Make it up with volume...

I was listening to a podcast recently where an ex-Amazon executive was being interviewed.

He made a comment about Amazon in the early days losing money.  A common quip at that time was an old joke about even though each transaction was losing money Amazon would make it up on volume.

It's funny, right? Everybody knows if you are losing money on every sale increasing the volume of sales will just multiply the problem.

That was true at Amazon, the ex-executive explained. Until it wasn't.

What he described was the reality of growing into an economy of scale. Amazon becoming profitable required an economy of scale large enough to allow sales that had previously lost money to become profitable because the larger organization could do each transaction cheaper. 

Thinking about this I cam up with the following question: What in our lives is currently inefficient or a loss in terms of time, energy, or money but would become efficient and profitable if done in larger volume or a bigger way? 

TB 10/2026