Ask HN: Why Google is a poster startup, and not Amazon?
Hello! Many YC school videos casually mention Google as a great example of a successful startup, and how investors are looking for "the next Google". But I've never seen Amazon mentioned in the same context. Why? Both companies are about the same age, about the same size now, etc... Amazon went IPO 2 years after it was founded, and had not made a profit in those years. The company went on to lose money for seven more years, until in 2003 when it laid off a seventh of it's employees. Of course, by undercutting its competitors to lure in buyers, then giving away big discounts to sellers for using their platform, they became sufficiently dominant that when they pulled the rug, both sides were more-or-less stuck with Amazon's monopoly. Building warehouses, shipping tangible products, hiring thousands of lowly paid workers is supersized version of business enterprises as they have been for a long time. It is the information based foundations of Google (and Facebook for that matter) that appeals to computer and software entrepreneurs. Shipping only bits and no atoms. For one thing Amazon hires a lot of people to work in the warehouse, something Google doesn't do much of.