Amazon wasn't competing with B&N in 1994. B&N however (and Borders, and so many others) were.

Amazon in the 90s wasn't about "getting a book" but "getting a book via a computer, from a place with "all the books" and I don't have to drive".

B&N could have competed with that if they had understand what was happening, but I don't think they did.

bookshop.org appears to do so, but may be 20 years too late.

I don’t think the previous commenter was saying that no startup could disrupt Amazon, but that no startup could disrupt Amazon simply by spending less time on tax paperwork.

Amazon didn’t disrupt B&N by spending less time on tax paperwork. They disrupted them by changing essentially every fundamental piece of how they conducted their business.

Amazon's original pitch was not selling you the latest Stephen King novel. B&N was going to beat them there. But they were going to own the long tail of books you cannot stock a cache of every few miles in suburbia.

I second this comment 1000x. Amazon beat Barnes, and then Walmart, and then Jet tried to beat Amazon. If the average Joe was able to give it a shot instead of just the Harvard elite, then we'd have many more chances