THE image in Mark R. Anderson's head was that of an airplane struggling to gain altitude. Mr. Anderson, one of the technology world's more highly regarded pundits, watched a speck of a company called Amazon.com grow from a three-person start-up in a converted garage into a publicly traded corporation that came to symbolize both the best and the worst of the dot-com era.Mr. Anderson publishes The Strategic News Service, an influential newsletter read by the likes of Bill Gates and Michael Dell, and prides himself on being able to predict the future. But he acknowledged that he had been dubious of Amazon and its charismatic chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, and for a time had believed Amazon was more likely to crash than to attain cruising altitude.
Ten years ago this week, Amazon.com made its Internet premiere when Mr. Bezos opened a Web site he audaciously called "Earth's Biggest Bookstore." Amazon sold only a half-million dollars' worth of books in the first six months, but was soon posting the kind of gaudy growth rates that impress Wall Street: sales hit $15.7 million in 1996 and $147.8 million in 1997.
Yet the more familiar story of Amazon in the second half of the 1990's was the rate at which it burned through cash. In 1999, for example, its revenue hit $1.6 billion, but it still lost $719 million.
To stay aloft, Amazon, based in Seattle, borrowed more than $2 billion from banks, but according to regulatory filings, at one point in 2000 it had barely $350 million of cash on hand. "After raising billions of dollars," Mr. Anderson said, "that's pretty close to hitting the ground."
Then Mr. Bezos, like the movie hero who saves the day with only moments to spare, turned things around. He shut some distribution centers and laid off one-seventh of his work force. In 2003 - its ninth year of operations, and seven years after going public - Amazon finally turned a profit.
"You have to give Jeff credit," Mr. Anderson said. "His goal was to turn Amazon into the Wal-Mart of the online world and, eureka, he's done it."
But, he added, it's time for Mr. Bezos to do as the founders of so many other technology companies have done before him: find a professionally trained chief executive with a deep background in operations to take the reins.
By GARY RIVLIN
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