Gurley discovered Amazon was running same-day delivery experiments through Uber drivers by talking to them as a shareholder.
“And I always talk to them. I always talk to the drivers because I'm a shareholder and I always talk to the drivers.”
Gurley notes Amazon ran same-day delivery experiments on Uber while most $20-30M companies would refuse due to accounting concerns.
“This is a company that's worth 100 billions of dollars that is running an experiment on top of Uber. And Yeah.”
Gurley discovered Amazon was running same-day delivery experiments on top of Uber using burner phones and driver cars.
“And I'm like, what happens at 02:30? He goes, I have to meet at the Amazon warehouse at 02:30.”
Gurley says most companies over $20-30M in revenue wouldn't run Amazon's experimental hack approach due to accounting concerns.
“I know for a fact that most of the companies I've worked with that have gotten over 20 or 30,000,000 in revenue would not run that experiment because someone would say, oh, we won't know how to do the accounting. We can't like, that's too much of a hack, like, whatever.”
Gurley says Amazon ran same-day delivery experiment using Uber while most companies over $30M wouldn't.
“I know for a fact that most of the companies I've worked with that have gotten over 20 or 30,000,000 in revenue would not run that experiment”
Gurley quotes Bezos saying internal experiments get killed only when the last person with good judgment gives up.
“They ask him, when does a internal experiment get killed? And he said, when the last person with good judgment gives up.”