Audio Podcast of a talk by David Risher – Founder of World Reader and Amazon & Microsoft Early Employee
David Risher founded a profit called World-Reader – after being an early employee first of Microsoft where he worked directly with Bill Gates and an early employee of Amazon who was hired by Jeff Bezos himself and worked directly with Jeff Bezos.
In this talk David modestly touches upon his experience at Microsoft and at Amazon as just something he did before he started his World-Reader journey. However David he was instrumental in taking Amazon.com from a very small startup when he joined in 1997 to a $4 billion dollar business, when he exited Amazon.
Before joining Amazon David worked in Microsoft where he was responsible for Microsoft Access – the database which was part of Microsoft Office.
To say a little more about David’s time at Amazon – he joined Amazon.com as its first Vice President of Product and Store Development.
Under his leadership, Amazon’s revenue grew from $16 million to over $4 billion. He later served as the company’s Senior Vice President, US Retail, overseeing the marketing and general management of Amazon’s retail operations. David left Amazon in 2002.
In Amazon, so massive and so deep was David Risher’s impact that till this day, there is a link on Amazon.com’s home-page – which leads to a message from Jeff Bezos (CEO & Founder of Amazon). Jeff Bezos himself thanks David and talks of David’s contribution and important role in building Amazon into what it is today.
World Reader which David Risher founded is a San Francisco, USA based non-profit which helps children in particular and readers in general in the most underprivileged and developing countries of the world get access to reading material by providing them with access to digital content, as well as ebook readers like kindle as well as world reader’s own mobile app.
Here’s a screenshot of what’s mentioned above – at the bottom of Amazon.com’s store directory, a perpetual Easter egg link leads to a tribute to David written by Jeff Bezos.
At the bottom of Amazon.com’s store directory, a perpetual Easter egg link leads to a tribute to David written by Jeff Bezos.
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