Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and the Breakfast Octopus

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D Magazine have a great profile/interview with Matt Rutledge. He’s the guy that founded woot.com and sold it to Amazon several years ago.

The piece is well worth a moment’s reading. But one bit really leapt out. Rutledge is having breakfast with Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. He asks Bezos why he bought woot.com. Bear in mind that Rutledge has flown from Dallas to Seattle just to meet Bezos post aquisition.

Bezos says: “You’re the octopus that I’m having for breakfast. When I look at the menu, you’re the thing I don’t understand, the thing I’ve never had. I must have the breakfast octopus.”

Yup. Weird ehh.

2 Responses

  1. i think its a great analogy.

    for the man who knows everything about everything about internet retail, but doesnt know why the hell this young upstart site (doing the exact opposite of internet retail norms, norms which this man largely wrote), is so damn succesful. the best way to find out is to order it from the menu.

    for the man who’s had pancakes and waffles and cornflakes and every breakfast under the sun, suddenly finds himself looking at octopus on the breakfast menu and wanting to order it, he has to find out why, by acquiring the company and making the whole octopus his.

    but i love weird, weird is good. weird is not vanilla.

  2. Actually this is all to do with a having way too much cash to spend and not enough strong characters in the Boardroom to ask why are you spending the shareholders money on this acquisition Mr Bezos.
    Frankly any business which cannot generate a decent dividend after all this time in online retail needs to answer some serious questions.

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