Checking in with Brad Stone, Author of 'Amazon Unbound'

Just Checking In

Episode show notes:

Welcome to another episode of Just Checking In. Today our guest is noted tech journalist and author Brad Stone. As senior executive editor for global technology at Bloomberg News and author of books including The Everything Store and Amazon Unbound, Brad has followed Amazon’s and Jeff Bezos’s personal evolution. In this episode, you’ll hear about the profound changes Amazon and Bezos have gone through over the last 10 years, many of them related to the company’s near-compulsive need to innovate across industries and maintain a mindset Amazon calls “Day 1.” Finally, we discuss Amazon’s notoriously tough corporate culture and Bezos’s surprisingly sharp PR skills, deployed when an extra-marital affair sparked a high-profile media scandal.

Join technology comms pros Becky Buckman and Keyana Corliss as they cut to the heart of today’s tech-news cycle and the general craziness that is high-tech corporate communications right now. With a short, not-too-serious take on the industry - with plenty of humor and irony thrown in - they’ll bring you the best in the biz, across comms and media together, for one-of-a-kind insights and perspectives you won’t hear anywhere else!

Jump straight into:

00:33 - Welcome back to Season 2 of Just Checking In!

1:45 - The new environment of the tech comms industry - “If you're a tech comms person these days, right? The news cycle is different. You've got different internal dynamics, you're trying to make do with less. It may be a good opportunity for people to reset and really think about their priorities.”

2:22 - Layoffs, layoffs, layoffs - “It's been a very interesting few weeks this past week. It's just been one layoff after another. Yeah, I mean, it was kind of like if you're not laying off people, are you even in tech?

3:18 - Season 2 guest lineup - “Let's talk about who we're going to hear from this season, cause I think we have an amazing lineup.”

5:53 - Keyana’s life recovery run - “I took a couple of months off and then I took a role outside of Silicon Valley, still in tech. And, you know, I'll sort of ease my way back into the crazy.”

7:05 - Intro to Brad Stone - “Excited about our guest today, Brad Stone, who I think many of you probably know, but he is the Senior Executive Editor for Global Technology at Bloomberg News. He's also the author of some really, really awesome books. Many of them about Jeff Bezos and Amazon. The most recent one, Amazon Unbound”.

9:30 - The genesis of Brad’s books - “With that kind of sort of intuition based as with all things, uh, for all journalists in insecurity and the feeling like, I didn't know this, this story as well as I was pretending to, I thought, oh, maybe there's room for part two of the story.”

10:43 - Looking for Amazon’s cooperation - “I sent one to Jeff and I explained what I wanted, to do. They got back to me and through a series of, I would say kind of negotiations. Over well, or discussions over what I wanted to do and how I would go about it.”

14:15 - The real challenge in writing books about Amazon: The case of AWS - “While the chapters are kind of categories, I'm also trying to tell a story.”

17:10 - Finding the common thread: Telling a time-coherent story in the ever-changing world of Amazon and Bezos - “The company almost needs to be inventive because, if you don't, you eventually slow down.”

18:15 - The Day 1 mentality: Amazon’s working culture - “Day one is the enemy of the entropy that encrusts every large company. And so it's his way of kind of creating a slogan that motivates employees.”

32:57 - Amazon’s scandals: From an alleged murderer to Lauren Sanchez - “It was surprising in the way in which it blew up was very unusual for disciplined Mr. Bezos. But perhaps, you know, when you like, look at the whole context, it's not that surprising.”

41:10 - What to expect of 2023 in the tech industry - “ I think, you know, there's gonna be a, a little blood on the floor and, um, a winnowing down of, of startups. And, maybe some, um, consolidation, you know, some bankruptcies.”

Episode resources:

Brad Stone LinkedIn and Twitter

Brad Stone

Thank you for listening to Just Checking In by Battery Ventures. Go follow Becky and Keyana on social media to know more about them. If you enjoyed this show leave a review and help us find new audiences!

This show is produced by StudioPod Media in San Francisco. Teresa Buchanan is the Show’s Producer. Nicole Genova is the Show Coordinator. Show notes are provided by nodalab.