Featured Image Credit: Jeff Bezos/Instagram
It's hard to believe Amazon was once anything other than the massive ecommerce behemoth it is today.
And yet, Amazon started life as a simple online book store - and there are plenty of interesting records and videos that show its relatively humble beginnings.
One of these, shared by Jeff Bezos himself a few years back, is an amazing look at Amazon when it was a truly modest business - a one-room office, in fact.
The video - filmed by Bezos' dad - shows him giving a sort of ironic tour of the room, pointing out his own small desk and PC, then showing the rest of the room, including heavy power cables that have had to be run in to provide enough power for the small team working there.
It's pretty amazing as a reminder that even a business as monolithic and massive as Amazon is now started from a very modest place, and the same is true of Bezos himself, who seems quiet and reserved in the video and is now one of the world's richest people.
Advert
The video has been doing the rounds on both YouTube and Reddit recently, and has attracted hundreds of interested comments, with many people touching on the same themes.
For one thing, everyone's impressed and reassured by the fact that Bezos is in his 30s in the video, having founded Amazon at the age of 30 on the dot - so if you're in your 30s, it's not too late to make billions.
One person wrote under a YouTube post of the video: "This is awesome. What a great reminder that being successful has little to do with a fancy start."
A much harsher way to look at this comes from a sarcastic Reddit comment, which jokes: "Crazy that at no point in history did Jeff not look like an old man."
A comment on Reddit, the most upvoted in the whole thread, reminisces: "I still remember when they announced that they were moving beyond selling books online and almost everyone thought it was a stupid idea. 'We have eBay for that!'. Amazon really parlayed off of used books to take over the world."
They're completely on the money, too - Bezos and Amazon made some smart and well-timed plays, and are now reaping the rewards.
The final word can go to another comment on Reddit: "This little office was the birthplace of a company that employs thousands of people and has made a few people very rich. Love it."
