19 November 2007: Amazon launches the Kindle
Amazon introduced the Kindle, a $399 e-reader with wireless downloads, and it sold out within hours. Critics mocked its clunky design, but the device turned digital books into a mainstream habit and gave Amazon control of a big chunk of publishing. More important for investors, it marked Amazon's willingness to build its own hardware, a strategy that later led to devices like the Echo and Fire TV.
The lesson: Companies that will sell cheap hardware to own a habit can win the whole market.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Amazon at the start of 2007 → $115,789 today, vs $4,789 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2007, the year it happened. That is 115.8 times the money, and $111,001 more than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What Amazon teaches: Accounting losses are not the same as a bad business; Amazon reinvested its cash flow for years while short-term investors read thin profits as weakness.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | $1.90 | $115,789 | $4,789 |
| 2008 | $4.60 | $47,826 | $4,626 |
| 2010 | $6.70 | $32,836 | $6,071 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Amazon? Every starting year and the full story →
More Amazon history
- 2 February 2021: Jeff Bezos says he will step down as Amazon CEO
- 15 May 1997: Amazon goes public at $18 a share
- 16 June 2017: Amazon buys Whole Foods
- 5 July 1994: A bookstore called Cadabra
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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