The Perfect Store
by Brad Stone
After reading Perfect Store, I think of it less as an catalogue of the history of a company like so many other company focused books are but rather a snapshot for the period in history where it seemed that eBay would be the future.
One of the biggest attributes in the book is that it incorporated the viewpoints of customers on eBay at the time and their struggles/triumphs with eBay. These are people that contributed non-trivially to the success that eBay saw but likely will never be mentioned in even the footnotes of the history of the company. It’s the same for a lot of employees at eBay, together they built the empire but the only ones that ultimately find the spotlight are the founders, early employees, and management team.
Overall, I really enjoyed reading The Perfect Store where the true learnings were hidden between the stories of those destined to be overlooked in any corporate memo.
8/10