The Paradigm Project
In 1991 a team of technology trailblazers got together to build a revolutionary product. It was 16 years before the first Apple iPhone would be released and yet this device offered much of the functionality that the first iPhone would subsequently offer including touch screen, games, apps and telephony.
These trailblazers were so busy working day and night to perfect their product for a 1994 release that they missed the launch of Netscape and general adoption of the internet in 1992.
Nobody Wants a SmartPhone?
In 1995 General Magic went bust. It turned out that nobody wanted their product and so the staff of around 20 went their separate ways. Indeed, the consumer market of 1994 told them quite forcefully that nobody wanted to be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and nobody needed nor wanted what this smartphone had to offer.
Around the same time, in 1994 Jeff Bezos had meetings with family, friends and private investors to try and fund a business start-up to sell books online. The concept was so radical that one of the people he approached even had to ask him what the internet was and his parents who invested some $300,000 warned him not to give up his day job, asking if he could work on the business during weekends and evenings. Bezos himself, careful to warn investors of the risk they were taking advised that there was a 70% chance that he would fail and that their investment would come to nothing.
Regret Minimisation Framework
Part of his ‘regret minimization framework’, the Amazon business was intended to make up for not participating in the internet boom sooner, but it was ahead of its time, there was nothing else like it and General Magic, also ahead of its time, was in its death throws.
As it happens, Bezos predictions of failure very nearly came true and Amazon struggled for a few years. As investors became weary of waiting for success, Bezos followed a steady pace towards his goal rather than rushing ahead. This served the business well and you cannot help but wonder if it too would have failed like General Magic if he had actually started the business earlier or if he had rushed plans to please investors.
Rising Stars from the Ashes
As Amazon continued to struggle and then grow; the General Magic team went on to form companies including Twitter, Web TV, LinkedIn, Nest Labs, FutureShape and Shift7; as well as take senior roles in Google, Apple, Adobe, eBay, Facebook and Pinterest. They became influencers and involved in AI, the design of the iPod and the iPhone, the development of the Safari browser, the creation of DreamWeaver, members of the board at MIT and also the US Chief Technology Officer and advisor to the President – first appointed by Obama.
As they continued building and developing, they were the effecting the lifestyle consumer changes that enabled the revolution that would propel Amazon on an incredible journey of success.
As Amazon grew and spread its wings and datacentres worldwide, the company started to think about monetizing spare IT capacity and the concept of Amazon Cloud became reality. With this, Amazon was offering to every small business in the World the same technology that it had only been able to develop itself because of its size, technologists and financial resources.
Amazon Cloud
Competition from and collaboration with the likes of Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and Google meant that it could provide databases, operating systems and software in its cloud offerings and that the rate of technological growth and innovation was constant if not accelerating.
Artificial intelligence became available to everybody to analyse data, provide voice recognition, text to speech, face recognition and a plethora of other applications. A small business with a minimal budget could now develop systems where customers could use technology such as Alexa to place orders and these orders could be processed and fulfilled with no human intervention at all whilst at the same time providing a realistic artificial-human engagement.
Perfecting Customer Relations
Whilst this may sound customer unfriendly, this technology has enabled Amazon to focus incredible resources on perfecting its customer relations and engagement and to provide the best service available. It has developed a Partner Network to help businesses migrating to the Cloud and has introduced strict regulation to protect the Amazon name and brand.
The world of technology has become incredibly exciting and it is now available to everybody. Whatever your idea, whatever you want to build, being small is no longer an excuse not to start out. Amazon and its peers may be giants, but they are offering a space for everybody on their shoulders and the view is exhilarating.
John Dunning works for 1Tech, an AWS Cloud Partner.