TheWaterRat

There are a lot of great companies and great business men out there. Microsoft, Google, GE, Bill Gates, Warrent Buffett, Sergio Marchionne, and many more.
I am however particularly fond of one company and its founder: Amazon and Jeff Bezos.
I love them both for many reasons:
Amazon is one of the most successful and longest standing internet companies. It contributed to create e-commerce and affected the retail market more than most other companies. It changed the book publishing industry and is about to do the same again with the Kindle.
It has brought incredible innovation to the retail logistics sector and has been the first major player in the cloud computing space.

Jeff Bezos was never bothered by all the criticism he and Amazon received in the early days; he mantained his cool, his vision, and executed better than most. Amazon wasn’t an overnight success like it seems to happen to many internet companies, these days. It took time and a lot of work. They succeded through determination, vision and innovation.
They did so with a smile on Bezos’ face all the way through. There are countless magazine covers and pictures of Jeff Bezos’ happy and cheecky face. To me, it’s the face of success and confidence of a man who is above others.
Amazon’s relevance recommendation system is still one of the best and most reliable out there and it makes you wonder why more people have not copied it also in other sectors.

With all its focus on customer needs, however, Amazon cannot escape some criticism: I have two Amazon accounts, one created when I was living in the UK and one created when I was in the States. I have the same email and password on both, but Amazon seems to think that I am two different people. And I had to ‘train’ both accounts about my preferences. The system was recommending to my US alter ego books I had already bought in the UK. To me, this is silly, not to mention, insane.
And have you tried to contact Amazon with a complaint or an issue? You simply can’t.

Still, I admire Bezos and what he’s achieved. I believe that he will continue to be one of the leading business innovators for many years to come.

Whether he will win the ebooks battle or the cloud computing one, I am not sure. I am certain though that he will be around, strong and prosperous after many of his competitors have come and gone and that Amazon will be leading the way in many fields.

For my part, I like to think that I have learnt from him many valuable lessons about e-commerce and the internet business in general. About being confident about my believes and that success takes time and effort.
I am applying this philosophy and some of Amazon’s tools to my current venture.
Wish me luck.