Kelyn Brannon, Amazon’s chief accounting officer at the time, says that she and Joy Covey pulled Bezos into a meeting to show him a form of financial analysis called common-sizing the income statement; it expressed each part of the balance sheet as a percentage of value to sales. The calculations showed that at its current rate, Amazon wouldn’t become profitable for decades. “It was an aha moment,” Brannon says. Bezos agreed to lift his foot from the accelerator and begin to move the company toward profitability. To mark the occasion, he took a photo of the group with his everpresent
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