Everything has gone way, way past Bezos’s expectations, save one: the part about making tons of money. At first he believed that after five years he’d take in $70 million and net about $5 million. At year six, however, he’s much bigger but deep in debt and still burning dollars. Now, after years of ducking the issue, he says profitability “is the right thing to do,” and makes a risky promise: the company will turn what he calls a “pro forma operating” profit (which isn’t the same thing as actually making money, but better than nothing) by the fourth quarter of this year. David Risher, one of the supersmarties whom Bezos hired as executives (the company is famous for workers who wrote doctoral theses on stuff like John Locke), says, “When you’re running a two-plus billion [dollar] company, frankly you start to get worried. If you don’t start going for profitability now, when are you going to?”
“I’ve heard this a million times,” says Bezos, sighing, “now a million and one.” (Apparently, he will hear it a million more times without changing his mind.) “Our new businesses are catching on, they are being adopted. You know, Nordstrom started as a shoe seller.”
Bezos unleashed his famous laugh. But Kapor hadn’t been joking.
Creatures of the BoomSock puppet:
Ravi Suria: The ex-Lehman Brothers bond analyst wrote three scathing reports on the company, the last speculating it would run out of cash this year
