If you started Amazon in 2014, would you be successful?

Many people who graduated from second-tier and third-tier colleges have achieved a comeback by relying on the Amazon platform. Because no one in big companies wants them, they can only work for Amazon, standing at the forefront of the times and successfully surpassing their classmates from 985 and 211 universities. Amazon is a platform. Whether you can continue to make money depends on whether you have accumulated your own core competitiveness.

In 2018, I heard people say that if I had started Amazon in 2014, I would have a house and a car now. Now it’s been 21 years, and I still hear people say that if I had started Amazon 18 years ago, I would have a house and a car.

Every era has its own difficulties. Only when there are difficulties do opportunities arise.
In 2014, you went to the factory and said, "I'm doing Amazon. Can you customize foreign models for me?" The factory asked how many they would make. You said 50. The factory said it was for proofing. The price for bulk goods was 50, and the sample was 200. Each stage has its own problems. Using a 21-year supply chain to do a 14-year business is definitely a big deal. It's a God's perspective. If you don't seek truth from facts and find a way out down to earth, even if you were given it in 2011, you would still fail in Amazon. At that time, everything was in English, and you had to use a Hong Kong account to collect payments. So far, few people can explain the fundamental logic of why it was so easy to place orders in 2014. Some just complain that they were not born a few years earlier. What did we do to become Amazon?

If you have this insight and are still working on Amazon, you are unlikely to succeed, because there are better options, but you didn't choose them. You should focus all your resources on buying a house in Shenzhen. In 2014, Amazon's headquarters was in Shenzhen Bantian. You could buy a benchmark property with a 30% down payment. Now the house price has increased fivefold. The benchmark property cost 20,000 yuan, but now it costs 100,000 yuan. 30% of 20,000 yuan is 6,000 yuan, which is equivalent to investing 450,000 yuan in 2014 and 6 million yuan - 450,000 yuan/0.3*0.7 in 2021.
The same applies to 2018. You should buy a house instead of starting Amazon. At the beginning of 2018, the benchmark property in Bantian was 60,000 yuan, and now it is 100,000 yuan. If you buy a small apartment, you will invest 1.2 million yuan, and now it is 6 million - 1.2 million / 0.3*0.7.

Every era has its own opportunities.
Taobao in 2010, Pinduoduo and AliExpress in China in 2015, Amazon and other foreign platforms, the explosion of TikTok in 2019-2020, various new platforms abroad, and independent websites in the early stage of the epidemic. Walmart and Titok are about to explode in 2021. Is there a lack of opportunities? No, but there is always only a small number of people who make money.
The money earned by luck in 20 years will be lost in 21 years by strength.

21 years later, the competition will be about supply chain.
Polishing the supply chain is not a matter of overnight, it requires long-term efforts. Now, when making products, high quality and cost-effectiveness are already the minimum requirements.
Whether your product can explode depends on whether your product design is ① aesthetic, ② rigid demand, and ③ whether the usage scenarios are rich and interesting, which determines whether your product will be shared (automatically spread). Last year and this year, we often encountered clearance products that were sold out the next day due to setting a low price, and then they were not moved after replenishing.

21 years later, no matter how you go, the more you know how to have fun, the easier it will be to succeed.
Work hard, but also look up at the stars. It is not enough to just operate.