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WV

Werner Vogels

11/12/18

@ Y Combinator

Amazon's architectural changes in the late 90s aimed to scale quickly, but resulted in a brittle monolithic structure that couldn't sustain growth.

Video

YC

A Conversation with Werner Vogels

@ Y Combinator

11/12/18

Related Takeaways

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Werner Vogels

11/12/18

@ Y Combinator

In the early days of Amazon, we faced failures with companies integrating due to infrastructure issues, which led to the creation of AWS.

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Werner Vogels

11/12/18

@ Y Combinator

When I joined Amazon, I wanted to bring more academic rigor to scaling, as we needed to revisit our processes and technologies to handle significant growth.

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Werner Vogels

11/12/18

@ Y Combinator

The effectiveness of engineers at Amazon dropped as deployments slowed, primarily because database management was centralized and controlled by a conservative group of DBAs.

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Alexandr Wang

11/03/23

@ The Logan Bartlett Show

Amazon's evolution from an online bookstore to the largest data center provider illustrates how unpredictable innovations can drive a company's market value, with AWS being a prime example.

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Alexandr Wang

06/18/25

@ Y Combinator

Amazon's creation of AWS in 2006 was initially seen as a terrible idea, but it turned out to be a pivotal moment in modern business history, demonstrating the potential of cloud computing.

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Werner Vogels

11/12/18

@ Y Combinator

I realized that Amazon is not just a retailer; it's a massive technology operation, operating at a scale I had never seen before.

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Werner Vogels

11/12/18

@ Y Combinator

Each team at Amazon has its own customer set and is expected to understand their needs, which fosters a fast-moving environment for software development.

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Apoorva Mehta

06/20/14

@ Y Combinator

Using unscalable techniques, we successfully added stores like Whole Foods and Costco, leading to rapid growth and customer satisfaction.

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Steve Ballmer

06/02/25

@ Acquired

When I became CEO, the dotcom bubble was bursting, antitrust issues dominated the company's culture, and we faced a significant accounting headache that affected profitability.