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Earth's Most Customer Centric Company: Differentiating with Technology

Jeffrey Bezos Robert Frederick '96: November 25, 2002; Running Time: 1:24:55

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

In this lively presentation Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon.com discusses many of the technological advances that have enabled Amazon.com to be the "earth's most customer centric company".

Bezos talks about Amazon's first 30 days of operation, shows the very first home page and explains how the existence of a little known book warehouse in Roseburg Oregon led to the decision to locate Amazon in Seattle. Since 1997, Amazon has spent $800 million on technology, more than it has spent on either warehousing or marketing. A self-proclaimed "EECS-geek", Bezos tells of technological advances that have not only enabled customers to find products, (and now at 28 million items), enabled products to find customers. Hear how Amazon developed "real time personalization", how the company performs "active experiments" and learn more about salad spinners than you could ever imagine.

Also appearing is MIT alum Robert Frederick, Manager of Amazon Net Services. Frederick explains how these services enable other retail services to interact with Amazon. Hear how the company that "runs on computer science" plans for more technological advances in the future.""

Lecture Details

Location: 34-101

About the Speakers

Jeffrey Bezos

Founder and CEO of Amazon.com

In 1994, Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com, Inc., now the leading online retailer, with 59 million active customer accounts and 10 billion dollars in 2006 sales.

Bezos graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University in 1986. After college, Bezos joined FITEL, a high-tech start-up company in New York building a network to conduct international trade. Two years later, Bezos began working for Bankers Trust Company in New York, where he led the development of their computer systems and became the company's youngest vice president in 1990. From 1990 to 1994, Bezos worked for D.E. Shaw & Co where he helped build one of the most technically sophisticated quantitative hedge funds on Wall Street.