> building the Sears Roebuck of the 21st Century.

Sears Roebuck failed. I'm starting to wonder if Sears Roebuck didn't fail by not innovating but perhaps the business is not very lucrative and it doesn't matter who tries. Retail, even at scale, is not wildly profitable- not in the $billions we come to expect from SV software companies.

Sears didn't have AWS