One Click: Jeff Bezos and the rise of Amazon.com

Indeed, Richard L Brandt’s One Click: Jeff Bezos and the rise of Amazon.com starts promisingly, with its breezy narration of how Bezos learned from early mistakes, developing his site by trial and error, applying the best practices of old-world bricks and mortar shops to the mechanics and techniques of online

The story of Amazon.com and its founder is a fine introduction to the era of the dot-com boom that happens in late 90s. Indeed, Richard L Brandt’s One Click: Jeff Bezos and the rise of Amazon.com starts promisingly, with its breezy narration of how Bezos learned from early mistakes, developing his site by trial and error, applying the best practices of old-world bricks and mortar shops to the mechanics and techniques of online.

Through his book Brandt provides a riveting account of a business success story, with Bezos obviously playing the lead role, his rise from computer nerd to world- changing entrepreneur. Brandt emphasises Amazon's focus on customer satisfaction and Bezos's obsessive micro-management.

The story begins by discussing the "1-Click" ordering method available on Amazon; its business model is deceptively simple: make online shopping so easy and convenient that customers won't think twice. It can almost be summed up by the button on every page: "Buy now with one click."

In the summer of 1994, Mr. Bezos quit his job in New York as a vice president at the financial-services firm D.E. Shaw. He and his wife, MacKenzie, moved to Seattle to take advantage of the explosive growth of the Internet and to start Amazon. Most of 17 chapters are devoted to a rigorous examination of what happened after Bezos arrived in Seattle. 

Their first rental, a three-bedroom house in the suburb of Bellevue, cost $890 a month. Amazon was launched literally in a garage on July 16, 1995, just as masses of people started moving onto the Internet and before many competitors had created strong commercial sites. The company did its IPO in 1997, when it purchased its first giant warehouse. By 2000, it recorded annual losses of $1.4bn and was 'the biggest money loser on the internet', moving from 'internet poster child to internet whipping boy'. By 2010 it was worth more than $80bn, having launched the Kindle and pioneered cloud computing. The company's original name, Cadabra, was nixed after someone misheard it as "cadaver."

The company's customer service- which Bezos later called "the cornerstone of Amazon.com"-started with the founder himself answering emails. By 1999 it was manned by 500 representatives packed into cubicles and answering customers' questions.

Bezos always tried to improve the Amazon site. In June 2008, Amazon filed patent application titled "Movement recognition as input mechanism." Customers may soon be able to make purchases simply by nodding their heads at their computer, Kindle or cellphone. Industry wags have dubbed it the "1-Nod patent."

One Click is a 191-page book and short in stature, making it a quick read. While footnoted and indexed, it may not cover much new ground to those who have followed Amazon from the start.

Through detailed research and interviews with Amazon employees, competitors and observers, Richard Brandt has deciphered how Bezos thinks, what drives his actions and how he makes his business decisions. His success can be credited to his forward-looking insights and ruthless business sense.

Author Richard L. Brandt is an award-winning journalist who has been writing about Silicon Valley for more than two decades. He is well known in the technology community as a former correspondent for Business Week. He is also the author of ‘The Google Guys’ about the founders of Google. Richard lives in San Francisco.

 The book seeks to answer the question of how Bezos not only succeeded but has come to dominate - and fundamentally change -the book business and shopping itself.