Amazon Web Services is the ‘Juicero’ of Web Hosting, so Why is it Winning?

Growth Study: How did Amazon win despite having an overcomplicated and higher priced solution?

Not so long ago, “Amazon” referred to the largest rainforest in the entire world. Now, most people associate it with the largest retailer in the entire world.

Juicero has become the poster child for silicon valley excess. They raised and spent $120M developing a $700 juicer which is essentially useless. If we take away all the hype, they took a simple industry (juice) and created a technology solution that is overly complex and more expensive. In the business world, this is a disaster.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is Amazon’s cloud hosting business that boasts millions of customers and a $13B run rate for 2017. If those numbers aren’t enough, consider this: the AWS cloud is 10x bigger than it’s next 14 competitors combined. In the business world, this is what we call #WINNING

Here’s the issue… AWS’ success makes NO sense.

If someone had pitched this business to me 10 years ago, I would have predicted almost zero chance of success. The hosting industry is a global, price sensitive, commoditized market and AWS has two big problems: