's some cough. And I just did

39:11

a lithium battery search the one Barry that you just

39:13

described, and it's a mess. Yeah,

39:16

it's a debacle, absolutely. Yeah.

39:18

It's all sponsored a private label brands,

39:21

and I have, you know, just absolutely no

39:23

idea here, right. If you don't know exactly

39:25

what you're looking for, the Amazon

39:27

search is as often as not

39:31

unhelpful. Let's let's talk about

39:33

two of the biggest failures

39:36

um and I'm going to use those terms loosely,

39:39

A new one and an old one. The

39:41

latest debacle h

39:44

Q two. I mean, how tone

39:46

deaf was that? That was just such

39:48

an avoidable self

39:50

inflicted wounds? How did they

39:52

blow that so badly? So

39:55

it's interesting. I have a chapter in the book

39:58

about HQ two and

40:00

and one I think easy answer is

40:02

that the political environment kind of drastically

40:05

changed under them as they

40:07

as they embark on this

40:10

um on, this on the search,

40:13

which lasted much longer than they thought. And

40:15

it starts with a kind of political earthquake

40:18

in Seattle, the city council

40:20

turning hospital, Amazon being

40:22

blamed for all sorts of ills, and Bezos think looking

40:24

at Elon with the giga factory in Nevada

40:27

and fox Kind in Wisconsin and thinking

40:29

this process is going to underscore who wants

40:32

us? And in the year plus

40:34

as they do this, Amazon hits

40:37

the trillion dollars in market cap, Bezos becomes

40:39

the wealthiest person in the world. AOC gets

40:41

elected, the progressive political movement

40:43

gathers steam and a sense, and the tech

40:45

lash begins. And as they announced,

40:48

um, you know New York City, in Washington,

40:51

d c um, they you know,

40:53

they realize that it's it's not just

40:55

gonna be expression of who whats us. It's going to be

40:57

a verdict about the role that tech company,

41:00

me and even big companies are playing in our

41:02

community. So that's a much different discussion

41:04

than the one they wanted to have. Huh.

41:06

So, So to two things about that,

41:09

I'm gonna push back a little bit. First, the

41:12

tech lash had been ramping up

41:15

for a good couple of years before

41:18

h Q two. Remember

41:22

Bernie Sanders almost bat

41:24

Hillary Clinton to be

41:26

the nominee. So issues

41:29

of wealth inequality and income inequality

41:32

and and the halves and the half nots. I

41:34

mean, that's been an ongoing discussion

41:36

for at least since the Great

41:38

Financial Crisis. Uh, it's

41:40

certainly accelerated. But but the other

41:43

thing is when you look at when

41:45

they started the search, they

41:47

were already a giant and

41:49

wildly successful company.

41:52

Um. It just seems and

41:55

and kudos to Scott

41:57

Galloway at n y U

42:00

who basically said, all these

42:02

things are are affront and

42:04

the areas that are gonna win are gonna

42:07

be where the CEO has a

42:09

home or one to live and and

42:11

he literally said it will either be New York or

42:13

d C. And lo and behold it was both.

42:16

Um. So the question is why

42:18

not why not be small? Are

42:20

they just at a at a certain point you

42:23

become so wealthy, you just out of touch. Why

42:25

not say Hey, we're gonna come in and

42:27

here's what we're gonna do for the community, and

42:29

we're gonna build a waterfront park, and we're

42:31

gonna help expand um mass

42:34

transit, and we're gonna do this, and we're gonna do that.

42:36

This looks like it was

42:38

just sold so poorly. And

42:42

I want to actually agree agree with you that

42:44

there were there worked some quite clear,

42:46

invisible signs that the political climates

42:48

and shifted. But I think it's a

42:51

function of how reclusive and

42:53

maybe self absorbed by us and other

42:55

Amazon executives were, so they just kind

42:57

of failed to see it. And you know,

42:59

the fact they you know, they

43:01

wanted to be wooed by communities. But

43:04

I think you're making a pretty good point, which is

43:06

that they actually were going to be the ones that would

43:08

have to do the wooing. And seeing

43:10

two hundred thirty regions prostrate

43:12

themselves, sorry, prostrate

43:15

themselves in front of Amazon, a

43:17

big, wealthy technology company, was just unseemly,

43:20

I think exactly

43:25

exactly. It's amazing. And then

43:27

the other failure I have to talk about,

43:29

which is kind of shocking, is

43:32

Blue Origins has just been a mess

43:35

from day one. It was preordained

43:37

to fail. How how could you say we're

43:40

going to set up a private company to

43:42

reinvigorate space travel,

43:45

but we're going to do it on the cheap. It's just it's

43:48

so opposite of the Amazon approach.

43:50

What was he thinking? Yeah,

43:53

well, this is um he sets up Blue

43:55

Origin in two thousand. He is a

43:57

relative popper by

44:00

by today's standards in terms of his

44:02

his wealth and this whole saying

44:04

in the space business, Um that

44:06

the quickest way to become a millionaire is

44:08

the start off as a billionaire. So I think he

44:10

went into it knowing that building

44:13

rockets is not for the faint of heart, and so

44:15

he righte he sets out to constrain the

44:17

investment, to keep the headcount small.

44:20

He's going to privately fund it, and he's going to think

44:22

long term, all the sort of Bezos hallmarks.

44:24

And what happens is Elon Musk comes in

44:27

and Um literally you know, starts

44:29

going quickly raising

44:31

money from venture capitalists, UM,

44:33

funding space X with government

44:36

contracts, and and Bezos's

44:38

approach seems you know, kind of meager

44:40

and tame. In response, then Bezos

44:42

changes gears, starts selling a billion dollars

44:44

worth of Amazon stock every year to

44:46

fund it, and sees a lot of dysfunction

44:49

at the company. Right, Yeah, that this

44:51

function was ongoing. There's a data point

44:53

you mentioned the book that was mind blowing. Elon

44:56

Musk's SpaceX wins

44:58

a contract for FO forty million

45:00

dollars, but like so many Defense

45:03

Department and government contracts,

45:05

there are some price over

45:07

rides and he ends up,

45:09

according to an inspector general, getting

45:12

paid seven point seven billion

45:15

dollars went to space X, which

45:17

which makes every time he complains kind

45:19

of laughing. Right. I think

45:22

that's more that that first, that

45:24

was the first installment of a contract

45:27

than that then kind of continued to evolve

45:30

UM and that Bezos was looking at back

45:32

go and you know, we should have we should have been

45:34

on this UM. He he was ultimately

45:37

I think jealous, probably a strange

45:39

position for Jeff Bezos to be in that

45:42

that musque was getting paid to play.

45:44

You know, they have similar dreams in space

45:47

UM. And here the government is funding SpaceX

45:50

and its ambitions and helping Elon scale

45:52

the company, and and Bezos is still

45:55

shelling out personally for Blue Origins

45:57

Amazing and our final discussion

45:59

on failure UM. They

46:01

had an internal process of reviewing

46:04

employees called stacked

46:06

ranking that led to what you

46:08

described as a quote informal

46:10

cruelty unquote that is

46:14

definitional for the company's

46:16

corporate culture. Explain what

46:19

that was about and why they ultimately had

46:21

to change it right

46:24

and and different companies have experimented

46:26

with different versions of this. Bezos

46:29

early on never wanted Amazon

46:31

to become a country club, a

46:33

place where employees got comfortable.

46:36

He was particularly worried in the fulfillment

46:38

center is that if people stuck around for too long,

46:40

they could be susceptible to organizing

46:43

efforts from unions. And

46:45

the review process really encouraged

46:48

managers to you know, to

46:50

to evaluate and then and

46:52

then um dismissed the lowest

46:54

performers. And this is a management practice

46:57

that has wreak havoc everywhere Microsoft,

47:00

off, the General Electric etcetera.

47:03

Um, there were there was one element

47:05

that led to I think these

47:07

sort of negative evaluations of Amazon,

47:09

Amazon's culture. That was a theme in the

47:11

Everything Store. It was obviously there was that high

47:14

profile New York Times article into those

47:16

of jifteen and yes, I

47:18

think after the Times article they

47:21

re evaluated it. I still

47:23

get reports periodically that a form of

47:25

it still exists. And the Amazon so big

47:27

of a company right now, there are lots of different

47:29

pockets of of employee

47:33

you know, experiences and reviews.

47:36

Um, but I think you know, this

47:38

is part of the basis is philosophy. He he

47:40

wants people to come to Amazon, to

47:42

have the most productive years of their career, to

47:45

move at breakneck speed, and when

47:47

they when they slow down, to move

47:49

on, he doesn't mind. He doesn't mind

47:51

that even the compensation systems

47:53

are sort of geared towards avoiding

47:56

people becoming extraordinarily so

47:58

extraordinarily wealthy that they stopped

48:00

being motivated. And yeah, it

48:02

is interpreted as a kind of informal cruelty

48:05

among some people. And that's why, um,

48:07

disgruntled former Amazon employees

48:10

are not a rare species, to say

48:12

the least. Let's talk a little bit

48:14

about some really fascinating things

48:17

with Bezos, including

48:20

one of my favorite memes circulating

48:22

Twitter is the photo of him in

48:26

sort of bookish looking with glasses.

48:29

And then there's a photo from I think it was sun

48:31

Valley where he's kind of

48:34

jacked in a you know, vest

48:37

and shirt, strolling confidently

48:40

towards the viewer, and it was Amazon, Amazon

48:43

Prime, and that was everywhere for a while. Tell

48:46

us about the transformation of

48:48

Bezos from a sort of you

48:51

know Wall Street geek into

48:54

uh an overlord. Right,

48:57

Well, the physical transformation,

49:00

so this is only the most obvious part

49:02

of it, right The guy has been working

49:04

out and getting in shape, and in the

49:06

first book I ascribed that from a

49:08

former friend to his interest in

49:11

in um in one day going

49:13

to space until he's trying to safe fit.

49:15

Now I think it's more. I suspect

49:18

it's more, you know, the billionaire fixation

49:20

with longevity and and and health.

49:23

But again that that's only part of it.

49:26

He his eyes have opened up to a

49:28

larger world beyond Amazon, and

49:31

and that's me a his ownership of The Washington

49:33

Post and participation in in Washington,

49:35

d C. Society, UM

49:39

Space Company, Hollywood right

49:41

throwing parties. He simply seems

49:43

to enjoy the lifestyle,

49:46

the extravagance that comes with his

49:48

position, much more than he ever did. And

49:50

and the greatest symbol of this, I never thought Jeff

49:52

Bezos circa even two thousand and ten

49:55

would be a yacht guy, you know, someone

49:57

who's spending time on big books.

49:59

And I was a report in the book. He's

50:01

building this massive three three

50:03

mass

50:05

math with a with its own

50:07

support yacht with it was

50:09

the right room for he and

50:12

I think part of that the the influence

50:15

of Laurence Sanchez, his partner, um,

50:17

and part of it is simply him enjoying

50:19

the world stage that is human

50:22

and the robot, the machine

50:24

that created Amazon. You know, is is

50:26

susceptible too. I guess some of these human

50:28

impulses. Yes, so so you

50:31

we we already talked. Mackenzie Scott,

50:33

his former wife, gave The Everything

50:36

Store a one star review. But

50:39

but her and and Bezos'

50:42

new girlfriend, Sanchez could not possibly

50:45

be more different. She's very

50:48

social and outgoing. Mackenzie Scott

50:51

is a little bit more of an introvert

50:53

and and a homebody. How

50:56

much of the divorce comes

50:59

from him wanting to step out a bit

51:02

and you know, literally the

51:05

wife wanting a quiet night at

51:07

home. What's the genesis of this?

51:09

Because there wasn't a whole lot about

51:11

the divorce um

51:13

other than to say it was already sort

51:16

of happening before Sanchez ever showed

51:18

up on the scene. I

51:20

mean, Barry, this the easiest

51:23

answers that we have no idea, right, I mean,

51:25

who really knows what happens in the private

51:27

confines of that marriage. Other than to observe

51:30

what what you've just said, which is Mackenzie

51:33

Scott is fiercely private.

51:35

I think I think she's done one interview

51:38

um around the publication of one of

51:40

her novels. Um. She she speaks

51:43

very carefully in the in the few medium

51:45

posts that she's written about her philanthropic

51:48

contributions. And she didn't seem

51:50

to enjoy as much going to

51:52

the awards shows or to the fashion

51:55

galas um as as Jeff

51:57

Bethos did. So yeah, they're they're

51:59

they're interest for public attention

52:01

were diverging. Um, that's

52:04

certainly true. And in Lauren Santis,

52:06

Bezos has found someone who's extremely

52:08

comfortable moving in those circles.

52:11

Um. And yet who

52:13

you know, I don't think it's it's ever

52:16

possible to know, Um, you know what

52:18

what has really you know, what really happens in

52:21

a marriage? Huh? To say

52:23

the least, let's talk a little bit. You mentioned the Washington

52:25

Post Bezos really

52:28

helped to drive a huge turnaround at

52:30

the Post, and I was kind

52:32

of surprised to read that

52:35

the tagline democracy

52:37

dies in darkness? Was that really

52:40

a Bezos line? Well,

52:43

if you if you remember Barry, that was a

52:45

line in a speech um

52:48

that Bob Woodward had given crediting

52:51

of pre Watergate era judge,

52:54

and then Bezos had heard that, and

52:56

when he asked Marty Baron and

52:59

others is the Washington Post to go find

53:02

a slogan for the paper, he suggested

53:04

that it should do something like democracy

53:07

Dies in Darkness. And then they spent about

53:09

a year and probably you know, thousands

53:12

of hundreds of thousands of dollars, paying branding

53:14

firms and coming up with ideas and firing

53:16

them, and they basically got back

53:18

to Democracy Dies in Darkness, which

53:20

originally they had thought was kind of too dreary,

53:23

uh, and then ended up being perfect

53:26

for the age of Donald Trump. So yes,

53:28

it was sort of bezos inspiration but

53:31

a little a little bit of well hard

53:33

to call, you know, that era luck,

53:36

But it certainly was for the Post, right, because

53:38

even though Bezos did drive a remarkable

53:41

turner on there, they certainly did, they

53:43

were fortunate by the revival of interest

53:45

and political news had accompanied the Trump years.

53:48

So it's interesting because

53:50

as you read the book, it's as much

53:52

about Amazon the company

53:55

as it is about Bezos, like

53:58

a bio of him. Was the intention

54:00

or did it just become clear

54:03

you can't write about one without writing about

54:05

the other. I think

54:07

in both books I thought of them as

54:10

um as. Yes, as both

54:12

um. I you know, since I'm working with limited

54:15

access to Bezos. Um,

54:18

they're predominantly about the companies.

54:21

But just is the main character, right,

54:23

And you can't when you peel back the

54:25

layers of the onion on most major

54:28

inventions at Amazon and most big

54:30

strategic moves, you find

54:32

you get to Jeff Bezos and and a

54:34

decision that he made. And this

54:37

book Amazon Abound is about transformation.

54:39

It's it's the transformation of this company

54:42

into this monolith that is dominating

54:44

all of our life now and and our economic

54:47

reality. And then the accompanying transformation

54:49

of Bezos right into the richest man in the

54:51

world, into into this figure

54:53

on the public stage, the evolution

54:56

of a tech geek into kind of a business

54:58

superhero. And yeah, they're really

55:00

intertwined. I think. I think in some ways

55:03

they function as biographies for the company

55:05

and for the man. So there's a quote

55:07

of his in the book quote

55:10

you can invent your way out of any box

55:12

unquote, which kind of raises the

55:14

question, how does he see himself? Is

55:16

he an inventor, Is he a business

55:19

founder? Is he a CEO and a leader?

55:21

What? What is his self identified

55:24

role? Yeah, that

55:27

one's easy to answer because he keeps

55:29

insisting and he did so again in

55:31

his latest shareholder letter that he's an

55:33

inventor. That is how he wants

55:35

to be seen. And

55:38

it's funny because I have a colleague at

55:40

Bloomberg and we were talking about that and

55:43

she said, you know, this reminds me a little bit of Taylor

55:45

Swift, who wants to be seen as

55:47

a songwriter, but the world kind of sees

55:49

her, you know, more as a singer and as a performer.

55:52

I think that's true with Bezos too. He wants

55:54

to be seen as an inventor, but you

55:57

know, by his admire

56:00

as he will largely be seen I think as an operator

56:02

and an entrepreneur, a creator

56:04

of amazing business value,

56:07

and by his critics as a monopolist.

56:09

Right, and the verdict is still out on this, but as

56:12

a as an aggregator of extraordinarily

56:14

extraordinarily wealth and and not

56:17

yet really as a philanthropist whose

56:19

contribution back has been commensurate with

56:22

with his um you know, accomplishment.

56:24

So yes, he wants to be seen as an inventor,

56:26

and that that might be uh, the

56:29

jury is out on that a little bit. So when

56:32

he looks at all of those accomplishments,

56:35

what does he see as his lasting

56:38

legacy? How does he want

56:40

to be remembered? With the caveat

56:42

that he's still a relatively young man, and is

56:45

what early fifties, Well, let's

56:47

see, it's probably it's probably mid

56:49

the late fifties, right, yeah, mid fifties

56:51

right now. I think he wants to be

56:53

seen as an inventor. I think that he

56:56

wants to be seen. The last investor

56:58

letter is really this interest thing, an impassioned

57:01

defense of Amazon as a contributor,

57:03

as a as a generator of

57:05

value, and he goes one by one talking

57:07

about the the

57:10

gross merchandise value generated

57:13

by third party sellers, the salaries

57:17

of the third party workers, how

57:19

much Amazon shareholders have benefited,

57:22

um. And he's really trying to reframe the

57:24

debate, I think, around his own wealth and

57:26

Amazon's own power, and to shed

57:29

lights on how much value Amazon is

57:31

creative. So I think he wants to be

57:33

seen and he wants Amazon's legacy to be

57:35

one that has contributed to the economy and positive

57:38

ways, and and and the reason why

57:40

he's arguing that so precipitously

57:43

is because the

57:45

prevailing sentiment right now at least

57:47

is that you know, billionaires are bad and

57:50

in some corners of society, of

57:52

course, um that they represent

57:54

something untoward in the distribution of

57:57

wealth in our society and the widening income

57:59

gap, and that big tech

58:01

companies have come to dominate the economy

58:04

and the snuff out opportunity for smaller

58:06

businesses. And look, I mean

58:08

I try to I try to get into that debate in

58:10

the book. I think that's a little bit of a harsh

58:13

view. Amazon has made some real positive

58:15

contributions and and basis

58:17

is I think only beginning to grapple with

58:20

the fact that his legacy right

58:22

now is very much contested and

58:25

he'll have to probably spend the next couple of years, you

58:27

know, turning turning that around and making significant

58:29

contributions and changing people's mind. You

58:32

have to say the least, I'm trying to remember where

58:35

which document of there's where they might

58:38

have been. In defense of something that Bernie sanders

58:41

Um had said, he points out, we

58:43

employ over a million people, with a second

58:46

biggest job creator in the country

58:49

which actually is as good a time as any to

58:51

talk about what he did

58:53

with the fifteen dollar an

58:56

hour um increase.

58:58

This this was just a brilliant jiu

59:01

jitsu in response to I

59:04

think Bernie Sanders haranguing uh

59:07

Bezos. He figured out pretty

59:09

quickly, Hey, this is paying more

59:11

money is a giant competitive advantage

59:14

to us. Tell us about how

59:16

he raised the minimum wage

59:18

at at Amazon to fifteen right,

59:23

and we should we should note I mean a lot

59:25

of a lot of these moves by

59:27

Amazon, as welcome as they are, our our

59:30

reaction reactions, and the

59:33

fight for fifteen dollars an hour, it's

59:35

something that starts ten years ago

59:38

among among big companies and fast

59:40

food chains. UM employee

59:42

strikes lots of pressure, and

59:45

Amazon is growing by leaps and bounds

59:47

over the past few years, becoming

59:50

a more and more prominent employer. The

59:52

lens of public scrutiny is on their relationship

59:55

with their employees, and at a certain

59:57

point, I think they realized that they're going

59:59

to have to get a head of it, and and they do have

1:00:01

the resources to get ahead of it in a way that

1:00:03

perhaps some of its competition UM

1:00:06

Walmart and the like do not, and

1:00:08

so they they raise their

1:00:10

their wage. And sorry, one other thing baries

1:00:13

that as they're hiring more and more people,

1:00:16

um, you know, hundreds of thousands of people in their for filming

1:00:18

centers at a time of economic

1:00:21

prosperity and tightness in the labor market,

1:00:23

I think they realized they need to sweeten the pot

1:00:25

for for workers to even just fill

1:00:28

those for filming centers, particularly during the holidays.

1:00:31

And so fifteen dollars an hour. It's a recruiting

1:00:33

mechanism. It's a strategic weapon

1:00:36

to to bludgeon their competitors

1:00:38

over the head who can't match the rate.

1:00:40

And then it's a little bit of a of a defense

1:00:44

um to the for the activists and the politicians

1:00:46

like Bernie Sanders who are criticizing Amazon's

1:00:49

relationship with their employees. Yeah,

1:00:51

he went away for a little while. Eventually he

1:00:53

started coming back at Bezos,

1:00:55

but for a while he was pretty

1:00:58

satisfied. Let's let's talk about on another

1:01:01

jiu jitsu that was so brilliantly played.

1:01:04

Um. Laurence Sanchez's brother

1:01:07

got access to a variety of

1:01:09

texts and then went

1:01:12

about selling them to the National Enquirer.

1:01:15

He claimed that he

1:01:17

had a nude selfie

1:01:19

of quote unquote below the belt selfie

1:01:22

that turned out not to be so true,

1:01:25

and Bezos just completely

1:01:29

up ended what looked like being

1:01:32

trapped in a box. Tell us a little bit about

1:01:35

that incredible escaping

1:01:38

act. Yeah, right, this is

1:01:40

this is one of those episodes that I couldn't quite

1:01:43

believe I was I was going to be writing about.

1:01:45

Um, Bezos has tangled with the National

1:01:47

Enquirer. You mentioned Laurence

1:01:50

Snchez, his brother delivering um,

1:01:52

delivering those text messages

1:01:54

to the paper. Um. He you know,

1:01:57

he thought he was trying well,

1:01:59

the cup was sort of conducting their relationship

1:02:02

out in the open, and you know, for

1:02:04

whatever reason, he decided that he wanted

1:02:06

to try to get ahead of it. He was

1:02:09

also he was also paid quite well

1:02:11

by the Inquirer for the information. And

1:02:14

UM, it's it's almost

1:02:17

impossible to believe Bezos.

1:02:20

Um. Well, it's a really complicated

1:02:22

saga. UM. I don't know how far you want me to

1:02:24

go back. But the the Inquirer was very susceptible

1:02:27

to accusations that they had

1:02:29

political motives, and Bezos

1:02:31

and his representatives had had been floating the possibility

1:02:34

that they were doing the work for the Trump administration

1:02:36

to embarrass Bezos as an owner of the

1:02:38

Washington Post, and in the negotiations,

1:02:42

um, the Inquirer essentially

1:02:45

was threatening Bezos

1:02:48

with the release of all of this, these these

1:02:50

embarrassing photos, saying you have to

1:02:52

stop accusing us of having political motives.

1:02:54

It wasn't politically motivated at all, simply

1:02:56

a good story. And then Bezos turns

1:02:59

around and publishes told his emails um

1:03:01

and suggest that there were political motives and suggests

1:03:04

that studies were involved, and

1:03:06

then sympathies swing to his side. It was this

1:03:08

brilliant move. If people remember that

1:03:10

episode at all, they probably think Bezos

1:03:13

did the right thing. And as I untangled

1:03:15

it, I sort of at least I concluded

1:03:18

that there weren't political motivations, so the

1:03:20

Staudies weren't involved. They

1:03:22

may have hacked Beazos' phone. We kind of don't

1:03:24

know, but it was. It was simply a sort of brilliant

1:03:27

pr master master

1:03:29

stroke, and they edited

1:03:31

the Inquirer ended up getting fired. Um,

1:03:35

you know, and I think we we That was

1:03:37

my excerpt in Bloomberg Business Week,

1:03:40

and the cover line was Bezos wins again. And

1:03:42

of course because he did right and this

1:03:44

is one where by all measures, he should

1:03:46

have been embarrassed, and he kind of came out on top

1:03:49

the New York Post with another memorable

1:03:52

headline, Bezos exposes

1:03:54

Pecker, referring to David

1:03:57

Pecker was the editor of the UM

1:04:00

Inquirer and had already

1:04:04

been under pressure

1:04:06

because of the catching killed deals

1:04:08

they had done to protect Donald Trump

1:04:11

UM and were some I don't

1:04:14

remember what the problem was. I guess that's a violation

1:04:16

of campaign finance laws. And he was

1:04:20

sort of in limbo with the Southern District.

1:04:22

Is that what took place there? Yeah,

1:04:25

they had a non prosecution agreement

1:04:27

with the Southern District of New York that required

1:04:30

am I, the company that operated

1:04:32

the National Inquirer, to to to

1:04:35

be a good citizen, to not break the law,

1:04:37

to play by the rules. And so when

1:04:39

the Washington Post and Gavin de Becker

1:04:42

Bezoss representative started

1:04:44

insinuating that the Inquirer was

1:04:46

doing the work of the Trump administration to embarrass

1:04:49

Jeff Bezos, UM, you

1:04:51

know that was that was sensitive

1:04:53

for for am I, and Pecker wanted

1:04:56

wanted the Dylan Howard, the under the Inquiry

1:04:58

to kind of settle settle settled the matter.

1:05:02

That's just an incredible story. And I

1:05:04

guess the the lesson is, if

1:05:06

you're in the business of challenging wealthiest

1:05:09

people in the world with lots of resources,

1:05:12

you probably don't want to do it while you're

1:05:14

on double secret probation is

1:05:16

probably a bit. There's a line from

1:05:18

the Wire that I love in this in this context,

1:05:21

if you come at the King, you better not

1:05:23

miss And they

1:05:25

came at the King and they missed.

1:05:28

Before we get to our favorite questions, I

1:05:30

have to ask you some recent news that

1:05:33

came out after the book

1:05:36

was published. What do you make of this eight

1:05:38

point four billion dollar purchase

1:05:41

of MGM. Is this about

1:05:44

Amazon Prime or is this about

1:05:47

Bezos getting to hang with Hollywood

1:05:50

Royalty. Well,

1:05:52

you can hang with Hollywood Royalty without MGM.

1:05:55

It's about intellectual property. It's about

1:05:57

the vault of franchisees, the deep.

1:06:00

The MGM has James Bond,

1:06:02

the Rocky Series, Legally Blonde, et

1:06:05

cetera, RoboCop um. Amazon

1:06:07

is facing the likes of Disney

1:06:10

Plus and an Apple. Um

1:06:12

you know, not just Netflix, Paramount,

1:06:15

Peacock Network and and franchises

1:06:18

are are going to be a big differentiator.

1:06:21

UM In addition, we talked about

1:06:23

the advertising business and with MGM,

1:06:25

Amazon gets this vault of this catalog

1:06:28

of archival programming.

1:06:30

They can funnel all that into Prime video

1:06:33

and into another streaming service I m DBTV,

1:06:36

which is it's free to use and it's

1:06:38

supported by advertising, and and

1:06:40

this is like, this is these are table

1:06:42

stakes now in the new streaming wards being

1:06:45

able to mint franchises and have

1:06:47

very deep catalogs of libraries of archival

1:06:50

programming. Really interesting. All

1:06:52

right, for our last regular question, I'm just

1:06:54

gonna throw a curveball at you and

1:06:57

say congratulations on

1:07:00

winning the Amazon Whole Food sweep

1:07:02

steaks. Okay,

1:07:05

I love this story. Yeah, thank you Berry.

1:07:08

Um, I is

1:07:10

that correct? Yes, I'm

1:07:13

working on this book and I got a call telling

1:07:15

me that I won a Whole Food

1:07:17

sweep stakes and I had never entered any but

1:07:20

apparently if you use your Amazon credit

1:07:22

cards and a Whole Foods, who got entered in?

1:07:24

And what are the chances I won? And

1:07:27

I thought it was a fraud. It sounds

1:07:29

like a telemarketing scam totally.

1:07:32

And I and I think, Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna

1:07:34

look into this because somebody's abusing you

1:07:36

know, the Amazon name, and I find

1:07:39

out that it's real, and of

1:07:41

course I didn't, I didn't accept it. But it

1:07:44

was just so peculiar. I mean, what what are

1:07:46

the what are the chances I could be eating you

1:07:49

know, free and whole foods now, But sadly

1:07:51

my journalistic obligations prevented

1:07:54

me from accepting it. That's

1:07:56

pretty hilarious. All right, Let's jump to our favorite

1:07:59

questions that we ask all

1:08:01

of our guests. And let's start

1:08:03

with and I asked this to everybody, not just

1:08:06

to you. What are you streaming these days?

1:08:08

Give us your favorite Netflix and Amazon

1:08:10

Prime shows? Interesting?

1:08:13

Let's see, Um, we

1:08:16

just started Halston

1:08:18

this is the you and McGregor fashion

1:08:21

thing on Netflix. We're only one episode

1:08:23

in my I'll reserve judgments

1:08:26

on that. Um. The Michael

1:08:29

Douglas series Comisky

1:08:32

Method, so they just did season three. I've

1:08:35

loved that show. The opening of

1:08:37

the first episode at the funeral is

1:08:40

just totally hilarious. Um,

1:08:44

and I haven't been watching a lot of

1:08:46

TV. So those are the two right now.

1:08:50

UM. I tried, I have I have young

1:08:52

daughters, teenage daughters. I

1:08:54

tried to introduce one to a classic film,

1:08:57

rain Man over the weekend the

1:09:00

great Dustin Hoffman films, and she wanted

1:09:02

to watching halfway halfway through.

1:09:06

UM, so I don't know, maybe maybe you

1:09:09

know, it's not it's not as moving

1:09:12

for for the younger generation. My

1:09:14

experience is that the younger

1:09:16

generation can't enjoy

1:09:19

the pacing which is so much slower.

1:09:22

I mean, unless you go to something like the front page

1:09:24

or bringing up baby. The pacing

1:09:27

of movies from the fifties,

1:09:29

sixties, seventies, eighties are just so much

1:09:32

slower than you know, how

1:09:34

how rapid the jokes come and

1:09:36

how fast explosions come. Today it's

1:09:39

a different era and and they

1:09:41

don't have the tolerance for that. I

1:09:45

think that might be true, and in the exactly the

1:09:47

same way as I rejected the

1:09:50

movies of my parents generation. I'm

1:09:53

now and there's receiving rooms. Yeah,

1:09:55

no, it's it's everything is accelerating. Let's

1:09:57

let's talk a little bit about your career and

1:09:59

ment yours who helped guide and

1:10:02

shape your career? Well?

1:10:04

Um, I think probably the most influential

1:10:07

with Stephen Levy, um, technology

1:10:09

writer at at Newsweek Magazine.

1:10:12

UM. He has written great books

1:10:14

about Apple and Facebook and Google. And

1:10:16

seeing him work and the way he writes was

1:10:18

always very inspirational to me. Um

1:10:22

George Hackett was an editor of

1:10:24

mine at Newsweek magazine. He was he

1:10:26

was quite influential and just a great, great

1:10:29

editor. And then um at Josh

1:10:31

Turangle, the former editor of Business Week who

1:10:33

brought me over from from the New York Times,

1:10:35

and the way he managed people

1:10:37

and his story sensibility, the way he

1:10:40

really refreshed business Week. When Bloomberg

1:10:42

bought it was was wonderful to watch.

1:10:46

What are some of your favorite books and and what

1:10:48

are you reading right now? Let's

1:10:51

see, I'm reading Cast, the

1:10:55

wonderful book by Isabel

1:10:58

Wilkerson just about um,

1:11:00

you know, how we view racial

1:11:03

and income divisions in the in the United

1:11:05

States. That's that's been really eye opening.

1:11:08

I feel like my reading has been eclipsed by

1:11:10

self promotion and book promotion over

1:11:13

the past a few weeks. So I

1:11:15

feel like I'm really looking forward to this summer

1:11:18

when I get to maybe read some of the other

1:11:20

excellent books that have that have come out this year.

1:11:22

I read the novel Clara and the Sun

1:11:25

by A. Kazoo Is Shiguru, which

1:11:28

um you know who wrote Remains

1:11:30

of the Day is just such a wonderful

1:11:32

author. And this book is about

1:11:35

it's a sort of science fiction future where people

1:11:37

can take home home robots, and it

1:11:40

is it is such a moving novel. I actually

1:11:42

read it and then immediately reread it, And

1:11:45

so that is a book I heartily recommend.

1:11:48

What sort of advice would you give to a

1:11:50

recent college grad who was thinking

1:11:52

about a career in either investment

1:11:55

finance or or journalism or

1:11:57

both? Right, well, I would

1:11:59

have absolutely no advice on the investment

1:12:02

finance side of things, very

1:12:04

that that might be more your per view than

1:12:07

mine. Um on journalism,

1:12:09

after maybe waving my hands, uh,

1:12:12

you know, at them to get them to reconsider

1:12:16

if they were really determined, I

1:12:19

would um, I would. I would encourage

1:12:21

young journalists to kind of find their lean, you

1:12:24

know, find something that they're passionate about and

1:12:26

interested in, to go deep

1:12:28

on um and to sort of

1:12:30

master the expertise in and

1:12:33

then to just be persistent. This

1:12:35

business is all about persistence and

1:12:38

being there after everyone else has left,

1:12:40

and going a little deeper and asking that last

1:12:43

question and digging into another box

1:12:45

of files when you feel like you're exhausted

1:12:48

and want to drop. And that's that's

1:12:50

the key to this business. Right, it's not rocket science.

1:12:53

We don't we don't need PhDs to do it. But

1:12:55

often it's just sheer curiosity

1:12:58

and persistence and absorption

1:13:01

and obsession, right. I mean I

1:13:04

have become over the past decade sort

1:13:06

of obsessed with understanding how

1:13:08

Amazon works and what drives

1:13:11

Jeff Bezos, um, you

1:13:13

know, and what's good about it, what's bad about

1:13:15

it? And I think you need that kind of absorption,

1:13:17

of an obsession of curiosity to succeed

1:13:20

as a journalist today. And our final

1:13:22

question, what do you know about

1:13:24

the world of journalism today? You

1:13:26

wish you knew when you were first getting started

1:13:30

twenty plus years ago, years

1:13:32

ago. I

1:13:34

mean, it's just just such a different environment.

1:13:37

I guess I wish I had known how rapidly

1:13:39

things would change. You

1:13:42

know. I spent the first ten years in my

1:13:44

career as I as I said earlier in the conversation

1:13:46

that Newsweek, magazine and

1:13:50

Newsweek does exist, and magazines of course

1:13:52

exists, but that kind of media

1:13:55

organization no longer does. Um.

1:13:57

There there was a whole class of journal

1:14:00

who labored in the salt mine, so to

1:14:02

speak, um, not really

1:14:04

reporting and writing, but researching

1:14:07

and and and performing support

1:14:09

functions. Um, and then every week

1:14:12

would be a desperate competitive scramble

1:14:14

to get your articles in the magazine.

1:14:17

And I actually think I learned a lot from

1:14:19

that. But um, there's

1:14:22

no replacement for writing and

1:14:24

publishing and repeating and reporting

1:14:26

and getting out into the world. And

1:14:28

and those are the kinds of skills that are rewarded

1:14:30

in today's journalistic environment.

1:14:33

And so I think I might wish that if

1:14:36

I was able to foresee the way in which the media

1:14:38

climate would change that I had been,

1:14:40

that I would have been a little bit more productive

1:14:42

in my earlier, earlier years,

1:14:45

where where like success at

1:14:47

a big magazine, just being at a big magazine

1:14:49

like like news Week, seemed like a career accomplishment

1:14:52

on its own. But of course, you know that

1:14:54

world no longer exists. We have

1:14:56

been speaking with Brad Stone. He is

1:14:59

the author of Amazon Unbound,

1:15:01

Jeff Bezos and The Invention of a Global Empire.

1:15:04

Thanks Brad for being so generous with your time.

1:15:07

If you enjoyed this conversation, well

1:15:09

be sure and check out any of our previous

1:15:12

almost four hundred interviews we've done over

1:15:14

the past seven years. You

1:15:17

can find those at iTunes, Spotify,

1:15:19

wherever you get your podcasts.

1:15:22

We love your comments, feedback in suggestions

1:15:24

right to us at m IB podcast

1:15:27

at Bloomberg dot net. You can

1:15:29

sign up for my daily reads at

1:15:31

rit Halts dot com. Check out my

1:15:34

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1:15:36

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1:15:38

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1:15:41

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1:15:45

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1:15:48

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1:16:01

Rihults. You've been listening to Masters

1:16:03

in Business on Bloomberg Radio