When the CEO Is the Company

What is Amazon.com (AMZN Quote) without Jeff Bezos?

That's what some investors may be wondering following reports that the company's chairman and chief executive officer survived a helicopter crash in Texas last week. Although Bezos, 39, presumably has many years of service to the company left in him, the frightening incident highlights his importance to the company, and Amazon's lack of an acknowledged No. 2.

"It would probably be more disruptive than you would imagine," said Jeff Matthews, general partner of Greenwich, Conn.-based investment firm Ram Partners, and a contributor to the Street Insight Web site. "It's a great yellow flag for them, to make sure they do have a good guy or woman in place to fill his shoes."

(Matthews has no position in Amazon.)

Bezos, who founded Amazon out of his garage in 1994, is, of course, more than just the head of the company. To a larger extent than most CEOs, he's the public face of Amazon and the company's guiding visionary.

In that way, he's more akin to Martha Stewart than to Meg Whitman, who serves as CEO of the other dot-com titan, eBay (EBAY Quote). Although Amazon's brand is not wrapped up in Bezos' name, like Stewart's, he is the person that investors and customers associate with Amazon.

"I think there's lot less of the company tied to [Whitman's] cult of personality than at Amazon," Matthews said.

That wouldn't be so bad if Bezos had a clear-cut successor who could assume his place in an emergency. But the company has seen the departure of several senior executives over the last year.

Warren Jenson, the company's respected chief financial officer, left the company a year ago to become CFO of Electronic Arts (ERTS Quote).

Mark Britto, the company's senior vice president of worldwide sales, services and business development, left last June to become CEO of Keen.com, while David Risher, who served as senior vice president of marketing and product development, left in March 2002.