<p>It was the autumn of 1996. Jeff Bezos had just raised eight million dollars, putting Amazon’s valuation at around sixty million. Revenue that year was $15.7 million, small yes, but growing at a huge rate and it had caught the attention of two men who’d built an empire out of books the old-fashioned way — Leonard and Stephen Riggio, founders of Barnes & Noble.</p><p>Their chain was the heavyweight of American bookselling: hundreds of superstores, nearly two billion dollars in annual sales, and a reputation for crushing smaller rivals.</p><p>That autumn, the Riggio brothers invited Jeff Bezos to dinner in New York for what was described as a frank but cordial conversation. They told him they admired what he’d built, acknowledged that Amazon had the early lead online. But, they said plainly, if Barnes & Noble launched its own e-commerce site, their scale and publisher relationships would allow them to “surpass Amazon easily” in both selection and price.</p><p>They floated alternatives — a partnership, maybe a strategic alliance, maybe for Bezos to lead Barnes & Noble’s online strategy.</p><p>Bezos declined. Steve Riggio left the dinner unconvinced and said after the meeting. “That purely virtual model won’t cut it in the long term.”</p><p>Now… to understand how Bezos ended up across the table from the biggest booksellers in America just over a year after setting up Amazon, you have to go back to where it all began.</p><p><br></p>
