YouSaid · the spoken record

Dana Mattioli

lines on the record: 77
first: 2024-12-19
most recent: 2024-12-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And she says, No, I'm not doing that. And he screams at her in the middle of the Seattle office. She starts crying. And someone reports to HR because it was just like such a clear violation. And Amazon actually fired those people because it went up to HR. But that sort of scenario plays out at Amazon every single team”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so she says no, the boss keeps hounding her, hounding her, and like it becomes this really tense experience. So then she emails him the top selling items from Trader Joe's from one whole week in the US. Ranked by products that were sold, and they start to disseminate that within the team. They have their blueprint to copy the top 200 items at Trader Joe's. And then he doesn't stop there. He says, now send me all the margins.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have to walk through the store. And people love to do it. It's like really delightful experience, right? So the head of the team goes about hiring the senior executive from Trader Joe's. She doesn't really know what her job's going to be. Moves out to Seattle and her first week in Seattle stumbles across this really secretive room, conference room. It has paper over the doors and the walls, brown paper so you can't see inside and she goes inside and it's filled with Trader Joe's boxes of foods and she has this light bulb moment like oh crap I've been hired to replicate my former employer From there her boss starts hounding her, saying give me any documents you retain from your time at Trader Joe's which is clearly like the collection.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Come up with ideas. And it says we want to copy the top 200 best-selling items at Trader Joe's. And they get the green light from management to do that. But Trader Joe's is a really secretive company. They don't do online shopping. It's hard to figure out what the best sellers are.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're the most competitor obsessed company I've ever covered, and I've covered companies for 18 years. Part of it is the culture because they have to be performing at all times to justify their existence to not get cut. It's this pressure cooker of an environment that people that I've spoken to that might have worked at other companies wouldn't be tempted to do illegal things, unethical things, anti-competitive things are sort of forced to their breaking point in Amazon. And I could give you an example if you like. There's a scene in the book that has resonated with a lot of people where Amazon at Jeff's behest wanted to create like a Trader Joe's like. Product line of food. He liked that Trader Joe's quirky and cool. So the team at Amazon writes the six-pager, that's how they.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, it's copycat mentality that continues to this day at Amazon. Oh, that's a good idea. Be ashamed if someone took it.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and actually, Basil's had a really hard time fundraising this idea because it was so wild. You know, it took him a really long time to get his first million dollars. Most of his investments trickled in in $50,000 increments.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so then Bezos likes what he sees. All on DE Shaw's dime, he does his research report, sees that there's legs for this, thinks that books could be the first area of selling online, and he goes on this walk with David in Central Park and says, hey, I think I'm going to quit and start an online bookshop. And David said, you know, I think that's, you already have a really good job. I think that's a good idea for someone else. And by the way, that was my idea. We might go head to head with you and compete with you on this. Bezos basically says I'll take the risk and moves out to Seattle.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She was 93, and 3% of Americans had ever been on the World Wide Web. So think of it, and you know, and David Shaw was the nerdy programmer type of person who could see the potential for it. So he Let's have my star associates and VPs look into the commercial uses for the internet. One looks into banking and Jeff looks into retail. And the idea is if they think it's worthwhile that DE Shaw will open up these verticals and they do it with the other areas. people that research the other areas for David start businesses for him that make money.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's why also part of this building the monopoly situation is that Amazon's third party sellers, 60% of what's sold on Amazon is these third-party sellers, they are so reliant on Amazon because 40% of everything sold online is there that they have to be there. And it's this weird love-hate relationship.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where are you going to go? So they could raise prices, they could flood the feed with advertisements that are annoying to you. They could do all these things to make it a lesser experience, but have you canceled your prime account? I haven't canceled.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Parad I can click Well, there's a reason for that. Amazon has been sued for being an illegal monopoly. And the idea here is that when a company is building monopoly, they have to have the best experience because they have to steal market share from their competitors. So when Amazon was coming up, when you like that experience, it was fast shipping. The quality was much better. The prices were low because they were using predatory pricing to undercut their rivals, to steal market share, get people to sign up for prime and put companies out of business. When's the last time you saw a Circuit City? Right. Circuit City, linens and things, Toys R Us. It goes on this. And I spoke to all those CEOs for this book and they lived it firsthand. Amazon was undercutting them on price to steal their customers and put them out of business.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he said, well, if that's what Bezos wants, there's other people that will handle that. So they reluctantly do that. And all the goods flood back in. And ironically, their boss who told them not to do that is now the VP of customer safety and trust. But my book found other examples. Amazon was selling carbon monoxide detectors that don't detect carbon monoxide.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Profit margin to expand, that's just a little collateral damage. Who can complain? Toughen up. So they flag this to actually, they take upon themselves to add some of the friction back into the process to sign up. Okay. And their boss yells at them. It says, take that off. And they say, well, we're trying to protect the consumer. Ostensibly, we are a customer obsessed organization, which is what they say.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Formal head and gas. There are hoodies that have strings around the neck, which are a strangulation hazard that are banned from being sold in the US because it could strangle a toddler. There are all these kids”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. So then the Chinese junk comes in within a day, and some of these parents on the team are horrified. There are children's pajamas that smell like Maldo.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they make changes to the sign up process for sellers to onboard to Amazon.com. They want to make it easy as possible. sign up and you could be selling within a day, okay? So, not really vetting these sellers. So”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I have anecdotes in the book where there are well-meaning people on the child marketplace team that they're selling clothes for children. Right. And there's a mandate from Bezos to expand selection and get more sellers into Amazon.com because the more sellers you have, the more sales you get, the more sales you get. The more sellers come on. Exactly.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Jeff liked that Intel did this. And that's what he said to his leadership team, let's do this because we have to get rid of the bottom performers. But that has unintended consequences. It means that everyone at Amazon on the white collar side Is driven to work in a way that just benefits their numbers, benefits their bottom lines, even if it's not good for you as the customer, even if it means it's unsafe for the customer, as long as it's expanding selection and increasing profits, that often is the name of the game.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there's a large part of my book gets into this toxic culture at Amazon, where employees are in this Hunger Games-like scenario where they're competing with their other employees to keep their jobs.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's a question for Bezos, I would say. You know, Starlink, which is Elon Musk's venture, is considered one of his crown jewels. Okay. So there's like definitely an appeal there. The way that Elon has it structured, it does fit into his space exploration company, SpaceX. So some people posit that should this be part of Blue Origin rather than Amazon. But as of right now, it is part of Amazon.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're going to go head to head with Elon Musk's Starlink. With this satellites, these orbital satellites, and that should launch in the next year. So they're ever-growing, and they have a lot of bandwidth to do that in ways that other publicly traded companies really don't.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They do, and it's kind of a paltry experience. And I'll tell you, 90% of my ebooks for this book have been sold on Amazon, which just tells you how much of dominant. I'll tell you something faster.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And guess what? They're only their own product. They're not even delivering it really for other people. That's just Amazon goods. They've taken over industry after industry, and that's forced bankruptcies, it's forced lack of innovation. And beyond that, Know my book gets into how they have this pattern of lying, cheating, copying their way to the top and using their leverage in all these different industries to crush competition.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, Amazon, you know, they started as this against all odds garage startup, right? But what we've seen in more recent years is that they've become the number one or two player by size in about eight different industries, you know, from retail, which we already know, 40% of everything bought online in the US is Amazon, to cloud computing where they are the biggest cloud computing company in the world. Exactly. In the US, they deliver more parcels than UPS or FedEx, and it goes on and on and on. Say that again.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Amazon's such a big company, you know, they're two trillion dollars today. And they're kind of like a giant, not kind of their giant conglomerate. They're like 15 different publicly traded companies in one company. So I wanted to do this in a way that I picked my spots. If you just cover Amazon News day in, day out, you could just write. Wire stories all day. Right. There's a million stories about them. I wanted to be deliberate and investigate them.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, they were excited that I've raised my hand. I had a history of being very scoopy, getting inside company is getting people to talk. Right.”
2024-12-19 · Masters in Business · Amazon's 'Everything War' with Dana Mattioli · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source