High level corporate sales is basically buying a suave guy who has a rolodex of people who can make purchasing decisions.
It is a huge problem if that guy can then turn around and use the contacts he gained through Amazon to compete with Amazon. He is basically turning Amazon's network of contacts into his own and then selling that access to a competitor. It is basically the sales/bizdev equivalent of taking Amazon code and handing it over to Google for a price. Amazon shouldn't have to pay money to negate that risk.
Technically, even in California, if he did something like that it would hold under any reasonable non-solicitation agreement I believe. It is the exact reason these agreements exist.
I'm not 100% sure that is what happened but it sounds like it.
> "High level corporate sales is basically buying a suave guy who has a rolodex of people who can make purchasing decisions."
If you're buying a guy with a rolodex, do you really own his rolodex or are you renting the use of it?
If said rolodex was created on Amazon's watch, with Amazon resources, you can make a pretty decent claim to ownership, but if those contacts pre-dated Amazon, then (not legally speaking, morally) can Amazon really lay ownership on it?
> If you're buying a guy with a rolodex, do you really own his rolodex or are you renting the use of it?
Both. His job is to convert contacts into customers. If contacts become customers, his obligation is not to re-sell the same customers to the next company.
> If said rolodex was created on Amazon's watch, with Amazon resources, you can make a pretty decent claim to ownership, but if those contacts pre-dated Amazon, then (not legally speaking, morally) can Amazon really lay ownership on it?
Key bit from the article was:
“Szabadi was involved in developing, implementing and managing Amazon Web Services’ strategy for many of its partners, and was the first point of contact for most partners who were considering working with Amazon.”
I'd say, morally, its quite reasonable to say "No, you can't solicit business from our customers for X months." Amazon is just playing it cautious and being negotiated down to that position.
It is like anything else in terms of legalities. Sometimes people get overzealous and go too far.
Turn it around. How would you feel if you solicited business from Customer X, hired another consultant to perform 50% of the work, then they turned around and stole Customer X from you because of the contacts/access they gained from when you hired them?
It is a huge problem if that guy can then turn around and use the contacts he gained through Amazon to compete with Amazon. He is basically turning Amazon's network of contacts into his own and then selling that access to a competitor. It is basically the sales/bizdev equivalent of taking Amazon code and handing it over to Google for a price. Amazon shouldn't have to pay money to negate that risk.
Technically, even in California, if he did something like that it would hold under any reasonable non-solicitation agreement I believe. It is the exact reason these agreements exist.
I'm not 100% sure that is what happened but it sounds like it.