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A conversation with Shel Kaphan, Amazon’s first employee (2016)

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: A conversation with Shel Kaphan, Amazon’s first employee (2016)

#2

Post by guiambros »

For those interested, I just watched the excellent PBS Documentary "Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos".

Available for free [1], and Shel Kaphan is one of the several former and current employees interviewed by the Frontline investigative reporters.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVVfJVj5z8s

Re: A conversation with Shel Kaphan, Amazon’s first employee (2016)

#3

Post by Rebelgecko »

Another one of the early Amazon employees (I think he was #3 or 4?) has talked about his experiences a bit in comments here on HN but I unfortunately don't remember his account name. It's interesting to see what early employees think of what Amazon has become, and their current relations (or lack thereof)with Jeff Bezos

Re: A conversation with Shel Kaphan, Amazon’s first employee (2016)

#4

Post by kornish »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #3

Another one of the early Amazon employees (I think he was #3 or 4?) has talked about his experiences a bit in comments here on HN but I unfortunately don't remember his account name. It's interesting to see what early employees think of what Amazon has become, and their current relations (or lack thereof)with Jeff Bezos

You may be thinking of this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23423955

Re: A conversation with Shel Kaphan, Amazon’s first employee (2016)

#5

Post by fractionalhare »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #3

Another one of the early Amazon employees (I think he was #3 or 4?) has talked about his experiences a bit in comments here on HN but I unfortunately don't remember his account name. It's interesting to see what early employees think of what Amazon has become, and their current relations (or lack thereof)with Jeff Bezos

Yep - that commenter is Paul Davis, the same person mentioned in this article. He was the second employee.

Re: A conversation with Shel Kaphan, Amazon’s first employee (2016)

#8

Post by a1pulley »

Apparently Shel didn't negotiate "founder's stock." This excerpt is from [1]:

So, you are kind of the forgotten founder? Most people think of Jeff Bezos as the creator of the company. “In fact, to be completely technically true about it, he is the founder. But I was talking to him about joining him on the venture before the company was incorporated. He basically was just arriving from the East Coast and setting up his house when I moved up from California. All that existed of Amazon was on paper at that point. Jeff was working on it full-time already, and his wife, Mackenzie, was writing checks every once in a while. But that was it. I didn’t get founder’s stock. It didn’t seem worth the argument at the time, although I kind of felt like, well, you know, I mean I was there at the beginning. And it was all going to work out the same way, one way or the other, regardless of the technicalities. And it just didn’t seem like something that I wanted to make a big deal about at the time.”

[1] https://www.geekwire.com/2011/meet-shel-kaphan-amazoncom-emp...

Re: A conversation with Shel Kaphan, Amazon’s first employee (2016)

#9

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

a1pulley wrote: post #8

Apparently Shel didn't negotiate "founder's stock." This excerpt is from [1]: So, you are kind of the forgotten founder? Most people think of Jeff Bezos as the creator of the company. “In fact, to be completely technically true about it, he is the founder. But I was talking to him about joining him on the venture before the company was incorporated. He basically was just arriving from the East Coast and setting up hi…

It seems that being employee #1 is a sucker of a deal with a lot of the same downsides as being a founder without the huge upside of being a founder.
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