the story of amazon com Shortly after the Amazon com Web site launched on July 16 1995 a loud beep echoed through the company’s offices near downtown Seattle The beep alerted the Amazon com staff that the first customer had made a purchase ordering a copy of the book Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought by Douglas Hofstadter The beep sounded six more times that day and was accompanied each time by a raucous cheer from Amazon employees But those beeps quickly became more frequent and more dis tracting to the small staff as the company logged more than 12,000 worth of purchases in its first week As Amazon prepared for a con tinued onslaught of orders the beeping sound was deemed too annoying and the function was disabled built for success
b u i l t f o r s u c c e s s 6 p a g e the story of amazon com chapter one T he moving van filled with all of Jeff Bezos’s be longings had left New York City on a summer morning in 1994 and driven westward for almost 24 hours before Bezos called to designate a final desti nation Bezos had left his job as senior vice president at a prominent New York investment company to start a business of his own but he wasn’t quite sure where A day after giving up the Manhattan apartment he shared with his wife Mackenzie he made his decision He called the movers loaded a battered 1988 Chevrolet Blazer and headed to Seattle Washington While Mackenzie drove Bezos spent the time it took to cross the country working on a rough business plan for the Internet-based bookstore he had spent months researching He saw enormous potential for growth in the Internet and the World Wide Web which had only begun to be used by the general public in the fall of 1993 By the spring of 1994 hundreds of thousands of people were al ready using the Web and usage was growing at an incredible rate of 2,300 per cent per year Things don’t grow that fast outside of petri dishes Bezos said At that rate he believed that the Internet could be invisible today and ubiquitous everywhere tomorrow Settling in Seattle
Seattle is known for its numerous technology companies frequent rain and iconic Space Needle amazon com
