Paul Davis
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Geek at Sea · Paul Davis - Second Employee at Amazon
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What Happened When Paul Davis's Daughter Turned 16?
When Paul Davis's daughter turned 16, her mother arranged a trip to Paris for the birthday. Her mother was doing research with a group in Paris and went to Paris quite a lot for the lab, which felt incredibly privileged. Paul Davis's software business does not do any marketing and does not do any advertising.
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What Happened When Paul Davis Left His Software Running for 10 Years?
Paul Davis left his software running for 10 years, and it grew slowly without being shut down. He had the privilege of allowing things to grow in a much more organic way. If he had shut the software down at any point in those 10 years, he would not have had the opportunity to do any of the things that happened to it later.
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Why Does Paul Davis Ask Friends Not to Pitch His Software?
Paul Davis asks friends not to pitch his software because he is the worst salesperson for what he does. He is not the person you would meet at a party trying to tell you all about his amazing software. If a friend did music, he would probably tell you not to mention the software to that friend.
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Why Does Making Money From Free Software Still Feel Like a Gift?
Paul Davis says making money from free software still feels like a gift because people choose to pay for work they can get for free. He feels extraordinarily blessed to do work he really loves and to parent the way he always dreamed. He says it still requires some level of belief.
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When Did Paul Davis's Software Business Start Paying Him?
Paul Davis's software business started paying him in 2009. It has now grown to the point where the software generates somewhere like $200,000 a year, though not all of that is kept, because other people work on the software and it gets distributed to them.
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Why Did Paul Davis's Plan to Leave Tech for Farming Fall Apart?
Paul Davis's plan to leave tech for farming fell apart a year into his first wife's postdoc on the East Coast. The plan was a few years there, then a return to the Pacific Northwest, a liberal arts college job for his first wife, and small-scale organic farming for him.
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Why Did Amazon's Second Employee Leave After One Year of Options?
Paul Davis, Amazon's second employee, left after the first year of his options vested so he could be a stay-at-home parent in Seattle. There were five years of options. He waited until the first year vested, then left and walked away with 1 1/5 of the options he would have had by staying the whole time. He thinks he might have paid $70 for the shares, and there was no way of knowing what they were going to be worth.
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Why Was Amazon Almost Called Cadabra?
Amazon was almost called Cadabra Inc, until a lawyer argued the name was not good because it sounded so much like cadaver. Jeff Bezos later took the name Amazon from a TV documentary about the Amazon River, after hearing that the Amazon is 10 times bigger than the next biggest river.
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Why Did People in Seattle Find Bellevue Unappealing?
People in Seattle proper found Bellevue unappealing because it looked deeply suburban. There was nothing but parking lots and shopping malls, and it was a place you would not really want to go.
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Who Was Hired Right After Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos at Amazon?
Paul Davis was the second person hired at Amazon outside Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos. He started at about the same time as Shel, normally the first employee. Both were being hired together, and Paul Davis was already there even before the company was called Amazon.