The Everything Store

In one sentence: Brad Stone's history of Amazon's first twenty years is the backbone source Acquired leans on throughout its Amazon episode — David calls it "one of the best business books written... of the 2000s for sure."

Overview

Brad Stone told the Acquired hosts directly, in a conversation before they recorded the episode, that there are only two reasons to write a business book — to make it a thriller, or to make it a how-to manual — and The Everything Store is both. The book reconstructs Amazon's arc from the one-page "Everything Store" concept hatched inside D. E. Shaw, through books as the structurally perfect beachhead, to the head-on standoff with Barnes & Noble. Many of the primary quotes and interior details the episode leans on — Eric Schmidt's backhanded AWS compliment, the full text of Joy Covey's email to Brad Stone shortly before her death — come directly from this book.

Why It's Worth Reading

David opens the Amazon episode by thanking Brad Stone by name; the hosts talked to him directly while prepping, partly to ask what he'd add after ten more years of history, partly to get color straight from the source. David relays Brad's own framing: "There are two reasons to write a business book. One is that it's a thriller. The other is it's a how-to manual. The Everything Store is both of those." Ben's aside: "It's a thriller, yeah."

The passage that moves the hosts most is the one printed in full at the end of the book: Joy Covey's 2013 email to Brad Stone, sent shortly before she was killed cycling. "It's almost like he fired an arrow and then followed that arc... I think Jeff is one of the most capable and effective founders ever, and I think the Amazon Juggernaut is still in its early stages" — written when Amazon was worth $120B, and correct ever since.

Sourcing

The book is the throughline of the Amazon episode: the Barnes & Noble turning point ("Bezos had predicted that Barnes & Noble would have trouble seriously competing online, and in the end, he was right"), Eric Schmidt's backhanded AWS line ("oh, the book guys figured out computer science"), and Covey's closing email are all quoted straight from it. The Walmart episode notes that it was The Everything Store that first revealed Made in America as one of Bezos's favorite books. The Costco episode draws on its account of the 2001 Sinegal–Bezos coffee meeting, after which Bezos reversed an Amazon price increase the very next day.