"Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company"
Table of Contents
1. Company Snapshot
🌍 Global HQ: Seattle, Washington (The Spheres biosphere campus)
🌐 Physical Reach:
- 300M+ customers
- 175+ fulfillment centers worldwide
- 40,000+ Amazon-branded trailers
📅 Founded: 1994 (Jeff Bezos’ garage) → IPO: 1997
🏦 Financial Scale: - Market Cap: $1.9T (2024)
- Revenue: $574B (2023) → More than Finland’s GDP
2. Core Philosophy
🧬 Leadership Principles:
- Customer Obsession (Not competitor focus)
- Long-Term Thinking (7-year decision horizons)
- Invent & Simplify
🌟 Cultural Hallmarks:
- “Day 1” mentality (Anti-bureaucracy)
- Bar Raiser hiring (50% veto power for interviewers)
- 6-page memos (No PowerPoints)
3. Leadership
| Role | Leader | Superpower |
|---|---|---|
| CEO | Andy Jassy | AWS Growth Architect |
| Retail CEO | Doug Herrington | Last-Mile Genius |
| CFO | Brian Olsavsky | Margin Whisperer |
Notable Alumni:
- Jeff Bezos (Exec Chair) → Blue Origin
- Tony Hsieh → Zappos culture legend
4. Evolution Timeline
📦 1995: Sold first book (Fluid Concepts…)
⚡ 2006: Launched AWS (Now $90B business)
📊 2015: Surpassed Walmart in market cap
🤖 2024:
- $4B Anthropic investment
- Prime Air drone deliveries (1hr in 3 cities)
5. Business Architecture
💰 Revenue Breakdown:
- North America Retail: 60%
- International Retail: 22%
- AWS: 16% (But 67% of profits)
- Advertising: $48B (Faster growth than Google)
🆚 Competitive Moats:
| Competitor | Amazon’s Edge |
|---|---|
| Walmart | 200M Prime members > Store traffic |
| Microsoft | AWS has 34% cloud market share |
| FedEx | 50% of US packages now delivered by Amazon |
6. Strategic Battlegrounds
🚀 Growth Vectors:
- Healthcare (One Medical + RxPass)
- AI Services (Bedrock, Trainium chips)
- India expansion ($26B invested)
💣 Existential Risks:
- FTC antitrust lawsuits
- AWS growth slowdown (Enterprises cutting cloud spend)
7. Financial Power
| Metric | Value | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Operating Cash Flow | $84B | Can fund SpaceX 4x over |
| R&D Spend | $73B | More than Apple+Google |
- Fulfillment Cost/Sale | 29% | Walmart’s is 21% |
8. SWOT Analysis
💪 Unmatchable Strengths:
- Prime loyalty (93% renewal rate)
- AWS infrastructure moat (7x more data centers than Google)
📉 Vulnerabilities:
- Retail margins <3%
- Unionization pressures
🌱 Blue Oceans:
- Kuiper satellite internet (Competing with Starlink)
- Cashierless Go stores (Just Walk Out tech)
☠️ Nightmare Scenarios:
- AWS outage lasting days
- Bezos selling significant shares
9. 2024 Game Changers
🤖 Tech Bets:
- Project Olympus (AI-powered fulfillment)
- Rufus AI shopping assistant
🌎 Global Moves:
- Saudi Arabia $10B cloud investment
- EU Digital Services Act compliance
10. Interview Playbook
💡 Must-Know:
- STAR method for LP questions
- How Flywheel actually works
🎯 Killer Questions:
“How would you improve Same-Day Delivery margins?”
“Should Amazon spin off AWS?”
11. Why Amazon Wins
Core Advantages:
🔹 Scale as Weapon: 200M Prime members fund everything
🔹 Two-Pizza Teams: 10-person autonomous units
🔹 Failure Tolerance: Fire Phone → Echo success