When Jeff Bezos quit his Wall Street job in 1994, packed up his Chevy Blazer, and headed to Seattle, few could have imagined that his risky idea for an online bookstore would one day become Amazon, one of the most powerful companies on Earth. In this episode of Talk2TheHand 90s, we explore the unlikely beginnings of a company that started in a garage with a spray-painted sign and a dream of selling books online.
We’ll trace Bezos’s journey from his childhood tinkering in New Mexico to his Ivy League education and early career in finance, where he first spotted the potential of the internet. With MacKenzie Bezos supporting him on the road trip west, his vision for a new kind of business took shape: a bookstore that could carry millions of titles, accessible to anyone with a computer and a modem.
Listeners will hear how the scrappy early days of Amazon—packing boxes by hand, celebrating each order, and racing to build trust in online shopping—set the stage for its explosive growth. By 1995, “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore” was already reaching all 50 states and 45 countries, forever changing the way people thought about buying and selling online.
The episode also digs into Bezos’s relentless focus on customers, his long-term strategy of reinvestment, and his belief that Amazon was never just a retailer but a technology company. From weathering the dot-com crash to launching Prime, Kindle, and AWS, Amazon’s story became one of adaptability, ambition, and an unwavering appetite for risk.
Finally, we reflect on how Amazon grew from a scrappy startup to a global powerhouse that reshaped shopping, entertainment, and even cloud computing. Love it or hate it, Amazon’s influence on modern life is undeniable—and it all started with one bold leap in the heart of the 1990s.
Talk2TheHand is an independent throwback podcast run by husband and wife, Jimmy and Beth. Obsessed with 90s nostalgia and 90s celebrities, we'll rewind the years and take you back to the greatest era of our lives.
New episodes bursting with nostalgia of the 90s released on Tuesdays.
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Find us on Twitter @talk2thehandpod or email us at jimmy@talk2thehand.co.uk or beth@talk2thehand.co.uk
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