Ex-Amazon VP tells us what it’s really like working with Jeff Bezos
Former Amazon VP Ethan Evans joins Shaan Puri and Sam Parr to share firsthand insights on working closely with Jeff Bezos, dissecting both Bezos's management genius and his notable flaws. Evans details the behind-the-scenes mechanics of Amazon Prime's creation, the company's rigorous AB testing and speed-first web design, and how customer anecdotes drove operational accountability through question mark emails. Finally, Evans explains why he traded high-earning corporate executive life to build a flexible solopreneur coaching business on his own terms.
- Amazon Prime was originally codenamed Project 100 because Jeff Bezos needed a bold public launch within 100 days to distract Wall Street from a weak quarterly earnings report. Read →
- Jeff Bezos forwarded unfiltered customer complaints to executives with a single character in the body: a question mark. Read →
- Amazon ran thousands of simultaneous experiments through an internal platform called Web Lab, isolating individual page changes to measure direct revenue impact. Read →
- Jeff Bezos never gave positive praise in reviews. He read the proposal, identified three items to correct, and told teams to get moving. Read →
- Ethan Evans traded a $1 million compensation package and 60-hour workweeks as an Amazon VP for an executive coaching business earning $700,000 to $800,000 on 20 hours a week. Read →
- During an executive offsite at Twitch, CEO Emmett Shear split from the majority of his team by ranking credibility far above integrity and intimacy. Read →