“The best business to be in is a business where you can help customers more and more over time.” — Jeff Bezos, looking back on accidental discoveries

The Story Begins

Here’s a funny story. One day in 2006, Amazon employees were sitting in a meeting. They weren’t talking about selling books or toys or Prime. They were talking about something technical and a little boring: computer servers.

What are servers? Imagine them as giant super-computers that run websites, store information, and handle millions of people visiting at the same time.

Amazon had a problem. To support their shopping website and warehouses, they had built huge computer systems. But here’s the interesting part: they had extra computing power that wasn’t being used. Like having extra rooms in your house that nobody lived in.

Someone in that meeting had an idea: “What if we rented this extra computer power to other companies?”

Everyone thought this idea was strange. Amazon was a store. Why would a bookstore rent computers? That didn’t seem like Amazon’s business. But they decided to try it anyway.

That decision changed everything. It accidentally created the most important and powerful part of Amazon. Today, this part makes more money than the entire shopping business.

This is the story of AWS—Amazon Web Services.

What Is “The Cloud”?

Before we talk about AWS, let’s understand what “the cloud” means.

Imagine you have a favorite game. You could keep it installed on your computer, and only play it at home. Or you could keep it somewhere on the internet, and play it anywhere, anytime, on any computer. When something is stored on the internet like that, we say it’s “in the cloud.”

Now imagine instead of just one game, it’s all of a company’s information. A bank needs to track millions of customers’ money. A hospital needs to store patient medical records. A weather service needs to process huge amounts of data from weather stations around the world. All these companies need powerful computers.

Before AWS, companies had to buy their own computers. Buy servers. Hire people to maintain them. If a company grew quickly and needed more computing power, they had to buy more servers. That was expensive and took time.

AWS solved this problem. Instead of buying computers, companies could rent computing power from Amazon. Want a powerful computer for one hour? Rent one for one hour. Want 100 computers for a day? Rent 100 computers for a day. It was flexible and smart.

The Accident That Changed the Internet

When Amazon first offered AWS, they thought it would be a small side business. Maybe some web companies would use it. But something unexpected happened: they were so right about what companies needed that AWS grew incredibly fast.

Netflix, where you watch movies? It runs on AWS. Spotify, where you listen to music? Built on AWS. Instagram, where people share photos? Runs on AWS. Slack, where people message at work? Uses AWS. Basically every big internet company you’ve heard of uses AWS at least partially.

By 2015, AWS was making billions of dollars a year. By 2020, it was making tens of billions. Today, AWS alone is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. This one “accident”—renting extra computer power to other companies—became worth more than the entire original Amazon shopping business.

The Power of Computing Somewhere Else

Think about what AWS made possible. Before cloud computing, starting a company was expensive because you had to buy computers. After AWS, you could start a company in your garage with almost no money, rent computing power on AWS, and serve millions of people.

This changed the world. Teenagers could build apps that millions of people use. Small teams could do things that previously only huge companies could do. The internet became more creative and innovative because it was cheaper to build things.

And if your company failed? You just stopped renting computers on AWS. You didn’t lose a lot of money on equipment sitting in your garage. But if your company succeeded? You could grow on AWS as fast as your customers wanted to use your service.

Bezos’s Space Dream

Bezos dreamed of space since he was little. When he was five years old, he watched the Apollo moon landing broadcast and decided that someday he would help humans live in space. In 2000, he quietly started a rocket company called Blue Origin, with the goal of making space travel as routine as air travel. In 2021, he rode his own Blue Origin rocket to the edge of space, making his childhood dream come true.

From selling books in a garage to launching people into space on rockets. That’s how Bezos thinks: always reaching further, dreaming bigger.

From Garage to Trillion

In 2020, Amazon became a “trillion-dollar company.” That means Amazon’s total value was more than one trillion dollars. One trillion is one thousand billion. To put that in perspective: most countries have a smaller economic output than Amazon’s value.

How did a garage bookstore become so valuable? By solving real problems. By treating customers well. By being willing to try new ideas, even if they seemed crazy. By thinking long-term instead of worrying about quick profits.

Did You Know?

  • When AWS first launched, many people inside Amazon thought it was a bad idea—why would a bookstore rent computers to others? That “bad idea” now makes more money than the shopping business.
  • Before AWS, a startup had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on servers to get started. With AWS, a college student with a credit card can rent the most powerful computers in the world.
  • Blue Origin’s rocket is called New Shepard, named after Alan Shepard, the first American to travel to space.

Think About It!

  • Bezos’s childhood dream of space seemed totally unrealistic, but he actually made it happen as an adult. Do you have a dream that sounds crazy right now?
  • AWS lets anyone build a website or app with very little money. If you could make an app, what would you make to help others?
  • Amazon went from selling books to becoming a cloud company—completely unplanned. What role do you think “accidental discoveries” play in success?