AMAZON

Amazon spent a decade building logistics in the US. We had to build it in two years because Amazon was coming to India and they weren't going to wait for us.

Amazon invested in us. Amazon. The company that would eventually dominate online retail invested in us and we still failed. That tells you how broken the model was.

Amazon ordering 100,000 delivery vans was the moment everything changed. It wasn't just the money — it was proof that the biggest company in the world trusted a startup with their logistics fleet.

We bought Amazon at $30 because we understood scale economics shared. The price was irrelevant — the flywheel was inevitable.

Amazon buying us for $970 million in 2014 looked expensive. It generates $2.5 billion in revenue now.

It's always Day 1. The moment you think it's Day 2, you're in trouble.

At Amazon in 1996, I helped build the recommendation engine. Turns out, recommending stocks is not that different from recommending books.

Having Amazon as both an investor and a distribution partner changed everything. Suddenly insurance was one click away for 300 million shoppers.

You cannot compete with Amazon by being Amazon. You compete by being something Amazon cannot be.