Summary:

Nancy Evans and Candice Carpenter founded iVillage in the mid 1990s. iVillage was one of the first community-focused sites on the early web, and grew to be one of the biggest of its ilk. Not only was iVillage a site and a company founded by women, but it was also among the first sites that targeted women as a demographic in the early web era. Nancy recounts for us the development of the company, the benefits and pitfalls involved in being one of the highest-flying companies of the dot com era, and gives us some powerful perspective about the role women have played from the very beginning of the web era.

Summary:

It’s part two of our Amazon founding story. How did Amazon come to completely dominate e-commerce? How did Jeff Bezos’ “Get Big Fast” strategy evolve? How and why did Amazon become the quintessential “dot com” and dot-com-era stock? The answers are within. 

Bibliography:

•  The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
•  The Playboy Interview: Moguls
•  Amazon.com: Get Big Fast
•  One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com
•  http://jimromenesko.com/2013/08/11/i-interviewed-jeff-bezos-when-amazon-was-an-insignificant-speck-in-the-book-selling-universe/#more-49306
•  http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/7.03/bezos_pr.html
•  http://www.fastcompany.com/50541/inside-mind-jeff-bezos
•  http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB832204437381952500
•  http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303339904576405922077032468
•  http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?p=irol-corporateTimeline_pf&c=176060
•  http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,992927-2,00.html
•  http://www.vox.com/2015/1/4/7490013/ecommerce-shopping-mall
•  http://mashable.com/2014/05/08/amazon-sales-chart/
•  http://www.statista.com/statistics/185283/total-and-e-commerce-us-retail-trade-sales-since-2000/
•  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-01-07/amazon-surges-to-record-high-on-global-e-commerce-growth
•  http://www.thewire.com/business/2014/05/amazon-has-basically-no-competition-among-online-booksellers/371917/

Summary:

If you are a Californian, then you might know Steve Westly's name very well. After all, in the mid 2000s, Westly was elected Controller of California, essentially the Chief Financial officer of the state, and he also ran for Governor in 2006. In fact, if you listen to the end of this episode, he might again show up on a ballot for governor some time in the very near future. But before his time in California government and politics, Steve Westly was also one of the key early eBay executives, who was instrumental in transforming eBay from a niche hobyist website to the global auctions and commerce powerhouse we all know it as today. We've not yet gotten to eBay in our overall narrative yet, so think of this as a primer to wet your appetite for the story of eBay's founding, coming very soon. In the mean time, you're going to very much enjoy this conversation with eBay's Senior Vice President, Steve Westly.

Here's a recent story from the LA Times about Westly's potential run for Governor.

Summary:

As you know, we’ve been trying to cover from every angle, the innovations that ecommerce sites in general, and Amazon.com specifically, brought to the world. That is why I was thrilled to get to speak with Greg Linden, who was one of the Amazon engineers who was responsible for a lot of the personalization and data-driven innovations at Amazon, especially the recommendation engine. Greg explains in great detail the technological challenges involved, but also gives us a conceptual and almost philosophical background to the ways that harnessing data and deploying personalized systems can improve commerce.

If you want to read any of the blog posts Greg has done about his early Amazon days, go here.