Amazon as a whole has nearly a million employees and generates 12-figure revenues. It would be remarkable if it had no R&D at all happening outside its main activities.
But imagine if you could take the more capable people who work on Amazon's high-tech systems like AWS or logistics automation, bundle them into well-composed teams of a few people each, and give each team say $10M in funding. You've potentially just created more highly capable startups with enough runway to do something worthwhile than YC has funded in its entire history. Tell me with a straight face that Amazon as a whole is innovating as much as the combined portfolio of YC from day one.
How much of YC innovation is possible because it runs on AWS commoditization of server hardware ?
Is the annual revenue of all YC companies combined larger than Amazon? (I really have no idea but the it would be the only objective measure of your comparison, brownie points if you reply the answer)
How much of YC innovation is possible because it runs on AWS commoditization of server hardware ?
Innovation? Probably not much. Running on cloud infrastructure is hardly innovative in 2020, there are several other viable choices apart from AWS, and of course before cloud people were running systems in data centres for a long time.
In short, infrastructure like AWS might make some things easier, but it doesn't create much potential to do anything radically different. Big businesses consolidate.
Is the annual revenue of all YC companies combined larger than Amazon?
I don't think we can tell, because a lot of YC companies are private and don't necessarily publish their figures. Amazon's reported revenue rate is in the region of $300B. YC has a portfolio that includes unicorns like Stripe and DropBox, but also a long tail with many less successful or now-failed businesses.
It seems unlikely that the YC portfolio out-earns Amazon, but this isn't really a useful comparison. For one thing, my figures before were only looking at the tech side of Amazon, and completely ignored major factors like Amazon's huge retail operation and most of its acquisitions over the years. For another, it would be no surprise for the big business with huge volumes to bring in more revenue. Small businesses innovate, and innovation is often more about potential revenues in the future than actual revenues right now. Big businesses consolidate, and consolidation is all about scaling up once they've found something that works.
But imagine if you could take the more capable people who work on Amazon's high-tech systems like AWS or logistics automation, bundle them into well-composed teams of a few people each, and give each team say $10M in funding. You've potentially just created more highly capable startups with enough runway to do something worthwhile than YC has funded in its entire history. Tell me with a straight face that Amazon as a whole is innovating as much as the combined portfolio of YC from day one.