The meeting probably went like this. “I want (crazy %) for (low ball $) or we start one ourselves.
Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products
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Re: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products
#12"An Amazon spokesman said the company doesn’t use confidential information that companies share with it to build competing products"
Maybe...but in the past, AWS proactively looked at traction of products hosted on its platform, built competing products, and then scraped & targeted customer list of those hosted products. In fact, I was on a team in AWS that did exactly that. Why wouldn't their investing arm do the same?
Re: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products
#13Silicon Valley is clearly not a comedy: https://youtu.be/JlwwVuSUUfc
Re: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products
#14So this didnt come across in the title - but the first company they use as an example is one Amazon actually did invest in? And that was four years before the "competing" product (which is literally just providing data for AI training as far as I can tell)? I'm not sure what I'm missing, but that reads like if coke invested in an energy drink brand and four years later launched another energy drink brand. It's basically a commodity and it's 4 years after the fact- what's so controversial here?
Re: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products
#15"An Amazon spokesman said the company doesn’t use confidential information that companies share with it to build competing products" Maybe...but in the past, AWS proactively looked at traction of products hosted on its platform, built competing products, and then scraped & targeted customer list of those hosted products. In fact, I was on a team in AWS that did exactly that. Why wouldn't their investing arm do the sa…
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Re: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products
#16"An Amazon spokesman said the company doesn’t use confidential information that companies share with it to build competing products" Maybe...but in the past, AWS proactively looked at traction of products hosted on its platform, built competing products, and then scraped & targeted customer list of those hosted products. In fact, I was on a team in AWS that did exactly that. Why wouldn't their investing arm do the sa…
Not trying to come across as judgemental. But if I may ask, did you at the time feel like that was an ethical thing to do?
Re: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products
#17"An Amazon spokesman said the company doesn’t use confidential information that companies share with it to build competing products" Maybe...but in the past, AWS proactively looked at traction of products hosted on its platform, built competing products, and then scraped & targeted customer list of those hosted products. In fact, I was on a team in AWS that did exactly that. Why wouldn't their investing arm do the sa…
> confidential information
aka, we did not sign an NDA with the party across the table
Re: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products
#18"An Amazon spokesman said the company doesn’t use confidential information that companies share with it to build competing products" Maybe...but in the past, AWS proactively looked at traction of products hosted on its platform, built competing products, and then scraped & targeted customer list of those hosted products. In fact, I was on a team in AWS that did exactly that. Why wouldn't their investing arm do the sa…
> confidential information aka, we did not sign an NDA with the party across the table
This doesn't matter if you don't have the millions set aside to defend yourself in court against a giant conglomerate. Giant companies breaking NDAs with scrappy startups is a story I have heard often.
Re: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products
#19"In 2016, a group of investors led by the Alexa Fund bought a stake in Nucleus, a small company that made a home-video communication device that integrated with the Alexa voice assistant. Nucleus’s founders and the venture-capital funds investing alongside the Alexa Fund had reservations about collaborating with an Amazon-backed firm, according to some of the co-investors. " "After striking the deal, the Alexa Fund g…
> Wow, Gavin Belson must be furious. life imitating art
Plot twist: Amazon discovers this topic is actually discussed on HN and asks for the 5 million USD back
Re: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products
#20"An Amazon spokesman said the company doesn’t use confidential information that companies share with it to build competing products" Maybe...but in the past, AWS proactively looked at traction of products hosted on its platform, built competing products, and then scraped & targeted customer list of those hosted products. In fact, I was on a team in AWS that did exactly that. Why wouldn't their investing arm do the sa…
Cannot up vote this enough. During my time both at Retail and AWS it was perfectly normal to trawl production customer data and come up with ideas to launch competing products. Prices were always set lower or free offering justified as data-driven and customer obsession. I hated the gas lighting their customers and left in disgust of the company and its leadership which encourages that behavior.