eBoys: The First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists at Work

Think about how an idea from a twenty-eight-year-old kid in Chicago [Andrew Mason] turned into a multi-billion-dollar business. That was not possible five or ten years ago. Opportunities like this are a possibility because the markets are so big. If you believe in the product, you believe in the use case, and you have the right team—you should ride

Afterward, Alberg and Bezos told the Riggios they would think about a partnership. Later Alberg and Bezos spoke on the phone and agreed that such a collaboration was unlikely to work. “Jeff was always a big believer that disruptive small companies could triumph,” Alberg says. “It wasn’t the end of the world. We knew we had a challenge.”

The venture capitalists backing eBay asked around and heard that one did not work with Jeff Bezos; one worked for him.