Invent like an Owner with Dave Schappell https://www.inventlikeanowner.com/ Pinecast (https://pinecast.com) enDave Schappell Dave Schappell dave@nosnivelling.com no Invent like an Owner with Dave Schappell https://www.inventlikeanowner.com/ https://storage.pinecast.net/podcasts/covers/83737f20-d892-40bc-b60a-bfe613f4e021/full_1617245171artwork.jpg episodic © 2024 InventLikeAnOwner.com Welcome to the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, where I’ll talk with the Amazonians who helped build Amazon.com into one of the world’s most valuable companies. Yes How Amazon Raised the Bar on Recruiting Talent | John Vlastelica 9116d3fa-a029-4cdc-a15c-a10e44b0f03c Wed, 14 Jul 2021 09:00:00 -0000 01:08:13 Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with John Vlastelica to talk about how Amazon scaled recruitment. They’ll discuss the origin and impact of the Bar Raiser program, where select employees helped pick top notch applicants, the birth Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with John Vlastelica to talk about how Amazon scaled recruitment. They’ll discuss the origin and impact of the Bar Raiser program, where select employees helped pick top notch applicants, the birth of Making Great Hiring Decisions, Amazon’s behavioral interviewing training, how Matt Round’s MRT was designed for the interviewers not recruiters, and the challenges companies face scaling a high hiring bar.


John Vlastelica joined Amazon in 1998 as the Tech Recruiting Manager and then later became a Director of Recruiting. He helped build out the recruiting organization, programs and infrastructure during his 6 years there for what would become foundational to Amazon’s incredible employee growth.


Episode Resources:


What to Listen For:

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 01:55 What is the Bar Raiser Program?
  • 08:33 Hiring people that will make the overall team better
  • 10:22 Embedding high hiring standard into every interview process
  • 12:17 Tech teams and non-tech teams have different bar standards
  • 16:34 Amazon’s Interview Training Program - Making Great Hiring Decisions
  • 20:00 The art of behavioral interviewing
  • 25:04 Some of the drawbacks of the Bar Raisers program
  • 28:30 How to scale a high hiring bar
  • 32:43 People want to hire smart folks and they depend on proxies
  • 37:21 Questions and scenarios to raise the bar mentality in the early days
  • 38:48 Spent the last 16 years building Recruiting Toolbox
  • 42:07 Overinvest in your hiring standards early
  • 44:20 Bringing ownership into the recruiting culture
  • 46:53 How John helps companies through Recruiting Toolbox
  • 51:18 MRT shifted recruiting to more pipeline oriented, and allowed feedback on interview feedback, a very amazon thing to do
  • 55:53 Creating a culture of ownership and recruiting ownership
  • 59:03 Advice for CEOs and startups
]]> no What It Was like to Be Amazon’s 5th Software Engineer | Eric Benson 7b60f8ef-6922-42e9-a2f5-c8369aa5e29e Wed, 07 Jul 2021 09:00:00 -0000 01:08:14 Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Eric Benson to discuss his myriad early software engineering projects at a time when Amazon was rapidly growing as a company. He implemented Book Matcher (which didn’t last long) and the Similar Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Eric Benson to discuss his myriad early software engineering projects at a time when Amazon was rapidly growing as a company. He implemented Book Matcher (which didn’t last long) and the Similarities feature, and later built the original version of Weblabs that helped test which Amazon features were optimal. Eric also mentored many of the new software engineers, and later worked to port Amazon from Digital Unix to Linux (along with Bob Vadnais, and others).


Eric Benson joined Amazon in 1996 as the 5th software engineer. He is currently a Software Consultant at United States Digital Service (USDS), a government agency composed of a group of technologists from diverse backgrounds working across the federal government to transform critical services for the people.


Episode Resources:


What to Listen For:

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 02:39 Amazon's multi-day outage in 1997
  • 05:15 Back then there was no backup server, just one customer database
  • 07:09 Joining Amazon in 1996
  • 10:00 Improving the website software was one of the first tasks
  • 12:52 Book Matcher: people get recommendations after posting a rating
  • 15:36 Developing the Similarities feature
  • 24:10 Instant Recommendations
  • 25:31 Promoting unusual items to show up in recommendations
  • 27:00 Building v1 of Weblabs
  • 34:16 People get burned out when there’s too much information
  • 37:34 CatSubst is putting marks in the HTML file to notify the software it serves
  • 39:44 Experimenting between showing 3 and 5 similar items
  • 41:09 Is every new feature slowing down the site?
  • 42:54 The biggest problem with CatSubst
  • 45:11 The hardware cost per unit was very high
  • 49:21 Hardships of the engineering team while using Linux
  • 53:27 Rufus the Dog and several site launches
  • 57:26 Helping new engineers with language and coding
  • 01:01:13 Software engineering at Amazon was too advanced for packaged software solutions from 3rd parties
  • 01:04:05 From a small business to becoming a huge company
]]> no How Amazon Prime’s Subscription Management Service was Invented | Neil Roseman & Jorrit Van der Meulen b6f356f3-56b7-4209-8066-dc3f6b191dc5 Wed, 30 Jun 2021 09:00:00 -0000 00:54:50 Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Neil Roseman & Jorrit Van der Meulen. The discussion revolves around Amazon's DVD rental business which was launched outside of the US, the significance of the Subscription Management Servic Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Neil Roseman & Jorrit Van der Meulen. The discussion revolves around Amazon's DVD rental business which was launched outside of the US, the significance of the Subscription Management Service, and the transition to the Agile/Scrum product development methodology at Amazon.


Neil Roseman is the former VP for Software Engineering at Amazon. He is currently the Technologist in Residence at Summit Partners - a funding company committed to finding and partnering with exceptional entrepreneurs to help them accelerate their growth and achieve dramatic results. Jorrit Van der Meulen originally joined Amazon in 1999 and left in 2005. After working at Zillow for nearly four years, he left and rejoined Amazon in 2008 as the VP for Content Sites. He's currently the VP for Amazon European Retail.


Episode Resources:


What to Listen For:

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 02:51 Many people who don't live in the UK or Germany weren’t aware of Amazon’s DVD rental business
  • 08:13 What happened after DVD rental was launched in the UK and Germany
  • 10:27 Figuring out how to ship DVD’s and then taking them back into rotation
  • 12:18 The window people want to rent a DVD is super short
  • 16:05 Reducing complexity by picking a market that was more solvable
  • 19:35 How Jorrit joined Amazon
  • 21:37 Launching the Subscription Management Service and moving to agile development
  • 26:43 It was process that was both business and technical
  • 28:33 Meeting with Jeff Bezos and the Subscription Service team
  • 33:15 Key features of the Subscription Management Service
  • 36:43 The difficult (and easier) aspects of creating Amazon Prime
  • 40:52 Focus on creating an appealing pricing program
  • 46:06 Integrating the business and development functions
  • 49:26 Jorrit runs Amazon’s retail business in Europe
  • 50:17 Neil is currently the Technologist in Residence at Summit Partners
]]> no How Amazon Built its Merchant Selling Platform | John Rossman e51c035b-95b4-45de-ac29-8e039f518da4 Wed, 23 Jun 2021 09:00:00 -0000 01:01:15 Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with John Rossman. They talk about how the Merchants@ program was built from scratch, why working directly with third party sellers prompted the principle of seller obsession, launching the Apparel a Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with John Rossman. They talk about how the Merchants@ program was built from scratch, why working directly with third party sellers prompted the principle of seller obsession, launching the Apparel and Sporting Goods categories, developing smaller teams within the retail organization, and essentially, how Amazon’s Leadership Principles led the way to writing his book, “The Amazon Way”.


John Rossman is the former Director of Merchant Integration and Enterprise Services at Amazon. He spearheaded the launch of the Merchants@ program, one of the largest B2B networks with thousands of sellers, offering products in new categories such as apparel, sporting goods, consumer electronics, health and beauty, and home.


Episode Resources:


What to Listen For:

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 02:39 What is the Merchants@ Program?
  • 04:41 Prior to Amazon, John was in a startup technology company
  • 09:04 While there was Customer Obsession, they needed to create Seller Obsession
  • 12:43 Inventory and catalog refreshes from daily to hourly
  • 14:06 Account management team within the retail organization
  • 15:51 Engineering and design work for customer and seller experience
  • 17:43 Gently enforcing the parity clauses of the seller agreements
  • 19:03 Building a three-option integration path for sellers
  • 22:36 Working directly with third party sellers
  • 24:30 The big launch for the Apparel category, followed by Sporting Goods
  • 27:31 The evolution of Item Matching
  • 30:59 Knowing when to have and not to have patience on something
  • 31:49 A big no to “handshake’ credit card deals to maintain customer trust
  • 34:15 Self service registration, so that seller’s could register without talking to anyone
  • 35:50 Product promotions and processing refunds
  • 38:26 Merchant.com was essentially a business outsourcing arrangement
  • 41:44 Classification is one of the tricky parts in creating a great customer experience
  • 44:17 M.com business wasn’t winning
  • 45:41 How "The Amazon Way" book came to be
  • 47:41 Being good has never been the bar at Amazon
  • 49:36 Truly understand the nature of experimentation in the business
  • 51:42 Getting clarity in your thinking and getting senior leaders to sit down and listen
  • 54:36 Startups should focus on instrumentation and metrics
  • 56:36 You don't want to scale when you don't understand your unit cost basis
]]> no How Amazon Created a Personalized Store for Every Customer | Josh Petersen & Matt Round e24fa8d9-1cd9-48be-8157-fb6ebacd2f9d Wed, 16 Jun 2021 09:00:00 -0000 01:03:53 Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Josh Petersen and Matt Round. The conversation takes us back to Amazon’s early years, when the Personalization team was put together and built on features such as Similarities, Instant Recommend Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Josh Petersen and Matt Round. The conversation takes us back to Amazon’s early years, when the Personalization team was put together and built on features such as Similarities, Instant Recommendations, Cart Recommendations and more. The team strove to iteratively improve key features; over time, the Personalization and Automation worked toward Jeff Bezos’ vision of “a store for every customer”. They also talk about the effectiveness of small cross-functional teams, feature testing through Weblabs, MRT (Matt’s Recruiting Tool) - a tool still being used today, and much more.


For over 20 years at Amazon, Josh Peterson helped create highly visible and innovative technologies used by millions of customers. He was the Director for the Personalization team and then led different teams at Amazon including Prime Photos/Cloud Drive, AWS, and Bots/NLU. Matt Round is the former Director of Software Development, and later became the Managing Director responsible for establishing the Amazon Development Centre in Scotland (a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com) including full responsibility for team building, project selection and implementation oversight.


Episode Resources:


What to Listen For:

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 02:01 Personalization feature examples
  • 05:17 How Personalization features were evaluated
  • 08:00 Item to item similarities versus collaborative filtering
  • 09:40 Personalization aims to build out a store for every customer
  • 12:17 Putting together a team focused on Personalization
  • 14:12 Tracking which features were generating which results
  • 17:12 How do Weblabs work?
  • 20:17 Big wins for the Personalization features
  • 24:22 How did Personalization work for new customers?
  • 28:53 Impact on Editorial team when Personalization became more automated
  • 32:30 Amazon’s customer reviews
  • 34:14 Emergence of advertising on Amazon
  • 39:29 Two Pizza Team model: small cross-functional teams with a narrow focus
  • 42:57 Personalized merchandising and Automated merchandising
  • 47:27 Matt’s Recruiting Tool (MRT): a simple tool to manage the interview process
  • 50:24 The Amabot Story
  • 54:46 Iquitos: the first successful microservice at Amazon
  • 59:10 Pressure from the product side produced innovation on the technical side
  • 01:00:14 By testing a lot of things, you learn about things you don’t know.
  • 01:02:56 Listening to data is very important
]]> no How Amazon Built the World’s Biggest and Smartest Product Catalog | Rebecca Allen c1bd353a-d033-4c06-99ab-acbcf739ba18 Wed, 09 Jun 2021 09:00:00 -0000 01:00:45 Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Rebecca Allen. They travel through memory lane by talking about the restructuring of Amazon’s catalog using Base 36, the complications of recycling ISBNs that led to the creation of Amazon’s Sta Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Rebecca Allen. They travel through memory lane by talking about the restructuring of Amazon’s catalog using Base 36, the complications of recycling ISBNs that led to the creation of Amazon’s Standard Identification Number (ASIN), how the Title Authority feature helped customers find books through associations, the seemingly impossible to accomplish Used Books category, and so much more.


Rebecca Allen is a former Software Engineer at Amazon from March 1996 to September 1998. She helped in the programming of creating and maintaining the book catalog, creating tools to modify the Amazon catalog, and much more.


Episode Resources:


What to Listen For:

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 02:36 Discovering Amazon and then joining the team
  • 05:25 Hired to work on catalog and search engine
  • 07:12 The original catalog sources weren’t customer facing
  • 10:16 Who made the requests to edit the catalog
  • 11:27 Developing the typo tool to allow the catalog department to fix content errors
  • 14:03 The complications of recycling ISBNs; building the Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN)
  • 21:31 People were worried about the backward compatibility of ASINs
  • 24:09 ASINs have been increasing rapidly over the years
  • 27:37 Base 36 is a really unique solution, but has worked extremely well
  • 29:26 Definition of Biblio Records
  • 34:38 What is Title Authority?
  • 37:21 Helping readers find what they want through associations
  • 41:38 Have ASINs been licensed or was it built just for Amazon?
  • 42:35 Introducing the Used Books catalog from the Library of Congress
  • 45:36 Order database broke down when Used Books was launched
  • 48:47 Differing opinions and the pressure to convince people
  • 50:58 Coming up with alphabetical search results
  • 54:21 How the catalog set up Amazon competitively
  • 57:00 “If you know your problem, your solution will be better.” - Rebecca Allen
]]> no How Amazon Used Imagination and Technology to Invent for Customers | Maryam Mohit dfe92f82-0119-4c4b-a0a3-4b0da198e383 Wed, 02 Jun 2021 07:00:00 -0000 00:59:51 Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Maryam Mohit. They talk about the different iterations of the early Amazon website that massively improved customer experience. Key improvements included navigation, browse, adding search to the Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Maryam Mohit. They talk about the different iterations of the early Amazon website that massively improved customer experience. Key improvements included navigation, browse, adding search to the homepage, personalizing the website, adding electronic gift certificates, expanding to new categories and much more. It was all made possible by listening to customers and translating their confusion and input into innovative product solutions.


Maryam Mohit, former VP for Site Development, was one of Amazon’s earliest employees, and was hired to “make the Amazon website interactive”. She went from working with a small initial team (one HTML developer and hiring the first QA) to running what became a department of more than 200 front-end engineers, web developers, designers, editors and researchers responsible for the features and functionality of the website, and the overall online customer experience.


Episode Resources:


What to Listen For:

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 02:23 Joining Amazon in 1996
  • 07:15 Talked to customers to understand the problems they were having with the Amazon website
  • 11:18 Search page wasn’t yet a part of the Amazon homepage
  • 11:51 The Amazon Checkout pipeline was a 12-page process
  • 13:35 Barnes and Noble was the biggest competition
  • 14:22 What Amazon’s V2 homepage looked liked
  • 15:58 Goals set during the site redesign
  • 19:13 The 1-Click ordering feature and how it came to be
  • 27:14 After every major project, teams did post-mortem sessions
  • 30:53 Executing customer feedback and incorporating it into the Amazon website
  • 32:14 Amazon’s V4 launch was a holiday release
  • 36:56 HTML 1.0 was basically writing every page by hand
  • 39:29 With V5, Amazon launched other products aside from books (music/CDs)
  • 45:50 Signed their Meeting maker launch schedule in blood
  • 47:39 Tabbed navigation introduced for the first time
  • 50:52 V6 focused on Amazon Video/DVD store and the holiday gift center
  • 55:00 Feel the urgency of the pain that customers are saying in their own voice
]]> no How Amazon Built its Associates Affiliate Marketing and Got Big Fast | Shawn Haynes d48fc4be-98b6-45fa-ba83-9b99db8b2f99 Wed, 26 May 2021 09:00:00 -0000 00:53:36 Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Shawn Haynes. They discuss how the Amazon Associates team built and grew the affiliate marketing program. Shawn grew the team from several hundred initial affiliate marketing websites to more th Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Shawn Haynes. They discuss how the Amazon Associates team built and grew the affiliate marketing program. Shawn grew the team from several hundred initial affiliate marketing websites to more than 500,000 by the time he moved on. He shares how the learnings from early Associates economics, such as focusing on cost per new customer rather than margin on individual sales, helped inform the Premium Associates and Megadeals that Amazon pursued later.


Shawn Haynes was the first Amazon Associates Program Manager and later was a Director of Product Development for Electronics.


Episode Resources:


What to Listen For:

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 02:39 Amazon Associates Affiliate Marketing
  • 04:07 Why work at Amazon?
  • 07:51 Hired to grow the Amazon Associates program
  • 10:57 How innovative affiliate marketing was back in 1996
  • 13:09 Commission rates third party sites could earn
  • 17:24 Amazon Associates Getting Big Fast
  • 21:15 Initial challenge after joining Amazon Associates
  • 25:35 Seemingly simple components that needed a new system
  • 31:30 Associates Central is still working and serving customers
  • 33:31 Different types of Associates site
  • 36:32 Crohn’s Disease specialist leaving a review on their own book
  • 39:19 How the Associates program supported megadeals
  • 43:07 Promoting Amazon’s Best Seller list drove huge customer demand
  • 44:37 Tips for new entrepreneurs to be more innovative
  • 46:24 Many early deals were based on ad impressions
  • 49:20 Amazon’s Core Values that stood out for Shawn
  • 52:02 The David Breashears story
]]> no Building the Amazon Website in the Late 90s | Alex Edelman 6deac464-8071-4138-a244-95b1e34abad7 Wed, 19 May 2021 09:00:00 -0000 00:50:15 Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Alex Edelman. They talk about how an English Major from the University of Pennsylvania joined Amazon as the company’s first dedicated “HTML Wizard”, why the V3 project (in 1997) was mainly about Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Alex Edelman. They talk about how an English Major from the University of Pennsylvania joined Amazon as the company’s first dedicated “HTML Wizard”, why the V3 project (in 1997) was mainly about obsession over customer experience, the thrilling yet exhausting experience during Launch Nights, and how a boating accident led to shared ownership through pager rotation.


Alex Edelman is an internet veteran. He was Amazon.com's first web developer, and has decades of experience building and scaling innovative web sites, mobile apps, and web service APIs. Lately, his focus is on serving his family's community, often leading in school fundraising and event planning.


Episode Resources:


What to Listen For:

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 02:16 How did you get to Amazon?
  • 06:07 Amazon set its eyes on the growing internet presence
  • 07:04 Hired under the site development and editorial team
  • 08:10 First major project after joining Amazon
  • 13:11 Reason why relational databases weren't an option before
  • 14:20 Pushing for the customer recommendations feature
  • 15:19 The difficulties of developing Amazon V3
  • 17:12 Engineers built basic templating system for editorial team to use
  • 19:33 Launch Nites of big projects
  • 24:32 It’s a collective mission to serve the customers
  • 25:47 Product images and developing an image server
  • 29:29 The Pager Story
  • 33:01 From books to launching new products
  • 37:18 Macro templates and expansion of UI features
  • 39:53 What is brutal triage?
  • 41:52 Young technologies don’t have great tooling
  • 43:26 Winning the Just Do It award (3 times)
  • 46:43 Interface programming has come a long way
]]> no How Amazon Automated its Google Advertising and Drove Billions in Sales | Blake Scholl 2d6a2368-2f46-45b1-8790-596a59875908 Wed, 12 May 2021 09:00:00 -0000 00:52:38 Today, on the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Blake Scholl. They discuss Blake’s time working on the Amazon Personalization team, and how he went on to build the team that built Amazon’s Automated Advertising engine, that dynamically placed Today, on the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Blake Scholl. They discuss Blake’s time working on the Amazon Personalization team, and how he went on to build the team that built Amazon’s Automated Advertising engine, that dynamically placed ads on Google Ads (before Google even had an API). Amazon’s Automated Advertising engine started slow, but went on to drive billions in profitable sales for the company. It was fun to hear not only about the successes, but also about the missteps along the way.

Blake was formerly the Manager of Automated Advertising and Social Networks, and is currently the Founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, which is redefining commercial flight by bringing supersonic flight back to the skies.


Episode Resources:


What to Listen For:

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 02:44 Why did you join Amazon?
  • 04:45 First project in the Personalization Services team
  • 08:13 The Personalization Service algorithm
  • 11:40 Experiencing the early days of Google Ad Words
  • 19:47 The plan to be the ‘default’ app for online shopping
  • 20:41 How long it took to build Google paid placements
  • 25:03 Writing product ad content and pricing range
  • 27:43 Placing ads on Google pre API
  • 33:21 Running Google Ads on corporate credit card exceeding the limit
  • 35:28 Amazon’s first version of a Pizza Team
  • 36:24 The most cringe-worthy moments
  • 39:10 Screening automation on non-profitable ads
  • 40:46 The confluence of two bugs
  • 42:22 Tips for innovators to succeed in their business ventures
  • 44:56 Post Amazon business startups and founding Boom Supersonic
]]> no Building Amazon’s Customer Service Organization | Colleen Byrum & Jane Slade 74c8e379-fc84-4788-8d22-9a44fbffb650 Wed, 05 May 2021 09:00:00 -0000 00:48:23 Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Colleen Byrum and Jane Slade. The discussion surrounds how the Customer Service team wasn't just the people in the Customer Service department, but everyone who joins the company. In the early d Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Colleen Byrum and Jane Slade. The discussion surrounds how the Customer Service team wasn't just the people in the Customer Service department, but everyone who joins the company. In the early days, almost all employees got trained in Customer Service support, even engineers and SVPs!


Jane Slade, former director of Customer Service Strategy - Customer Experience, Product Development, Finance, and Operations. Colleen Byrum, former director of Customer Service and former VP for Amazon.de and Amazon.co.uk. Recently, both were working at Freightera.


Episode Resources:


What to Listen For:

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 02:03 What customer service support was like in the early days
  • 04:09 Varying questions from Amazon’s early adaptors
  • 05:58 Training for customer support was done basically side by side
  • 06:57 Mid-May 1996 was the first flood of customers
  • 08:40 Early customer support was phone-only before email became dominant
  • 09:45 Jeff Bezos liked to hire smart people (advanced degrees were a good proxy)
  • 12:00 The number one Customer Service question
  • 12:32 What happened after the Wall Street Journal surge?
  • 19:04 Jeff looked for intuitive qualities in people
  • 20:57 Massive search to fill up shortage in Customer Service headcount
  • 22:50 Amazon Customer Service support scaling up
  • 25:33 Third party CS software could not keep up with the existing volume
  • 29:15 Customers call because something went wrong
  • 31:43 Figuring out which orders should go first
  • 34:48 Key metrics in sending and tracking orders
  • 36:18 Hands are full during Christmas and people are being sent to distribution centers
  • 39:11 Customer Service is an incubator for other jobs in Amazon
  • 40:32 Working around very small vendors for books
  • 42:47 What’s the most memorable online complaint?
  • 44:07 CS lessons for startup companies
]]> no Refining Amazon’s Search Engine | Dwayne Bowman and Ruben Ortega 7209816f-700a-4503-9a79-70ad5bcb77ad Wed, 28 Apr 2021 09:00:00 -0000 00:42:27 Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Dwayne Bowman and Ruben Ortega. They discuss the birth of Bowtega Box, maintaining the balance between adding new features and continuous upscaling and customer support, and redesigning and refi Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Dwayne Bowman and Ruben Ortega. They discuss the birth of Bowtega Box, maintaining the balance between adding new features and continuous upscaling and customer support, and redesigning and refining Amazon's Search functionality.


Ruben is the former director of Amazon's Mechanical Turk and CTO of A9.com (Amazon’s innovative search subsidiary), and was responsible for its early scaling and technical success. He also participated in designing infrastructure that could dynamically scale from hundreds to thousands of transactions per second. Dwayne, a former software engineer at Apple, was Amazon’s former Director of Engineering and took part in redesigning Amazon's Search engine.


Episode Resources:


What to Listen For:

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 01:40 How Amazon’s Bowtega Box came to be
  • 06:52 Making it easier for customers to navigate such as browse tree for relevant searches
  • 08:13 Why was the alphabetical algorithm the only option in 1996-1997?
  • 09:47 Sales jumped significantly when Bowtega Box was launched
  • 11:21 Fixing Amazon’s Search feature for better user experience
  • 15:23 Building a catalog for a new book consumed a lot of time
  • 17:53 Balancing new features versus scaling and support
  • 19:08 Preventing downtime while Search updates are ongoing
  • 22:03 Hire people who take the problem and solve it
  • 24:08 Without A/B Testing, take the right signal for the next step
  • 25:45 Where did the Bowtega name originate?
  • 26:44 What was Amazon like in 1997 - 1998?
  • 28:10 The Bar Raiser team
  • 30:48 Amazon’s Search team set the bar for hiring engineers
  • 32:06 How did the product mix change search complexity?
  • 34:22 Amazon’s first word-based ad product
  • 36:18 Expanding the accessibility of Search in e-commerce
]]> no Setting Up Amazon Marketplace | Joel Spiegel d50fcb4d-a663-451e-b62f-f960fa11b908 Wed, 21 Apr 2021 09:00:00 -0000 00:51:51 Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Joel Spiegel - the former VP of Engineering and VP of Auctions & Marketplace Businesses at Amazon - and currently a Trustee at Grinnell College. He is one of the leading figures in Amazon's Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Joel Spiegel - the former VP of Engineering and VP of Auctions & Marketplace Businesses at Amazon - and currently a Trustee at Grinnell College. He is one of the leading figures in Amazon's transition from a retail-centric business model to a marketplace-driven business model.


Joel worked at tech pioneers including Visicorp, HP, Apple and Microsoft before joining Amazon.com in 1997. He talks about his busy years after joining Amazon as well as the seemingly endless challenges of restructuring the company to cater to both buyers and sellers along with the technical aspects that made all these changes possible.


Episode Resources:


What to Listen For:

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 01:52 How it all started for Joel
  • 06:09 Other big contributors in the early days
  • 07:34 What made Joel decide to join Amazon?
  • 09:31 The first projects and early web development
  • 11:32 Splitting database and different technical issues every month
  • 14:27 How Amazon became a third-party seller marketplace
  • 21:02 From a general manager to supervising the marketplace
  • 21:49 Why Amazon Auctions were necessary
  • 26:29 The introduction of the Best Seller List
  • 28:32 Evolution of selling through Auctions and zShops to creating Amazon Marketplace
  • 34:26 Convincing retail customers to try out Amazon Marketplace
  • 38:43 Seller Central: building tools for sellers
  • 41:54 Launching of Single Detail Page made buying products from Marketplace Sellers work for Amazon shoppers
  • 45:05 It wasn’t easy to get buyers and sellers in the early days
  • 48:12 What future entrepreneurs can learn from Amazon’s transition to a Marketplace-driven business model
]]> no How We Built It | Kim Rachmeler 709da904-7be5-4a51-b390-fa11757ae718 Wed, 14 Apr 2021 09:00:00 -0000 00:52:24 In our first ever episode, Dave speaks with Kim Rachmeler, former VP Worldwide Discovery and member of the S-Team at Amazon.com, Inc. She’s a skilled engineer and web developer whose efforts helped build and develop Amazon literally from the ground up. Sh In our first ever episode, Dave speaks with Kim Rachmeler, former VP Worldwide Discovery and member of the S-Team at Amazon.com, Inc. She’s a skilled engineer and web developer whose efforts helped build and develop Amazon literally from the ground up. She shares the challenges of working with a small team of engineers when tech engineers were scarce and some of the iconic steps the company has taken to cope with consistent monthly growth.


Episode Resources:


What to Listen For:

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 02:16 How Kim started at Amazon
  • 04:50 What three things do you need to want something?
  • 07:14 Working as a Technical Project Manager for the first time
  • 09:41 Figuring out different process and running experiments
  • 13:39 On the 3rd version release of the Amazon website
  • 15:40 It started with more or less 35 people doing everything
  • 17:20 A 30% monthly growth had created several technical issues
  • 20:31 Preventing downtime while website maintenance is ongoing
  • 23:13 Adding categories and other big changes
  • 26:15 Engineers are difficult to hire back in the day
  • 28:56 It was mainly an engineering problem for a long while
  • 29:53 From being an engineer to becoming a TPM
  • 34:20 Nightly builds prompted people to pay more attention
  • 37:16 The service-oriented architecture
  • 40:24 Just Do It Award: how it came to be
  • 41:44 “Bias for Action” as a core value
  • 45:24 Overworking resulted in success, but it’s unhealthy
  • 47:59 Tips for young entrepreneurs
]]> no 0: Trailer | Invent like an Owner 55390bcc-2c84-449c-bf51-7a9676477338 Thu, 01 Apr 2021 02:55:00 -0000 00:01:29 Welcome to the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, where I’ll talk with the Amazonians who helped build Amazon.com into one of the world’s most valuable companies. The goal of the podcast is to capture the Amazon Creation Stories and create a historical arch Welcome to the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, where I’ll talk with the Amazonians who helped build Amazon.com into one of the world’s most valuable companies.

The goal of the podcast is to capture the Amazon Creation Stories and create a historical archive... before we forget all the details -- that’s it.

And if you’re a little old school and would like email updates, sign up for my email newsletter at www.InventLikeAnOwner.com

Onward!

~ Dave Schappell

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