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Building Alexa at Amazon: Innovating from Vision to Scale
When Jeff Bezos sent a simple email proposing a device you could talk to from across the room, most experts said it couldn't be done. Far-field voice recognition was considered impossible. But impossible just takes a little longer.
In this unprecedented inside account, Al Lindsay—the first technical hire and former VP of Engineering for Alexa—reveals how Amazon built one of the fastest-growing consumer products in history. From renting houses across America to collect voice data, to solving seemingly insurmountable technical challenges, to scaling to hundreds of millions of users, Lindsay provides a master class in innovation, leadership, and building revolutionary products.
Drawing on his eight years leading the Alexa engineering organization, Lindsay
How Amazon tackled "impossible" technical problems by breaking them into manageable piecesThe secrets to successfully managing distributed global teams across multiple time zonesKey strategies for reducing friction to drive massive user adoptionCritical lessons from strategic acquisitions and integrationAmazon's unique playbook for achieving hyperscalePractical, authoritative, and filled with unforgettable stories from the front lines of innovation, The Art of the Impossible is an essential playbook for anyone building transformative products or leading ambitious technical projects. It's also a deeply human story about the team that created a product that changed how we interact with technology—and made the impossible inevitable.
As Al Lindsay himself
“Building Alexa was the most challenging thing I have ever done. It was an immense technical effort. Building Alexa required us to learn to handle hyperscaling (0–100 million endpoints in a few years). We were “close to the Sun,” under perpetual review and scrutiny from Jeff Bezos. There was constant pressure to deliver more, faster. It was also very challenging from a professional development perspective and from a personal development perspective, pushing me out of all my comfort zones. Yet it was the most exhilarating, rewarding and fun time in my career, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
Come along for the journey.
In this unprecedented inside account, Al Lindsay—the first technical hire and former VP of Engineering for Alexa—reveals how Amazon built one of the fastest-growing consumer products in history. From renting houses across America to collect voice data, to solving seemingly insurmountable technical challenges, to scaling to hundreds of millions of users, Lindsay provides a master class in innovation, leadership, and building revolutionary products.
Drawing on his eight years leading the Alexa engineering organization, Lindsay
How Amazon tackled "impossible" technical problems by breaking them into manageable piecesThe secrets to successfully managing distributed global teams across multiple time zonesKey strategies for reducing friction to drive massive user adoptionCritical lessons from strategic acquisitions and integrationAmazon's unique playbook for achieving hyperscalePractical, authoritative, and filled with unforgettable stories from the front lines of innovation, The Art of the Impossible is an essential playbook for anyone building transformative products or leading ambitious technical projects. It's also a deeply human story about the team that created a product that changed how we interact with technology—and made the impossible inevitable.
As Al Lindsay himself
“Building Alexa was the most challenging thing I have ever done. It was an immense technical effort. Building Alexa required us to learn to handle hyperscaling (0–100 million endpoints in a few years). We were “close to the Sun,” under perpetual review and scrutiny from Jeff Bezos. There was constant pressure to deliver more, faster. It was also very challenging from a professional development perspective and from a personal development perspective, pushing me out of all my comfort zones. Yet it was the most exhilarating, rewarding and fun time in my career, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
Come along for the journey.
76 pages, Hardcover
Published March 4, 2025
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