Brad Stone Talks Amazon Unbound on Twitter Spaces: Businessweek

You can also listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern Time on Bloomberg Radio, or watch us on YouTube search Bloomberg Global News. Hello everyone, my name is Joel Webber and I'm the editor of Bloomberg Business Week. I'm excited to host our leaders Behind the Story conversation, this time with my colleague Brad Stone, the author of the forthcoming book Amazon Unbound, which we excerpted in this

week's cover story. The conversation we're about to have it's going to make you want to pre order a copy, so go get that done asap. Brad, thanks for joining.

I started working on this book in um late two thousand sev and so two thousand eighteen comes around suddenly h Q two is launched and amazons in the middle of this very polarizing process to find a second headquarters, which kind of ends in disaster in New York City in early two thousand nineteen, at the same time that Jeff and Mackenzie announced their divorce on Twitter, and then the National Enquirer comes out with this explosive revelation about

Jeff's personal life, which leads to all sorts of craziness. So in the as I'm writing, as I'm researching this book, you know, they're they're like these earthquakes, and what I thought was a tame little business book suddenly has to veer into the territory of explicit photographs and cyber espionage and you know, per you know, alleged Trump interference in uh, you know, in the Jedi contract, and and the question

of whether the National Choir story was politically motivated. So the whole thing was this hall of mirrors, can of worms that I had to navigate, and there you were suddenly writing about gossip rags, and so let's talk about that, like, because the first, the first thing that really said all of this in motion was the announcement of their separation. And so I'm just curious, like knowing what you know about the basis is in Amazon, Like what did you first think when you when you saw that and then

when the news that begin to trickle out happened? What went through your head? As somebody who watches um Amazon closely, I think my reaction was the same as pretty much every other Amazon um executive or anyone close to the company or who observes it, which is just here surprise, shock, you know, because well there it's a you know, it's a very private family. So obviously, um, you know, you don't know what's happening inside any family or any marriage.

But you know, Jeff had had basically made the story of his marriage part of his public persona, you know it, talked about it a lot um um, And so it's just a surprise. He's also so so disciplined, so careful, and you know the fact that his private life had become fodder for you know, this past its prime tabloid magazine.

It was just a shock on a number of different levels. Um, you know that had happened at all, and that he allowed it to happen and had you know, when you look back on it, and some of this is in the Business Week excerpt. You know, he he conducted that relationship really out in the open throughout two eighteen. Um. You know, him and Lauren went to um, you know, we're at Blue Origin launches together. He brought her to the Seattle Amazon headquarters to the see the Washington Post

printing presses. Um. In fact, it was it was really conducting it as if it wasn't a secret. Um, you know, which is which is fine, Um, except that I think he underestimated or perhaps didn't care about the extent to which he had become such a big public figure and the extent to which you know, tabloid elements would be interested in his life. And it's then kind of metastasized

from there. So let's drop, um, everyone into the story with a fantastic lead which goes, raise your hand if you think you've had a harder week than I've had. And this is Bezos and Amazon's headquarters talking to to whom put And that's interesting because you know, this is in a book about Amazon, right and and it is fundamentally an Amazon story. Even though this is something that happens in Jeff's life. It rocks Amazon. Everyone is surprised, um, you know, at at at this at this crisis that

has enveloped their boss. He comes into this s team meeting in early two thousand nineteen and he he's sort of apology. He comes close to apologizing for it. Um. He he reassures everyone that he's, you know, had adult conversations with Mackenzie, that she's fine, the kids are fine. So thanks for being focused on the business. But at the same time, and this leads to a little bit of a disillusionment within the company. They recognize it within

retrospect that something some strange behaviors were explainable now. So, for example, Amazon had requested helipads be part of its second headquarter offices in in Queens Long Island City and Northern Virginia. And if you remember, it was a really polarizing request in in New York, and the New York Post had it on its cover, and it's starting to

stir up some of the animosity towards Amazon's project. And you know, later we learned that not only is Laurence Sanchez a helicopter pilot, but Jeff has taken flying lessons himself, and they've bought his and hers Bell's textron helicopters um. And then similarly, Amazon was floating a plan, and this is in the Business Week story, to create a second share of Amazon stock, a second class with lower voting rights,

which Amazon disputes this characterization. Yeah, I just think in context of this being ultimately your business story, I thought that that the dual class thing was a really important thing because keep in mind, Amazon went public before the rest of the tech companies, the facebooks of the world had this dual class structure. So so what does that what does that represent for for you know, those of us who are making sense of Amazon, right and and

important to note that Amazon never did this. It it pitched this this dual class plan to some of its largest institutional shareholders, and they were perplexed, like, why would you do this? You know, definitely not. They don't want to do anything that might potentially dis dilute their influence

on the company. And and then later they when the divorce tweet was announced, a lot of people at least interpreted it as as some exploration that Jeff was was doing to see if in the divorce settlement he might retain some of his voting power over the company, and in fact, they ultimately resolved that because Mackenzie's shares, Jeff, Jeff retained voting influence over those shares. But as we've seen, and she's getting rid of those shares, she's she's giving

away a lot of her money very quickly. And when the shares pass on, I would imagine their voting rights go to their new owners. So you know, again, Amazon dispute that interpretation. But a lot of people inside and outside the company we're looking at these things and wondering, and I think, with some with some good reason, whether Jeff's personal life had begun to really impact his stewardship

of the company. So, if you're just joining us, my name is Joel Webber and the editor of Bloomberg Business Week. I'm joined by Brad stone Um, the author of the new book Amazon on Bound, in my colleague here at Bloomberg. We excripted his book this week with the untold story of how Jeff Bezos beat the tabloids. If you haven't read it yet, you can go to Bloomberg dot com slash business Week and get that excerpt Um, and please remember the pre order Brad's book. Brad, there's so many

little nuggets in actually substantial news. In this excerpt, why don't you give us another one. We've talked about the dual class thing. What was another um thing that people will find surprising? Okay, I gotta remember, Um, here's a good one. Here's a good one. Um. And I dropped this in at the very end. You know, over the years, there has been this funny little search, uh to find the Bezos boat, Like the richest man in the world,

does he have a luxury yacht somewhere? And about two years ago, um, there was a false report that, in fact he had bought this kind of four million dollar motor yacht, and they denied that that was true. And you know, I was wondering it as well, because him and Lauren were showing up on Barry Dealer's yacht and David Geffen's yacht. And in fact, um, I I at the end of my search, I found a super yacht.

Um sailing a sailing a three mass schooner that's being h constructed by the Dutch company Ocean Co. That's under construction. Now you know that the Jeff is building. And not only is it this magnificent yeah, but because it's a sailing yacht, you can't land helicopters on the deck because the mass. And so they're building and I did not know this term. Um, they're building a support yacht with the helipad so they could land the new helicopters on the new near the new yacht. So anyway, that that

was another delicious little tidbit that's in the story. Yeah, and these the companies that build these yet obviously hyper hyper secretive. So you have to like, you know, basically, like you know, go trolling through whatever local Facebook photos

you can find of of things under construction. And you found one, right, that's right there, There was a there there is a sailing a yacht community on Facebook, and I was looking at it and and there was a photo of an unfinished hole and it was the code name was something like Y seven, And and I looked on Ocean Coast site and there was a Y. See I might be getting the number wrong for memory, and

it wasn't. It didn't say who the owner was. And that was one of the bread crumbs along the way that made me think, you know, um, there are only a few people in the world that might build a yacht of the size and scale. Okay, so the real juicy part of this story is the stuff that gets into uh Jeff Bezos, UM Laurence Sanchez, their relationship and sort of the drama that ensues. So why don't we talk about that, because once this thing gets out in

the open um. You know, most of us UH discovered everything through this medium post that was a news event, but in and of itself, right, um, and what you basically helped us piece together was the untold story that led to that moment. So rewind the clock a little bit and and talk to us about how National Enquire and everything else fits together into this the drama that unfolded between Jeff Bezos and and am I Right, it's such a long tangled story, UM, So let me try

to boil it down. And there are some coincidences that um I concluded are just coincidences. But you know, I sort of a frank in the book that like, this is is kind of my it's such a peculiar saga that based on the evidence that we have, now this is is what transpired. And I'll go quickly, but essentially, in the fall of two eighteen, Dylan Howard, the the editor, the chief content officer of AMI, editor of National inquiry.

It gets a little upset at the at the Washington Post pursuit of the inquires catch and kill reporting on behalf of Donald Trump, and the authorizes a look into the life of Jeff Bezos, and a memo goes out to inquire reporters to dig up dirt on the world's richest man. And there's no other information, nothing about an affair and nothing like that, and all this is now

in the voluminous court filings. Then, coincidentally, Laurence Sanchez's brother, Michael Sanchez, approaches the paper, the tabloid paper, with this mysterious scoop that he knows of a wealthy tech billionaire who's dating a B list actress. Long story short, Michael is basically informing on on his sister in her new relationship, and over the next couple of months provides the Inquirer um,

not with any not with um. This is a family Twitter space, so I'm not going to get too explicit, but you know, not with any explicit photos, but with a lot of the text messages and other photos that shows that show his sister is having an affair with Jeff Bezos. Um. You know, the Inquirer publishes well, first, you know, Jeff and Mackenzie get wind of this report. They announced their divorce on on Twitter UM. And then

there's a battle between UM, Jeff's camp and the inquirer UM. Jeff, Jeff's security consultant, Gavin de Becker begins to insinuate that there were political motives, UM and sort of unexplained mysteries behind the story. It wasn't an unreasonable conclusion because you know, Michael Sanchez is a peculiar guy. He's he's a Republican, he's overtly conservative on Twitter, He's got relationships with Trump World figures. And of course am I did as well.

They were the news organization that you know, did the catch and kill um, you know, on on stories about Donald Trump's infidelity. Anyway, the media, Jeff publishes the Medium post accusing am I of extorting him and really insinuates that, you know, there were political um motivations and that maybe even the Saudi government was involved, and of course the Saudis had reason to have enmities against the Washington Post

as well. And in the Medium report, Jeff kind of wraps himself up in the mantle of the Post and says he's proud of the work. And you know, and I don't know, I don't think it was deliberate misdirection. That there might there might have been good reasons to suspect that this was a politically planted story, But in the end, all the evidence, the currently available evidence, suggests

us that it was a much simpler story. Um, And you know that that this was a story ultimately of you know, a brother who maybe in his own peculiar way, was trying to protect his sister but but nevertheless ended up creating more of a problem for him and and for his sister and enter her new partner. Um, you know, is it possible one day we'll find that there was a hidden another hidden level of secrecy and conspiracy to

the whole thing. It certainly is. But I went as far and deep into it as I would ever want to go, or I think anyone else have gone has gone, and and and really the available evidence does suggest that, you know, the Saudis they might have hacked Jeff's phone. I I don't know, but there's certainly no evidence and it would contradict the available evidence, you know, if in fact they were a kind of secret source all along. Okay, So There's another character that we haven't mentioned yet, Gavin

de Beeker. And this is um sort of Jeff Bezos is uh sort of private bulldog. UM who you know, you would just expect that the richest man in the world would have somebody like this basically at his beck end. Call, what did Gavin de Becker break loose? Yeah? He he's he's you know, he's an accomplished investigator, has got an amazingly successful security company. He's an author. Um. He he

has a long relationship with with the Bezos family. He starts Jeff basically gives him, you know, endless resources to go pursue the truth. He's talking to Michael Sanchez and you know pretty much recognizes pretty quickly that you know, saying that Michael Sanchez had played some role in in

at least tipping off the National Enquirer. And he also suspects, you know, reasonably that you know, that there might have been political motives because not only is Michael this outspoken conservative, but because the Trump world had so much animosity towards the Washington Post and the Jeff and Amazon, uh you know at the time. Um, and so you know, he starts writing articles in the in The Daily Beast or giving interviews that do suggest that this is part of

a of a grand conspiracy. Um. You know, it's um. You know, he he does identify Michael Sanchez as being the primary source, but he also really does lay a lot of the groundwork for you know, some of the confusion that came out as a result of it. I don't I don't necessarily think that any of that was done as a an overt pr strategy to obfuscate, but

it did obfuscate. If most people are going to reflect in this peculiar bit of history and the in the in the life of the world's wealthiest person, they're gonna say, well, didn't the Saudis have something to do with that? Was Trump responsible? Wasn't there a brother? And a lot of that is because of Jeff's medium medium post and Gavin de Becker's um stories in The Daily Beast, And you know,

in the end, I concluded it wasn't as complicated as that. Um. It was also I thought one of the most interesting thing about this was sort of once Bezo sort of let Um the Becker sort of like loose in terms of trying to to plush out the truth, right unlimited

resources to do so. Um, he actually did engage with with Michael Sanchez and and immediately just had like a sniff of something that something was a little off, and that ultimately sort of culminates with this the Catton mouse game with with the photos of them, um, which is in a pretty interesting place. So why don't we go ahead and cheer that? Oh boy, okay, what happened? What happened? Right? I I I can't remember if Twitter spaces has rated

r PG thirteen, but keep it okay. So the lynch pin of this whole thing, and again one of these little avenues that you know, when you're writing about a big tech company, you don't expect to be going down. But what did the wire ever have what will colloquially refer to as the dick pick? That? That's it? Right? Did they ever have it? And it's a it was it was part of the letter that was viewed as extortive that Jeff wrote about in his medium post. You know,

they referred to it in the story. You know, did it exist? Did the paper have it? And as I you know, and this is actually something that the Southern District of New York and the FBI as they tried to unravel all this and figure out, you know, should there be charges. That's something they looked at. And ultimately, what I what I AM told Michael Sanchez told them is that the inquirer was was bugging them for they

wanted Sanchez to give it to them. He was hemming and hang and resisting, and finally he said, Okay, I'll show it to you, and he went to a meeting in in uh sorry, he was in l A and the enquired editors were face timing with them in uh In from New York, and he showed owed them the dick pick. Except he didn't and this is this is uh in the story. He did he what he showed them, it's unclear if he ever had he really had the

photograph in question. What he showed them was a photograph that he had downloaded from an escort website, and he passed it off as an authentic item. And then they believed they had it um and didn't understand that they were you know, that it was sort of another level of of deceat let's call it deception from their source. Uh yeah, you just never expect to go there as a tech reporter, right, did I break Did I did I break any Twitter rules with that district? We'll find

out later. I think we'll find out later. But but I think he did a good job, uh speaking good good jobs, Brad. Like I want to kind of bring this back home to a business story, like ultimately, like this is um, you know, one of the most successful business people of all time, and obviously this story took

him places that he probably never expected to go. But can we bring this back to Amazon and also what Jeff Bezos has accomplished his business, Like what insights did you learn from from reporting on this particular part of the story that relates to how Amazon has come to you know, just dominate um um everything right. Well, you know it's it's actually something that I had sort of understood and maybe even experienced a little bit um myself.

If if you remember after the Everything story came out, um, you know, Jeff and Mackenzie at the time, Um, well, Mackenzie and a bunch of other Amazon executives left me one star reviews, you remember, because they didn't they didn't love the book and it was such a unique and interesting way to object to a piece of journalism. And then you fast forward to the medium posts, and of course they're upset at the National enquir and he does this bold, unusual thing of publishing their their emails in

their negotiation. And it so it underscored for me that kind of Bezos mindset, which is he sort of he'll he'll throw a playbook out the window, and he'll come up with something totally new, totally unique, something that kind of shakes the ground under his, at least perceived adversaries. And they do that with products too, right, He's he never wants to launch a me too product. If they're going to do a smart watch, they're going to do

something totally unique. You know. The new Amazon smart watch, which hasn't done all that well. Um, records your moods and and gives you and gives you feedback on on your emotions and how you're behaving. Right, there's always something different. And so this whole saga with the National Enquirer, you know, is is the base is the Bezos operating philosophy laid there. You know, he's going to do something bold and unexpected.

Um and usually, as we say on the cover of Business Week this week, Jeff wins, right, I mean that's he comes out on top, and now he's retiring as CEO later this year at the helm of um I've lost track a one point seven trillion dollar company, and

his fortune has succeeded two d billions. So lots of room for critique, lots of ways in which regulators should look at Amazon, but you look at you know, his moves over the past twenty five years, and you know you have to you have to admire or at least be a little odd by the way in which he has built his empire. Okay, what other elements are you excited for people to read about in the book which comes out? Win? And I pre ordered this online? Yeah,

I'm Joel. I hope you've pre ordered one copy for Yeah, I know. Can I pre order an autographed to that? How does that work? But when did it come out? And what else are you excited for people to read? Sure? So May eleven, So next Tuesday, I'm available at your friendly neighborhood bookstore or retailer in addition to being for sale online and on Amazon. Um, I will I will offer Lawrence. Do you think Lawrence Sanchez will give you

a one star review? But do you think maybe maybe we can hope I'll autograph copies that are bought from my my local bookstore, book Passage in Court of Maderic, California. UM, So if you go there and order online and ask for an autograph copy, I'll do that. And I'm just really super proud of the whole book. Um, everything from the story of Alexa. There are some surprises in there, um that will come out next week. How you know

Jeff conceived this product and launched it. Um to the way in which Amazon devised its transportation, you know, the network the vans that are driving our streets and in the Amazon airplanes that are in the air now, and the costs associated with that growth and and of moving so quickly. Uh. And and to the hidden story of

the HQU two saga. I've got all. I've got the cities that Amazon that the internal HQ two committee inside Amazon had selected, but basically before Jeff and the senior leadership team overrode them and picked New York and d C. There's so There's what I'm really excited about is all the news and the tidbits and the great anecdotes that are in there, and that I hope people just come away with a deeper understanding of what is really a complicated company and a complicated person. Brad, do you have

any idea how many people you interviewed for this? I do, because um, I was. I was recently counting to get an inaccurate tally, and it it definitely exceeded three hundred. And you need you need to do a lot of interviews when you're writing about Amazon because not many people

have the full picture. It's a really decentralized company. So you have to go and do a couple of dozen interviews for every topic you're you're looking at, and they also turn and over at Amazon is high and for that reason, you know, people don't have a full chronological picture either. So it was it was a large number. All right. That's where we're gonna call it. Thanks to all of you for joining this episode of Behind the Story. You can read the untold story of how Jeff Bezos

beat the tabloids in this week's Business Week. Subscribe at business Week dot com, Bloomberg dot com, Brad Uh thank you. You can follow Brad at Bradstone Fallow, business Week at b W and me at Joel Webber Show. Um. Please preorder Brad's book Amazon and bound uh and get that out autograph copy from his local bookstore. Thanks again everyone, have a great day. Thanks for listening to Bloomberg Business Week.

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