GeekWire’s new ‘Day 2’ podcast scrutinizes Amazon’s impact on tech, business and the world

It feels at times like the “enemy hordes are at the gates,” an Amazon shareholder instructed Jeff Bezos at the company’s annual conference in 2018. “Is this the value a person pays for obtaining this major, this strong? Is this a development? Is it likely to blow in excess of?”

The Amazon founder was keen to respond to, as we documented from within the meeting in Seattle. All large establishments “deserve to be inspected and scrutinized,” Bezos reported, acknowledging how a lot the corporation experienced grown. “It’s usual.”

Bezos explained he advises individuals inside the corporation not to acquire this scrutiny individually, which he explained can guide to a counterproductive response.

“There’s only a person way to deal with it,” he claimed, “and that is that we have to perform ourselves in these kinds of a way that when we are scrutinized, we go with flying hues.”

We’re putting all of this to the test.

GeekWire is launching a new podcast, “Day 2,” that will take a look at the effects of the company’s organization on the planet. We’ll do this by in-depth conversations with people today immediately concerned, and with authorities in the underlying issues.

As people today who follow the firm know, Bezos’ mantra is that it’s normally “Day 1,” approaching the environment with the contemporary mentality and very clear eyes of a startup.

The phrase is so infused into Amazon’s lifestyle that it is the identify of the company’s headquarters tower on its campus north of downtown Seattle. When Bezos moved workplaces, the “Day One” name went with him to the new building down the road.

So what does Amazon consider Working day 2? “Day 2 is stasis,” Bezos stated at an inner conference a couple many years in the past. “Followed by irrelevance. Adopted by excruciating, distressing drop. Followed by demise. And that is why it is generally Day 1.”

This podcast is about none of people things. We do not posit that Amazon has entered a time period of decrease. On the opposite, the business proceeds to be a single of the most impressive small business expansion stories in modern day historical past. As tech and organization reporters in Seattle, we’re privileged to get to protect these a intriguing firm in our yard.

But at a firm that developed an empire obsessing about its shoppers, what if “Day 2” could rather indicate an expanded mentality, larger sized recognition and a more substantial sense of duty for its influence on almost everything else? Could Amazon do this without shedding its impressive edge? Could the organization (and the entire world) ultimately be improved off as a result?

With Bezos stepping apart as CEO, and Andy Jassy and a new generation of leaders having the helm, there’s no superior time to question these inquiries.

Of study course, these challenges are not black and white. As our reporting has repeatedly demonstrated, Amazon has expanded its concentrate very well further than the buyer in current a long time: rallying other corporate titans to sign up for its climate pledge, launching a $2 billion housing fund, supporting a broad selection of training initiatives, basically making a homeless shelter into its campus, and maintaining corporations afloat through the pandemic. The listing goes on and on. 

Bezos individually released a $10 billion Earth Fund, and allocated $2 billion to his Working day 1 Fund for early childhood instruction and family members enduring homelessness.

In the meantime, the organization has barely stopped developing in dimension and impact. Due to the fact the conclusion of 2018, Amazon has added 650,000 new personnel, doubling in size to 1.3 million people. Its earnings have also doubled to a lot more than $21 billion per year, and its net sales are up 50% to $386 billion. Its marketplace benefit is extra than $1.5 trillion.

Its cloud computing division, Amazon Web Solutions, powers numerous of the world’s on the web organizations, bringing in $45 billion in annual revenue and $13.5 billion in profits on its have.

Back in 2018, the shareholder who asked Bezos about Amazon’s “bumpy year” cited challenges this sort of as antitrust inquiries, queries more than corporate taxes, and assaults from then-President Donald Trump. These times, the checklist would also contain its reaction to a nascent union movement its treatment of 3rd-occasion sellers its technique to artificial intelligence and privateness and its dealing with of COVID-19 in its success network. This listing could go on, way too.

“I consider Amazon is an awesome tale. Not only Jeff Bezos as an American results story, but this business is literally switching the planet,” said Jason Boyce, a former Amazon third-social gathering seller. “I’m infinitely impressed with what they have accomplished and what they are undertaking. But they have reached a stage exactly where they are so significant, and so highly effective — I problem anybody to test to do anything at all on-line that doesn’t touch Amazon in some way — that I believe we have to consider a unique seem.”

We to start with linked with Boyce immediately after spotting him in the footnotes of the U.S. Dwelling antitrust committee’s report on the large tech titans previous year, which recounted “several instances around his seventeen decades as a seller when Amazon leveraged his get the job done, undercut him on cost, and inevitably drove him out of business.”

Boyce is the co-writer of “The Amazon Jungle,” and the founder and CEO of Avenue7Media, an agency that operates with 3rd-occasion suppliers on Amazon. Soon after he joined us as a visitor on our flagship GeekWire Podcast, for episodes about the long run of retail and Amazon’s emerging levels of competition with Shopify, we requested him to collaborate and sign up for us on a standalone podcast about Amazon, and he agreed. My colleague John Prepare dinner and I, longtime business and tech journalists and GeekWire’s co-founders, will just take turns web hosting the present.

We will be bringing in a combine of friends as the episodes roll out, searching for to recognize matters from numerous views. These are elaborate problems, deserving of in-depth exploration and insightful conversations. This was underscored in our initially “Day 2” episode with Peter Dering of Peak Style, whose company issued a savagely humorous online video mocking Amazon for knocking off its preferred camera bag. As you’ll hear, Dering’s acquire on the problem is much a lot more progressed and pragmatic than a seem bite on a news section may suggest.

“I’m super grateful for the system listed here to reveal, at a further level, the ideas going on in my head and Peak Design’s head,” Dering reported as we wrapped up the dialogue. “This is just like every single other important social problem that we are dealing with suitable now. It involves a nuanced dialogue.”

The episode with Dering and an introductory conversation with Jason, John and me are obtainable now to Day 2 podcast subscribers and in the players above. We’ll have a lot more on GeekWire next 7 days.

Subscribe to the Working day 2 podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or anywhere you pay attention. (Podcast feed offered below Google Podcasts coming soon.)