This is a YouTube video titled "Recovering from a Jeff Bezos screwup" containing a monologue or personal recount from May 22, 2024, where a speaker (SPEAKER A) describes a challenging experience launching Amazon's App Store, detailing how they lost and then worked to regain Jeff Bezos's trust through frequent communication during a critical launch failure.
My biggest example of screwing up is I was trying to launch Amazon's App Store, and there was a key feature that Jeff Bezos really liked and wanted to be the centerpiece of the launch. So it came time to launch that, and my team worked all night to launch it on the appointed date. And in the morning, Jeff woke up and we had problems. And so the announcement wasn't out his. And so he emailed me, copied all my leadership above me, and said, hey, where's. Where's the announcement? And I had to write him back and say there are some problems working on it. He writes me right back and starts asking questions and it all unravels and he gets quite mad. How did I re earn trust? I started communicating what we were doing on an hourly basis. So I would write him an email that said, here's what we're doing and you will get your next report at 8:00am I've lost trust. So I'm asking for the smallest unit of trust, which is you're reading this at 8:00'. Clock. Give me 55 minutes. And from his viewpoint, he's like, okay, he's got a good plan. I can wait 55 minutes because he's doing the right things.