biography about jeff bezos

Jeff Bezos Biography

Birthday: January 12 , 1964 ( Capricorn )

Born In: Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States

Jeff Bezos is an American technology entrepreneur and founder of e-commerce giant Amazon.com. Born to Jacklyn Gise and Ted Jorgensen, he was adopted by Miguel Bezos, a Cuban immigrant, after his mother married him. As a child, he spent his summers laying pipes, vaccinating cattle and fixing windmills at his grandfather’s Texas ranch. He attended Miami Palmetto Senior High School, and took his B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University graduating ‘summa cum laude’. He worked on Wall Street in companies such as Fitel, Bankers Trust and D. E. Shaw & Co, New York. He became the youngest Vice President at D. E. Shaw & Co. In spite of success, he decided to quit the field of finance. He founded Amazon.com, an online book store, and later introduced features including one-click shopping, customer reviews, and e-mail order verification. He expanded it to include various other items including clothes, CDs, toys, jewellery, watches, electronics and shoes. He has constantly been improving his web site, and introducing improved facilities for his customers. His childhood dream of space travel spurred the founding of Blue Origin, an aerospace company that is developing technologies to offer space travel to customers. Bloomberg Billionaires Index listed Bezos as one of the wealthiest people in the world with an estimated net worth of $28 billion.

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Also Known As: Jeffrey Preston Bezos, Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen

Age: 60 Years , 60 Year Old Males

Spouse/Ex-: Mackenzie Bezos (m. 1993)

father: Ted Jorgensen

mother: Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen

Partner: Lauren Sánchez

Born Country: United States

Billionaires CEOs

Height: 5'7" (170 cm ), 5'7" Males

U.S. State: New Mexico

Ancestry: Danish American

Notable Alumni: River Oaks Elementary School, Miami Palmetto High School

City: Albuquerque, New Mexico

Founder/Co-Founder: Amazon.com, Inc.

education: Princeton University, River Oaks Elementary School, Miami Palmetto High School

awards: 1999 - Time Person of the Year

You wanted to know

How did jeff bezos start amazon.

Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 as an online bookstore, operating out of his garage in Seattle, Washington.

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Jeff Bezos emphasizes a "Day 1" mentality at Amazon, encouraging constant innovation, customer-centric focus, and willingness to take risks.

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Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, a private aerospace company focused on developing technologies for space travel and exploration.

What is Jeff Bezos' leadership style at Amazon?

Jeff Bezos is known for his hands-on leadership style, focusing on long-term vision, customer obsession, and fostering a culture of innovation and risk-taking at Amazon.

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Critics have raised concerns about Amazon's impact on small businesses, labor practices, environmental footprint, and market dominance in various industries.

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Jeff Bezos once worked at a McDonald's restaurant during his teenage years, where he learned important lessons about customer service and hard work.

Bezos founded Amazon in a garage in 1994, starting as an online bookstore before expanding into the e-commerce giant it is today.

He is passionate about space exploration and founded Blue Origin, a private aerospace company, to further develop space travel technology.

Bezos is known for his hands-on approach to leadership, often attending meetings and staying involved in the day-to-day operations of Amazon.

See the events in life of Jeff Bezos in Chronological Order

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Real Time Net Worth

• Jeff Bezos founded e-commerce giant Amazon in 1994 out of his Seattle garage.
• Bezos stepped down as CEO to become executive chairman in 2021. He owns a bit less than 10% of the company.
• He and his wife MacKenzie divorced in 2019 after 25 years of marriage and he transferred a quarter of his then-16% Amazon stake to her.
• In 2020, Bezos committed to donate $10 billion to climate causes by 2030 through his Bezos Earth Fund; he has granted $2 billion so far.
• He owns The Washington Post and Blue Origin, an aerospace company developing rockets; he briefly flew to space in one in July 2021.
• Bezos said in a November 2022 interview with CNN that he plans to give away the majority of his wealth in his lifetime, without disclosing specific details.

Forbes Lists

I didn't think I'd regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all. Jeff Bezos

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Inside the Life and Career of Jeff Bezos, the Tech CEO Who Founded Amazon Everything to know about Jeff Bezos, from high school in Miami to flying in space with Blue Origin.

By Sarah Jackson Aug 25, 2023

Key Takeaways

• Jeff Bezos began his career as a hedge-funder in New York before leaving to start Amazon.
• Amazon struggled to turn a profit at first, but is one of the world's biggest companies today.
• Along the way, Bezos has faced antitrust scrutiny, weathered scandals, traveled to space, and become one of the world's richest people.

This article originally appeared on Business Insider .

Jeff Bezos is one of the most recognizable names in business.

The 59-year-old tech titan worked at a hedge fund before he left to start Amazon as an online bookseller, ultimately growing it into one of the world's largest companies by revenue. He's also founded space tourism company Blue Origin, which has flown him to the edge of space.

He's a fixture in the world's wealthiest list; currently, Bezos is the third-richest person in the world with a net worth of $158 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index .

With all of his wealth, Bezos has made some splashy purchases. He's the 24th-largest landowner in the US with 420,000 acres, according to the 2022 Land Report , with a real estate portfolio boasting mansions in Hawaii, California, Florida, and more. Bezos also owns the world's biggest sailing yacht , a 417-footer that cost an estimated $500 million.

From his first job flipping burgers at McDonald's to building Amazon into a trillion-dollar company at one point, here's a look at Jeff Bezos' life and career.

Allana Akhtar and Avery Hartmans contributed to an earlier version of this story.

Jeff Bezos' mom, Jackie, was a teenager when she had him on January 12, 1964.

Jeff Bezos with his father, Miguel "Mike" Bezos. Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Statue Of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation

She had recently married Cuban immigrant Miguel Bezos, who later adopted Jeff.

Jeff didn't learn that Miguel, who often goes by Mike, wasn't his real father until he was 10 years old, but he told Wired he was more fazed about learning he needed to get glasses than he was about the news.

In 1968, his mother told his biological father, Ted Jorgensen, who previously had worked as a circus performer, to stay out of their lives.

When author Brad Stone interviewed Bezos' biological father for his 2013 book, "The Everything Store," Bezos' dad had no idea who his son had become.

Bezos showed signs of brilliance from an early age.

When he was a toddler, he took apart his crib with a screwdriver because he wanted to sleep in a real bed, according to an account in the book "The Everything Store."

From ages four to 16, Bezos spent summers at his grandparents' ranch in Texas, doing things like repairing windmills and castrating bulls.

Bezos said he would help vaccinate cattle, fix equipment, and do other chores while at his grandparents. AP Photo/Richard Drew via BI

Decades later, Bezos purchased his own land in Texas . His acreage is used as the launch site for Blue Origin rockets.

Bezos' first job was cooking burgers at a McDonald's in Miami.

Bezos became interested in automation during his time at McDonald's. Joe Raedle/Getty Images via BI

Bezos described the gig at McDonald's as "really hard" in a 2001 interview with Fast Company.

"They wouldn't let me anywhere near the customers. This was my acned-teenager stage. They were like, 'Hmm, why don't you work in the back?'" Bezos said.

Bezos has cited his grandfather, Preston Gise, as an inspiration.

Bezos said his grandfather was an intelligent, quiet man. AP Images via BI

At a commencement address in 2010, Bezos said Gise taught him , "it's harder to be kind than clever."

As a child, Bezos fell in love with reruns of the original "Star Trek" and became a fan of later versions too.

Bezos' interest in space goes way back. Paramount Pictures via BI

He even considered naming Amazon MakeItSo.com, a reference to a line from Captain Jean-Luc Picard, according to the book "The Everything Store." Bezos also considered naming Amazon Cadabra .

In 2016, Bezos even filmed a cameo in a "Star Trek" movie.

At his South Florida high school, Bezos said he wanted to be a "space entrepreneur."

Bezos' space company is called Blue Origin. Getty Images / Blue Origin via BI

In school, Bezos would tell teachers that "the future of mankind is not on this planet."

Of course, he's made that dream a reality: He now owns space exploration company Blue Origin.

"I do think we have all our eggs in one basket," Bezos said according to a Wired interview in 1999.

To avoid spending a summer flipping burgers at McDonald's, Bezos and his high school girlfriend started a summer camp.

The name of Bezos' summer cap was Dream Institute. Kim Kulish/Getty images via BI

Dream Institute, an educational summer camp for kids, focused on science, math, and reading.

The camp had six kids who each paid $600 for the session — though two of them were Bezos' siblings. "The Lord of the Rings" series was required reading, and science lessons focused on fossil fuels and space, according to the 1999 Wired article.

Upon graduating high school in 1982, Bezos matriculated at Princeton University, where he majored in computer science.

Princeton University. John Greim / Getty Images via BI

Upon graduation, he turned down job offers from Intel and Bell Labs to join a telecommunications startup called Fitel, according to the book "The Everything Store."

After he quit Fitel, he went to Bankers Trust where he worked as a product manager.

Bezos worked at Banker's Trust for about two years. Karl Baron/Flickr via BI

While at Bankers Trust, Bezos focused on selling software to pension-fund clients.

He left Banker's Trust after two years for hedge fund D. E. Shaw.

D.E. Shaw was founded by David Shaw, pictured. D.E. Shaw via BI

He became a senior vice president after only four years, according to a Wired interview.

Meanwhile, Bezos was taking ballroom dancing classes as part of a scheme to increase what he called his "women flow."

Bezos' had an interesting dating strategy. Lisi Niesner/Reuters via BI

The term was a play on Wall Street's "deal flow" and referred to the number of opportunities he had to meet women.

He ended up meeting his future wife, MacKenzie Scott Tuttle at work.

MacKenzie Scott Tuttle was a D.E. Shaw research associate. The pair married in 1993 and they went on to have four kids together.

By 1994, Bezos's eye was on the internet, after reading about the web's immense growth in one year.

Paul Falardeau via BI

This number astounded him, and he decided he needed to find some way to take advantage of its rapid growth. He made a list of 20 possible products to sell online and decided books were the best option, according to "The Everything Store" book.

He decided to leave D.E. Shaw — a stable and lucrative job — in 1994 to start what would become Amazon.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is silhouetted during a presentation of his company's new Fire smartphone at a news conference in Seattle, Washington June 18, 2014. REUTERS/Jason Redmond via BI

His boss at the firm, David E. Shaw, tried to persuade Bezos to stay, but Bezos was already determined to start his own company. Source: Wired

MacKenzie and Jeff flew to Texas to borrow a car from his father, and then they drove to Seattle, which would become Amazon's headquarters.

Bezos worked on his business plan while the couple were driving across the country, according to Wired. Sara Jaye/Getty Images via BI

Bezos was making revenue projections in the passenger seat the whole way, though the couple did stop to watch the sunrise at the Grand Canyon.

Bezos started Amazon.com in a garage with a potbelly stove.

Bezos worked out of the garage of a rented house in Bellevue, Washington. Mike Segar/Reuters via BI

He held most of his meetings at the neighborhood Barnes & Noble — which would soon become a competitor.

In the early days, a bell would ring in the office every time someone made a purchase.

AP Photo/Andy Rogers via BI

Amazon's employees would gather to see if anyone knew the customer.

But it took only a few weeks before it was ringing so often that the company put an end to the bell, according to the book "The Everything Store."

In the first month of its launch, Amazon sold books to people in all 50 states and more than 45 different countries.

Frank Micelotta/Getty Images via BI

In 1997, less than three years after it was founded, Amazon went public on May 15.

When the dot-com crash came, analysts called the company "Amazon.bomb." But it weathered the storm.

The dot-com bust didn't kill Amazon. Mario Tama/Getty Images via BI

The website ended up being one of the startups that wasn't wiped out.

Amazon has now gone beyond selling books to offering almost everything you can imagine.

Amazon has hundreds of fulfillment centers around the world. Shutterstock via BI

The retailer offers, appliances, clothing, groceries, toiletries, and even cloud computing services.

In the early days, Bezos was said to be a demanding boss.

Bezos wasn't always the easiest person to work with. Reuters via BI

Bezos could explode at employees , and rumors circulated that he hired a leadership coach to help him tone it down. He also reportedly gave sarcastic responses when he was upset.

At one point, Bezos banned PowerPoint presentations at Amazon.

Bezos Thomson Reuters via BI

Instead, Bezos required his staff to turn in papers on their proposals. This, he believed, would encourage critical thinking.

Bezos is also known for creating a frugal company culture.

An Amazon office. Business Insider

This contrasts with other big tech firms, which offer free food and perks.

Bezos told Business Insider in 2014 that Amazon did offer great amenities to its employees, but they just weren't the same as other tech companies.

More than 20 years after going public, Amazon now has a market cap of $1.4 trillion.

Amazon has become one of the biggest companies in the world. Alex Wong/Getty Images via BI

Amazon is one of the world's five largest public companies.

His time leading Amazon was not without controversy.

Amazon has come under the spotlight many times. AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais via BI

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon saw a surge in demand as more people were forced to shop online. But the company faced criticism over its treatment of workers , who said the company paid little attention to their health and safety at its fulfillment centers nationwide.

Amazon delivery drivers, who are contractors employed by third-party companies, have also spoken out about the demands of their jobs. Some drivers say Amazon's emphasis on metrics has forced them to use their delivery vans as bathrooms or sacrifice safety to deliver packages on time.

Amazon has faced antitrust concerns , particularly over its treatment of third-party sellers on its platform. Bezos and other tech CEOs were called to testify before Congress in 2020.

He's also gotten rich as an early investor in Google

Google cofounders Larry Page, left, and Sergey Brin, right. AP via BI

Bezos invested $250,000 in Google . That translated to 3.3 million shares when the company went public in 2004.

Today, that would be worth more than $400 million. Bezos hasn't said whether he kept any of his stock after the initial public offering.

Despite his high net worth, Bezos had the same annual base salary for decades while he was CEO: $81,840.

Security and travel costs for Bezos totaled some $1.6 million in 2016. Drew Angerer/Getty Images via BI

His annual total compensation for many years exceeded $1 million owing to costs related to security and business travel.

In July 2017, Bezos became the world's richest person for the first time.

Bill Gates, left, and Jeff Bezos, right. Getty Images via BI

He momentarily surpassed Microsoft founder Bill Gates with a net worth of more than $90 billion.

Today, Bezos is worth $157 billion, and he said he will give most of his wealth to charity.

Bezos has given to a number of causes. REUTERS/Abhishek N. Chinnappa via BI

Some of his more notable contributions include pledging $10 billion to fight climate change through his Bezos Earth Fund , donating $200 million to the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum , and pledging $100 million towards recovery efforts on Maui , where he owns a $78 million home, following the catastrophic wildfires.

But he's also spending his money on other business pursuits.

Amazon was not involved in the deal with The Washington Post. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images via BI

In August 2013, Bezos bought The Washington Post for $250 million.

And he's spent an unknown amount on the private space tourism company Blue Origin.

Bezos made history with his rocket company. Blue Origin via BI

The company made history in 2015 when it successfully launched a reusable rocket.

The rocket, called New Shepard, traveled to an altitude of 62 miles.

Bezos' interest in flying has gotten him into trouble in the past.

Bezos cheated death in 2003. LINDSEY WASSON/Reuters via BI

In 2003, Bezos almost died in a helicopter crash in Texas while scouting a site for a test-launch facility for Blue Origin.

Over the years, Bezos has also built quite the real estate portfolio.

Jeff Bezos owns all kinds of properties. Stephen Brashear/Getty via BI

He is the country's 24th largest landowner with 420,000 acres.

In January 2017, Bezos was revealed as the anonymous buyer of the Textile Museum in DC's Kalorama neighborhood.

The property dates back to 1912. AgnosticPreachersKid/Wikimedia Commons via BI

The property sold for $23 million, and with nearly 27,000 square feet of living space, it is the largest home in Washington, DC.

Bezos also owns five apartments at 212 Fifth Avenue in New York City.

Madison Square Park in New York City. Shutterstock via BI

His most recent purchase was in 2021, when he paid a reported $23 million for a four-bedroom unit. He's spent a total of $119 million on apartments in the building.

In February 2020, Bezos became the new owner of the Warner Estate, a sprawling compound in Beverly Hills, California.

The estate has a 13,600-square-foot mansion Los Angeles County/Pictometry via BI

He purchased the property for $165 million , making it California's most expensive real estate transaction at the time. Bezos bought the mansion from David Geffen, who had purchased it in 1990 for $47.5 million.

In 2021, Bezos bought a home in Hawaii located in an isolated area on Maui's south shore near lava fields.

A home in Maui, Hawaii, although not the one Bezos purchased. ejs9/Getty Images via BI

Bezos' Maui home reportedly cost $78 million.

Most recently, Bezos scooped up a $68 million waterfront mansion in Miami's "billionaire bunker" island, Indian Creek Village.

Indian Creek was ranked the most expensive city in the US in 2021. Jeffrey Greenberg/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images; Karwai Tang/WireImage via Getty Images via BI

The sale to Bezos was record-breaking on the island, which has also been home to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Tom Brady, and billionaire investor Carl Icahn.

In January 2019, Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, announced they were divorcing.

The couple decided to split after more than two decades. Dia Dipasupil / Staff via BI

"As our family and close friends know, after a long period of loving exploration and trial separation, we have decided to divorce and continue our shared lives as friends," the couple wrote in the statement. "If we had known we would separate after 25 years, we would do it all again."

Jeff and MacKenzie announced on Twitter they had finalized the term of their divorce in April 2019.

MacKenzie was with Jeff before he ever started Amazon. Reuters via BI

MacKenzie, who changed her last name to Scott, retained more than $35 billion in Amazon stock , making her one of the world's richest women.

Scott, whose net worth is $36 billion, has donated at least $14.5 billion since 2019 , when she vowed to give away most of her fortune in her lifetime.

Shortly after they announced their divorce, news broke that Bezos was dating TV host and helicopter pilot Lauren Sanchez.

Sanchez and Bezos originally met when both of them were still married. When they started dating is unclear. Simon Stacpoole/Offside/Getty Images via BI

At the time, the National Enquirer said it had obtained texts and explicit photos the couple had sent to each other. The publication also said at the time that it had "raunchy messages" between Bezos and Sanchez .

Bezos immediately launched an investigation into who had leaked his personal messages.

Bezos' head of security helmed the investigation. Drew Angerer/Getty Images via BI

Soon after, he dropped a bombshell of his own: an explosive blog post accusing National Enquirer publisher AMI of trying to blackmail him .

"Rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail, I've decided to publish exactly what they sent me, despite the personal cost and embarrassment they threaten," Bezos wrote.

Since then, Bezos and Sanchez have had a whirlwind few years.

Sanchez and Bezos travel the world together. Reuters/Andrew Couldridge via BI

The couple are often captured traveling around the world together . They've been spotted attending Wimbledon together, yachting with other moguls and celebrities, and vacationing in Saint-Tropez and St. Barths.

Throughout the summer, they've frequently been spotted on Bezos' new yacht.

Bezos and Sanchez hanging out in Portofino. MEGA / Contributor / Getty Images via BI

The ship, which cost an estimated $500 million to build , is 417 feet long and said to be the largest in the world. Bezos may have even put a sculpture of Sanchez on the bow of the ship .

In May, multiple outlets reported that the pair had gotten engaged.

Jeff Bezos and Laura Sanchez in 2022. Jordan Strauss/AP via BI

They marked the engagement with a party in August attended by guests like Bill Gates and Kris Jenner.

In 2021, Bezos announced he would step down as Amazon's CEO and transition to executive chairman after 27 years at the company's helm.

Jeff Bezos was succeeded by Amazon executive Andy Jassy. Kevin Winter/Getty Images via BI

Bezos said that he planned to spend more time on philanthropy — including the Bezos Earth Fund and his Day 1 Fund — as well as his two other major endeavors: The Washington Post and his rocket company, Blue Origin.

That month, he took an 11-minute voyage to the edge of space aboard a Blue Origin spacecraft.

The rocket had flown 15 times before, but this was it's first time with people onboard. Isaiah J. Downing/Reuters via BI

The trip marked his company's first human spaceflight .

He was accompanied by his brother, Mark; a Dutch teenager named Oliver Daemen ; and Wally Funk, an 82-year-old aviator who trained to go to space in the '60s but was ultimately denied the opportunity because she was a woman.

Though Bezos remains the third-richest person in the world today, his wealth took a tumble last year.

Jeff Bezos. AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File via BI

In Forbes' annual ranking of the world's wealthiest individuals, Bezos came out as the biggest loser: His net worth fell $57 billion from March 2022 to March 2023 but still sat at a cool $114 billion at the time.

Amazon's stock fell 50% in 2022, and it became the first public company to ever lose $1 trillion in market value . Don't feel too bad for him — with Amazon's stock bouncing back this year, Bezos' wallet has largely recovered.

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Jeffrey p. bezos, founder and executive chairman, amazon.com.

Listen to this achiever on What It Takes

What It Takes is an audio podcast produced by the American Academy of Achievement featuring intimate, revealing conversations with influential leaders in the diverse fields of endeavor: public service, science and exploration, sports, technology, business, arts and humanities, and justice.

I knew that if I failed, I would regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.

Jeffrey P. Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His mother was still in her teens, and her marriage to his father lasted little more than a year. She remarried when Jeffrey was four. Jeffrey’s stepfather, Mike Bezos, was born in Cuba; he escaped to the United States alone at age 15, and worked his way through the University of Albuquerque. When he married Jeffrey’s mother, the family moved to Houston, where Mike Bezos became an engineer for Exxon. Jeffrey’s maternal ancestors were early settlers in Texas, and over the generations had acquired a 25,000-acre ranch at Cotulla. Jeffrey’s grandfather was a regional director of the Atomic Energy Commission in Albuquerque. He retired early to the family ranch, where Jeffrey spent most of the summers of his youth, working with his grandfather at the enormously varied tasks essential to the operation.

From an early age, Jeffrey displayed a striking mechanical aptitude. Even as a toddler, he asserted himself by dismantling his crib with a screwdriver. He also developed intense and varied scientific interests, rigging an electric alarm to keep his younger siblings out of his room and converting his parents’ garage into a laboratory for his science projects. When he was a teenager, the family moved to Miami, Florida. In high school in Miami, Jeffrey first fell in love with computers. An outstanding student, he was valedictorian of his class. He entered Princeton University planning to study physics, but soon returned to his love of computers, and graduated with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering.

After graduation, Jeff Bezos found employment on Wall Street, where computer science was increasingly in demand to study market trends. He went to work at Fitel, a start-up company that was building a network to conduct international trade. He stayed in the finance realm with Bankers Trust, rising to a vice presidency. At D. E. Shaw, a firm specializing in the application of computer science to the stock market, Bezos was hired as much for his overall talent as for any particular assignment.  While working at Shaw, Jeff met MacKenzie Tuttle, also a Princeton graduate. They began dating and were married in 1993. Bezos rose quickly at Shaw, becoming a senior vice president, and was looking forward to a bright career in finance when he made a discovery that changed his life — and the course of business history.

The Internet was originally created by the Defense Department to keep its computer networks connected during an emergency, such as natural catastrophe or enemy attack. Over the years, it was adopted by government and academic researchers to exchange data and messages, but as late as 1994, there was still no Internet commerce to speak of. One day that spring, Jeffrey Bezos observed that Internet usage was increasing by 2,300 percent a year. He saw an opportunity for a new sphere of business, and immediately began considering the possibilities. In typically methodical fashion, Bezos reviewed the top 20 mail order businesses, and asked himself which could be conducted more efficiently over the Internet than by traditional means. Books were the commodity for which no comprehensive mail order catalogue existed, because any such catalogue would be too big to mail — perfect for the Internet, which could share a vast database with a virtually limitless number of people.

He flew to Los Angeles the very next day to attend the American Booksellers’ Convention and learn everything he could about the book business. He found that the major book wholesalers had already compiled electronic lists of their inventory. All that was needed was a single location on the Internet, where the book-buying public could search the available stock and place orders directly. Bezos’s employers weren’t prepared to proceed with such a venture, and Bezos knew the only way to seize the opportunity was to go into business for himself. It would mean sacrificing a secure position in New York, but he and his wife, Mackenzie, decided to make the leap.

Jeff and Mackenzie flew to Texas on Independence Day weekend and picked up a 1988 Chevy Blazer (a gift from Mike Bezos) to make the drive to Seattle, where they would have ready access to the book wholesaler Ingram, and to the pool of computer talent Jeff would need for his enterprise. Mackenzie drove while Jeff typed a business plan. The company would be called Amazon, for the seemingly endless South American river with its numberless branches.

They set up shop in a two-bedroom house, with extension cords running to the garage. Jeff set up three Sun microstations on tables he’d made out of doors from Home Depot for less than $60 each. When the test site was up and running, Jeff asked 300 friends and acquaintances to test it. The code worked seamlessly across different computer platforms. On July 16, 1995, Bezos opened his site to the world, and told his 300 beta testers to spread the word. In 30 days, with no press, Amazon had sold books in all 50 states and 45 foreign countries. By September, it had sales of $20,000 a week. Bezos and his team continued improving the site, introducing such unheard-of features as one-click shopping, customer reviews, and e-mail order verification.

The business grew faster than Bezos or anyone else had ever imagined. When the company went public in 1997, skeptics wondered if an Internet-based start-up bookseller could maintain its position once traditional retail heavyweights like Barnes and Noble or Borders entered the Internet picture. Two years later, the market value of shares in Amazon was greater than that of its two biggest retail competitors combined, and Borders was striking a deal for Amazon to handle its Internet traffic. Jeff had told his original investors there was a 70 percent chance they would lose their entire investment, but his parents signed on for $300,000, a substantial portion of their life savings. “We weren’t betting on the Internet,” his mother has said. “We were betting on Jeff.” By the end of the decade, as six percent owners of Amazon, they were billionaires. For several years, as much as a third of the shares in the company were held by members of the Bezos family.

From the beginning, Bezos sought to increase market share as quickly as possible, at the expense of profits. When he disclosed his intention to go from being “Earth’s biggest bookstore” to “Earth’s biggest anything store,” skeptics thought Amazon was growing too big too fast, but a few analysts called it “one of the smartest strategies in business history.” Through each round of expansion, Jeff Bezos continually emphasized the “Six Core Values: customer obsession, ownership, bias for action, frugality, high hiring bar and innovation.” “Our vision,” he said, “is the world’s most customer-centric company. The place where people come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.” Amazon moved into music CDs, videos, toys, electronics and more. When the Internet’s stock market bubble burst, Amazon re-structured, and while other dot.com start-ups evaporated, Amazon was posting profits.

In October 2002, the firm added clothing sales to its line-up, through partnerships with hundreds of retailers, including The Gap, Nordstrom, and Land’s End. Amazon shares its expertise in customer service and online order fulfillment with other vendors through co-branded sites, such as those with Borders and Toys ‘R Us, and through its Amazon Services subsidiary. In September 2003, Amazon announced the formation of A9, a new venture aimed at developing a commercial search engine that focuses on e-commerce websites. At the same time, Amazon launched an online sporting goods store, offering 3,000 different brand names. Amazon.com ended 2015 with net revenue of $107 billion. Amazon has become America’s largest online retailer, with more than four times the sales of its nearest rival.

The success of Amazon has allowed Bezos to explore his lifelong interest in space travel. In 2004, he founded an aerospace company, Blue Origin, to develop new technology for spaceflight, with the ultimate goal of establishing an enduring human presence beyond Earth. From its 26-acre research campus outside Seattle and a private rocket launching facility in West Texas, Blue Origin is testing New Shepard, a multi-passenger rocket-propelled vehicle designed to travel to and from suborbital space at competitive prices. New Shepard will allow researchers to conduct more frequent experiments in a microgravity environment, as well as providing the general public with an opportunity to experience spaceflight. In its mission statement, Blue Origin identifies its ultimate goal as the establishment of an enduring human presence in outer space.

As exciting as that prospect may be, Jeff Bezos has had more terrestrial innovations on his mind as well. In 2007, Amazon introduced a handheld electronic reading device — the Kindle. The device used “E Ink” technology to render text in a print-like appearance, without the eyestrain associated with television and computer screens. The font size was adjustable for further ease in reading, and, unlike earlier electronic reading devices, the Kindle incorporated wireless Internet connectivity, enabling the reader to purchase, download and read complete books and other documents anywhere, anytime. Hundreds of books can be stored on the Kindle at a time. Many classics can be downloaded free of charge; all new titles were initially priced at $9.99.

In the year the Kindle was introduced, Amazon’s sales increased by 38 percent, and its profits more than doubled. In 2010, Amazon signed a controversial deal with The Wylie Agency, in which Wylie gave Amazon the digital rights to the works of many of the authors it represents, bypassing the original publishers altogether. This, and Amazon’s practice of selling e-books at a price far below that of the same title in hardcover, angered several publishers, as well as some authors, who see their royalty rates threatened. But it appears that the advent of electronic reading devices is increasing the overall sales of books, which can only benefit readers and authors alike. By mid-2010, Kindle and e-book sales had reached $2.38 billion, and Amazon’s sales of e-books topped its sales in hardcover. With e-book sales increasing by 200 percent a year, Bezos predicted that e-books would overtake paperbacks and become the company’s bestselling format within a year.

With the introduction of the Kindle, Amazon quickly captured 95 percent of the U.S. market for books in electronic form — e-books. The first major challenge to the Kindle’s supremacy in the e-book market came in 2010, when Apple introduced its iPad tablet computer, which was also designed for use as an electronic reading device. Bezos responded aggressively, cutting the Kindle’s retail price and adding new features.

In 2011, Amazon introduced the Kindle Fire, a mini tablet computer with a color touch screen, to compete directly with the iPad. Amazon also took the handheld e-reader to a new level of comfort and convenience with the Kindle Paperwhite, an illuminated touchscreen device that can be read comfortably in a darkened room. A Whispersync feature enables users with multiple devices to mark their place in one book and resume reading at the same place in another. Having already revolutionized the way the world buys books, Jeff Bezos is now transforming the way we read them as well.

Amazon now boasts a host of diversified subsidiaries, including AmazonLocal and LivingSocial. Business customers can employ Amazon’s online infrastructure technology through Amazon Web Services. In 2012, Bezos launched Amazon Studios, crowdsourcing the development of feature films and television shows. Amazon plans to present the television programs through an online video service, the feature films in brick-and-mortar theaters. The company’s share price increased 30 percent in 2012 alone, tenfold over the previous six-year period. Fortune magazine named Bezos its 2012 “Businessperson of the Year.”

In 2013, Jeff Bezos purchased the newspaper division of The Washington Post Company for $250 million. In addition to The Washington Post , the leading daily newspaper in the nation’s capital, the sale included a number of smaller local newspapers in the Washington, D.C. area. Bezos made the purchase as principal of a privately held company, rather than on behalf of Amazon. It was the first time in 80 years that the newspaper had passed from the control of the Graham family, descendants of Eugene Meyer, who bought the paper in 1933. At the time of the sale, Bezos expressed respect and admiration for the Graham family’s stewardship of the Post and announced his intention to retain the existing management.

Early in 2017, Bloomberg News estimated that Jeff Bezos had a net worth of $75.6 billion, making him the second wealthiest person in the world, second only to Microsoft founder  Bill Gates . That summer, the rapid rise in the value of Amazon shares boosted the value of the founder’s stake by over  $1 billion in a single day. Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos became noted philanthropists in the Seattle area.  “Giving away money takes as much attention as building a successful company,” Jeff Bezos has said.

In 2017, Amazon purchased national grocery retailer Whole Foods for $13.7 billion.   While Whole Foods stores will continue to sell high-end delicacies and organic produce, they will also serve as delivery locations for Amazon’s online retail business, extending the company’s reach into ever more areas of the economy.  As the world entered the 2017 holiday shopping season, Amazon’s stock price soared, raising the net worth of founder Jeff Bezos and making him the wealthiest person in the world.  His net worth continued to grow, and in July 2018 was estimated by the Bloomberg Billionaires’ Index to be over $150 billion, roughly $55 billion greater than that of anyone else on Earth.

In addition to their philanthropic activities, MacKenzie Bezos has pursued a separate career as a novelist, publishing The Testing of Luther Albright in 2005 and Traps in 2013.  Together, Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos founded the homeless charity Day One Fund in 2018.   In January 2019, the couple announced plans to divorce.   Over the course of their 25-year marriage, Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos raised four children and maintained homes in Medina, Washington and in Beverly Hills, Manhattan, Washington, D.C., and Van Horn, Texas.

In the first months of 2020, a global pandemic rocked the world’s economy, but as people all over the world sheltered at home, the demand for Amazon’s online services exploded and the company’s stock price surged along with it. By August 2020, his personal stake in the company gave Jeff Bezos an estimated net worth of more than $200 billion, making him by far the wealthiest individual in history.

At the peak of this success, Jeff Bezos announced his decision to relinquish the role of CEO at Amazon, effective as of summer 2021. He continues to serve as Executive Chairman of the global retail, communications and media empire he has built.  He is now focusing more of his energy on his aerospace initiative, Blue Origin. In 2021, he announced that he will be one of the crew on board Blue Origin’s first manned space flight. On July 14, 2021, the Smithsonian Institution announced it would receive a $200 million donation from Jeff Bezos — the largest gift to the Smithsonian since the Institution’s founding gift from James Smithson in 1846. A $70 million portion of the donation will support the renovation of the National Air and Space Museum, and $130 million will launch a new education center at the museum.

On May 19, 2023, a team led by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin won a coveted $3.4 billion NASA contract to build a 50-foot-tall spacecraft to fly astronauts to and from the moon’s surface. The mission, Artemis V, is scheduled to launch in 2029 and is another critical piece of NASA’s Artemis program to send astronauts back to the moon as part of an effort to explore its south pole region.

On May 22, 2023, Jeff Bezos and his partner, Lauren Sánchez, announced their engagement. The couple, who made their relationship public in 2019, have largely kept their personal lives under wraps, mostly appearing together at various public events. Sánchez, a former broadcast journalist turned philanthropist, and Bezos have been working together on their philanthropic endeavors, strategically distributing Bezos’s vast wealth to a variety of causes. In May 2024, Jeff Bezos, at 60, ranked second on Bloomberg’s wealth index with a net worth of $208 billion, largely due to his ownership of the world’s largest online retailer.

“I’m going to go do this crazy thing. I’m going to start this company selling books online.”

In 1994, Jeff Bezos was a 30-year-old vice president of a New York investment firm, newly married, with a secure and prosperous future ahead of him. He decided to give it all up and drive to Seattle with his wife, in a used car, to start a business in their garage. He was betting his own savings — and his parents’ and friends’ — on a totally untried notion: that people would buy books through a little-known network of computers called the Internet.

Jeff Bezos was convinced that this global network, primarily the domain of academics and government scientists, could become a vibrant new venue for commerce, with the right product and the right plan. Almost overnight, the company Bezos started, Amazon.com, changed the book-buying habits of a nation. Bezos and his investors found their shares in the company worth billions.

As the company’s capitalization soared, Bezos embarked on a risky strategy of expansion, forgoing immediate profits to secure an ever-larger share of the Internet market, not only in books, but in music, videos, electronics, toys and clothing. At the turn of the 21st century, the Internet bubble burst, and fortunes seemingly made overnight literally vanished. Yet Amazon flowed on like its mighty namesake, still expanding, but also showing profits, while other promising start-ups faded from the scene. Once-daunting competitors had become grateful partners.  By 2018, the growth in Amazon’s stock price had made its founder and principal shareholder the wealthiest man in history.  The vision of Jeff Bezos had prevailed, and the world of commerce had changed forever.

When did you get the idea to start Amazon? Was there a moment of inspiration?

Jeff Bezos: The wake-up call was finding this startling statistic that web usage in the spring of 1994 was growing at 2,300 percent a year. You know, things just don’t grow that fast.   It’s highly unusual, and that started me about thinking, “What kind of business plan might make sense in the context of that growth?”

You couldn’t have been the only one to see that growth statistic.

Jeff Bezos: No. In fact, not only was I not the only one, but a lot of people saw it much earlier.

Not everyone has been able to realize that potential the way you have. What do you think enabled you to see what you saw and to act on it?

Jeff Bezos: I think there are a couple of things. One of the things everybody should realize is that any time a start-up company turns into a substantial company over the years, there was a lot of luck involved. There are a lot of entrepreneurs. There are a lot of people who are very smart, very hardworking, very few ever have the planetary alignment that leads to a tiny little company growing into something substantial. So that requires not only a lot of planning, a lot of hard work, a big team of people who are all dedicated, but it also requires that not only the planets align, but that you get a few galaxies in there aligning, too. That’s certainly what happened to us.

Our timing was good, our choice of product categories — books — was a very good choice. And we did a lot of analysis on that to pick that category as the first best category for e-commerce online, but there were no guarantees that that was a good category. At the time we launched this business it wasn’t even crystal clear that the technology would improve fast enough that ordinary people — non-computer people — would even want to bother with this technology. So that was good luck. So there are a whole bunch of things that have to sort of align to make it work.

Here you were, sitting in New York City in a very good job, a lucrative position with a future. You go home and you say to your wife you want to throw all that over and get in the car and go to Seattle. What possessed you to do that? What was her reaction? What is the role of risk taking?

Jeff Bezos: I went to my boss and said to him, “You know, I’m going to go do this crazy thing and I’m going to start this company selling books online.” This was something that I had already been talking to him about in a sort of more general context, but then he said, “Let’s go on a walk.” And, we went on a two-hour walk in Central Park in New York City, and the conclusion of that was this: he said, “You know, this actually sounds like a really good idea to me, but it sounds like it would be a better idea for somebody who didn’t already have a good job.” He convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. So, I went away and was trying to find the right framework in which to make that kind of big decision. I had already talked to my wife about this, and she was very supportive and said, “Look, you know you can count me in 100 percent, whatever you want to do.” It’s true she had married this fairly stable guy in a stable career path, and now he wanted to go do this crazy thing, but she was 100 percent supportive. So, it really was a decision that I had to make for myself, and the framework I found which made the decision incredibly easy was what I called — which only a nerd would call — a “regret minimization framework.” So, I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, “Okay, now I’m looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have.” I knew that when I was 80 I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day, and so, when I thought about it that way, it was an incredibly easy decision. And, I think that’s very good. If you can project yourself out to age 80 and sort of think, “What will I think at that time?” it gets you away from some of the daily pieces of confusion. You know, I left this Wall Street firm in the middle of the year. When you do that, you walk away from your annual bonus. That’s the kind of thing that in the short-term can confuse you, but if you think about the long-term then you can really make good life decisions that you won’t regret later.

Most regrets, by the way, are acts of omission and not commission. If you do bad things, if you go murder somebody, that would be bad and that would be an act of commission that you would regret. But most everyday, ordinary non-murderers, when they’re 80 years old, their big regrets are omissions.

When you showed up in Seattle, you had left your job, you’d left any regrets you might have behind you. How do you get something like Amazon.com started? What did you have to do?

Jeff Bezos: That blank sheet of paper stage is one of the hardest stages, and one of the reasons it’s hard is because at that stage there’s nobody counting on you but yourself. Today it’s easy because we’ve got millions of customers counting on us, and thousands of investors counting on us, and thousands of employees all counting on each other. In that beginning stage it’s really just you, and you can quit any time. Nobody is going to care, so you set about doing the simple things first.

So, you want to start a company.   Well, the first thing you do is you should write a business plan, and so I did that.   I wrote about a 30-page business plan.   I wrote a first draft.   In fact, I wrote the first draft on the car trip from the East Coast to the West Coast.   And, that is very helpful. You know the business plan won’t survive its first encounters with reality. It will always be different. The reality will never be the plan, but the discipline of writing the plan forces you to think through some of the issues and to get sort of mentally comfortable in the space. Then you start to understand, if you push on this knob, this will move over here and so on.   So, that’s the first step.

We tried to get a lot of the little housekeeping details done even before we arrived in Seattle. I called a friend who lived in Seattle and asked if he could recommend an attorney. He recommended his divorce lawyer, but that’s who we used. It was a general practitioner, a sort of small sole practitioner. He incorporated the company. He asked me on the cell phone what name would you like the company incorporated under. I said, “Cadabra, as in abra cadabra.” And he said, “Cadaver?” I knew then that was not going to be a good name. We went ahead and incorporated under that name. We changed it about three months later.

I stopped in San Francisco and interviewed vice presidents of engineering, because that was going to be an important long lead time item. We needed to build the technology that would run the store, and found the person who turned out to be the most important person ever in the history of Amazon.com on that trip. A guy named Shel Kaphan, who built all of our early systems. He had help from others, but he was the architect, he engineered them, and just did a fantastic job. So writing the business plan, the initial hiring, getting the company incorporated, all these are simple, almost pedestrian tasks, but that’s how you start, one step at a time.

Were investors knocking at your door?

Jeff Bezos: Oh no.

The first initial start-up capital for Amazon.com came primarily from my parents, and they invested a large fraction of their life savings in what became Amazon.com.   And you know, that was a very bold and trusting thing for them to do because they didn’t know. My dad’s first question was, “What’s the Internet?” Okay.   So he wasn’t making a bet on this company or this concept.   He was making a bet on his son, as was my mother. So, I told them that I thought there was a 70 percent chance that they would lose their whole investment, which was a few hundred thousand dollars, and they did it anyway.   And, you know, I thought I was giving myself triple the normal odds, because   really, if you look at the odds of a start-up company succeeding at all, it’s only about ten percent.   Here I was, giving myself a 30 percent chance.

There are so many things that can go wrong. When we launched that store in July of 1995, we were shocked at the customer response. Literally in the first 30 days we had orders from all 50 states and 45 different countries, and we were woefully unprepared from an operational point of view to handle that kind of volume. In fact, we quickly expanded. We talked to our landlord, and we expanded into a 2,000-square-foot basement warehouse space that had six-foot ceilings. One of our ten employees was six-two; he went around like this the whole time. We were doing our day jobs, which might have been computer programming — all the different things that ten people will do in a tiny start-up company. And then we would spend all afternoon into the wee hours of the morning packing up the orders and shipping them out. I would drive these things to UPS so we could get the last one, and we would wait till the last second. I’d get to UPS and I would sort of bang on the glass door that was closed. They would always take pity on me and sort of open up and let us ship things late.

We had so many orders that we weren’t ready for, that we had no real organization in our distribution center at all. In fact, we were packing on our hands and knees on a hard concrete floor. I remember, just to show you how stupid I can be — my only defense is that it was late. We were packing these things, everybody in the company, and I had this brainstorm as I said to the person next to me, “This packing is killing me! My back hurts, this is killing my knees on this hard cement floor,” and this person said, “Yeah, I know what you mean.” And I said, “You know what we need?” My brilliant insight. “We need knee pads!'” I was very serious, and this person looked at me like I was the stupidest person they’d ever seen. I’m working for this person? This is great. “What we need is packing tables .”

I looked at this person, and I thought that was the smartest idea I had ever heard.   The next day we got packing tables, and I think we doubled our productivity.   That early stage, by the way of Amazon.com, when we were so unprepared, is probably one of the luckiest things that ever happened to us, because it formed a culture of customer service in every department of the company.   Every single person in the company, because we had to work with our hands so close to the customers, making sure those orders went out, really set up a culture that served us well, and that is our goal, to be Earth’s most customer-centric company.   In a second round of fundraising, about a year later or so, we raised a million dollars, and I had to talk to about 60 different people.   These were angel investors. Venture capitalists were totally uninterested. It wasn’t like what people think of today.

In 1998 and 1999 you could raise $60 million for an Internet idea without a business plan with a single phone call.   It was a very different era, but back in 1995 it was very difficult to raise money. And, by the way, it wasn’t more difficult than it had been for the previous 20 years to raise money, it just was sort of normally hard. It’s supposed to be hard to raise a million dollars. So, with a lot of hard work we raised that million dollars from about 20 different angel investors who invested about $50,000 each, and that was the original money that really funded Amazon.com.

Did you ever have any self-doubts, fear of failure?

Jeff Bezos: In a strange way, no. Because remember…

Once you are looking at the odds in a realistic way — it’s very important for entrepreneurs to be realistic — and so if you believe on that first day while you’re writing the business plan that there’s a 70 percent chance that the whole thing will fail, then that kind of relieves the pressure of self-doubt. It’s sort of like, I don’t have any doubt about whether we’re going to fail. That’s the likely outcome. It just is, and to pretend that it’s not will lead you to do strange and unnatural things. So, what you do with those early investment dollars — if you have $300,000 and then you have a million dollars — what you do with those early precious capital resources is you go about systematically trying to eliminate risk. So, you pick whatever you think the biggest problems are, and you try to eliminate them one at a time. That’s how small companies get a little bit bigger, and then a little bit bigger, and a little bit bigger, until finally, at a certain stage, you reach a transition where the company has more control over its future destiny.

When a company is very tiny, it needs a tremendous amount of not only hard work but, as we talked about earlier, luck.   As a company gets bigger, it starts to become a little more stable. At a certain point in time the company has a much bigger influence over its future outcome, and it needs a lot less luck, and instead it needs the hard work.   At that point there’s a little bit more pressure, because if you fail you have nobody to blame but yourself.

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Who is Jeff Bezos?

Jeff Bezos is an American entrepreneur who played a key role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and chief executive officer of Amazon.com , an online retailer. In 2020 he had a net worth of more than $180 billion.

Jeff Bezos quit his job at an investment bank in 1994 and moved to Seattle , Washington , to open a virtual bookstore. Working out of his garage with a handful of employees, Bezos began developing the software for the site, which he called Amazon.com . It sold its first book in 1995.

Where was Jeff Bezos born?

Jeff Bezos was born in Albuquerque , New Mexico , on January 12, 1964. He was raised largely in Houston, Texas, and moved to Miami, Florida, as a teenager.

Jeff Bezos was not born into a wealthy family. His parents were 17 and 18 years old when he was born, and he worked on his maternal grandparents’ ranch in Cotulla, Texas , early in his life. He graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1986, with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science .

What was Jeff Bezos’s first job?

As a teenager, Jeff Bezos got his first job at a McDonald’s restaurant, where he was a fry cook. His salary was less than $3 per hour. After graduating from Princeton University , he worked at Fitel, an international trade start-up.

Recent News

Jeff Bezos (born January 12, 1964, Albuquerque , New Mexico , U.S.) is an American entrepreneur who played a key role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and chief executive officer of Amazon.com, Inc. , an online merchant of books and later of a wide variety of products. Under his guidance, Amazon became the largest retailer on the World Wide Web and the model for Internet sales.

While still in high school , Bezos developed the Dream Institute, a centre that promoted creative thinking in young students. After graduating (1986) summa cum laude from Princeton University with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science , he undertook a series of jobs before joining the New York investment bank D.E. Shaw & Co. in 1990. Soon named senior vice president—the firm’s youngest—Bezos was in charge of examining the investment possibilities of the Internet. Its enormous potential—Web usage was growing by more than 2,000 percent a year—sparked his entrepreneurial imagination. In 1994 he quit D.E. Shaw and moved to Seattle , Washington, to open a virtual bookstore. Working out of his garage with a handful of employees, Bezos began developing the software for the site. Named after the South American river, Amazon sold its first book in July 1995.

Amazon quickly became the leader in e-commerce. Open 24 hours a day, the site was user-friendly, encouraging browsers to post their own reviews of books and offering discounts, personalized recommendations, and searches for out-of-print books. In June 1998 it began selling CDs, and later that year it added videos. In 1999 Bezos added auctions to the site and invested in other virtual stores. The success of Amazon encouraged other retailers, including major book chains, to establish online stores.

As more companies battled for Internet dollars, Bezos saw the need to diversify, and by 2005 Amazon offered a vast array of products, including consumer electronics, apparel, and hardware. Amazon diversified even further in 2006 by introducing Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud-computing service that eventually became the largest such service in the world. In late 2007 Amazon released a new handheld reading device called the Kindle , a digital book reader with wireless Internet connectivity, enabling customers to purchase, download, read, and store a vast selection of books on demand. Amazon announced in 2010 that sales of Kindle books had surpassed those of hardcover books. That same year Amazon moved into making its own television shows and movies with its Amazon Studios division. Amazon’s yearly net sales increased from $510,000 in 1995 to some $600 million in 1998 and from more than $19.1 billion in 2008 to almost $233 billion in 2018. About half of the company’s operating income in 2018 was derived from AWS. Two years later Amazon registered record profits, and its revenue in the fourth quarter that year surpassed $100 billion for the first time. The unprecedented numbers were, in part, caused by a rise in home shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In February 2021 Bezos announced that he would be stepping down as CEO later that year. However, he planned to remain at Amazon as executive chairman.

Aside from Amazon, Bezos founded a spaceflight company, Blue Origin , in 2000. Blue Origin bought a launch site in Texas soon thereafter and planned to introduce a crewed suborbital spacecraft, New Shepard , in 2018 and an orbital launch vehicle , New Glenn, in 2020. Bezos bought The Washington Post and affiliated publications for $250 million in 2013. Bezos’s net worth was calculated in 2018 at $112 billion, making him the richest person in the world.

In 1993 Bezos married Mackenzie Tuttle, whom he had met at D.E. Shaw. The couple announced in January 2019 that they were divorcing, and the following day the National Enquirer printed a story revealing that Bezos was having an affair with another woman. Bezos subsequently launched an investigation into how the tabloid had obtained his private text messages. Then, in February, he posted a lengthy essay online in which he accused officials at American Media Inc. (AMI), the parent company of the Enquirer , of “extortion and bribery” for suggesting that they would release nude photographs of Bezos if he did not stop his inquiry, amid other demands. The Bezos-led investigation later alleged that his lover’s brother had leaked the texts.

The fabulous life of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the second-richest person in the world

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, is one of the most powerful figures in tech, with a net worth of roughly $82 billion .

Today, his "Everything Store" sells more than $136 billion worth of goods a year.

Here's how the former hedge funder got his start and became one of the world's richest people.

Jillian D'Onfro and Eugene Kim contributed to an earlier version of this story.

Jeff Bezos' mom, Jackie, was a teenager when she had him in January 1964. She had recently married Cuban immigrant Mike Bezos, who adopted Jeff. Jeff didn't learn that Mike wasn't his real father until he was 10 but says he was more fazed about learning he needed to get glasses than he was about the news.

Source: Wired

When Bezos was 4, his mother told his biological father, who previously had worked as a circus performer, to stay out of their lives. When Brad Stone interviewed Bezos' father for Stone's book "The Everything Store," Bezos' dad had no idea who his son had become.

Source: The Everything Store

Bezos showed signs of brilliance from an early age. When he was a toddler, he took apart his crib with a screwdriver, because he wanted to sleep in a real bed.

From ages 4 to 16, Bezos spent summers on his grandparents' ranch in Texas, doing things like repairing windmills and castrating bulls.

His grandfather, Preston Gise, was a huge inspiration for Bezos and helped kindle his passion for intellectual pursuits. At a commencement address in 2010, Bezos said Gise taught him "it's harder to be kind than clever."

Source: Business Insider

Bezos fell in love with reruns of the original "Star Trek" and became a fan of later versions too. Early on, he considered naming Amazon MakeItSo.com in reference to a line from Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

In school, Bezos told teachers "the future of mankind is not on this planet." As a kid, he wanted to be a space entrepreneur. Now he owns a space-exploration company called Blue Origin.

After spending a miserable summer working at McDonald's as a teen, Bezos, together with his girlfriend, started the Dream Institute, a 10-day summer camp for kids. They charged $600 a kid but managed to sign up six students. The "Lord of the Rings" series made the required reading list.

Bezos eventually went to college at Princeton and majored in computer science. Upon graduation, he turned down job offers from Intel and Bell Labs to join a startup called Fitel.

After he quit Fitel, Bezos almost launched with Halsey Minor — who would later found CNET — a startup that would deliver news by fax.

Instead, he got a job at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw. He became a senior vice president after only four years.

Meanwhile, Bezos took ballroom dancing classes as part of a scheme to increase his "women flow." Just as Wall Streeters have a process for increasing their "deal flow," Bezos thought analytically about meeting women.

He married MacKenzie Tuttle, a D.E. Shaw research associate, in 1993. She's now a novelist.

In 1994, Bezos read that the web had grown 2,300% in one year. This number astounded him, and he decided he needed to find some way to take advantage of its rapid growth. He made a list of 20 possible products to sell online and decided books were the best option.

Bezos decided to leave D.E. Shaw even though he had a great job.

"When you are in the thick of things, you can get confused by small stuff," he said later . "I knew when I was 80 that I would never, for example, think about why I walked away from my 1994 Wall Street bonus right in the middle of the year at the worst possible time. That kind of thing just isn't something you worry about when you're 80 years old. At the same time, I knew that I might sincerely regret not having participated in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a revolutionizing event. When I thought about it that way…it was incredibly easy to make the decision."

His boss at the firm, David E. Shaw, tried to persuade Bezos to stay. But Bezos was already determined to start his own company. He felt he'd rather try and fail at a startup than never try at all.

And so Amazon was born. MacKenzie and Jeff flew to Texas to borrow a car from his father, and then they drove to Seattle. Bezos was making revenue projections in the passenger seat the whole way, though the couple did stop to watch the sunrise at the Grand Canyon.

Bezos started Amazon.com in a garage with a potbelly stove. He held most of his meetings at the neighborhood Barnes & Noble.

In the early days, a bell would ring in the office every time someone made a purchase, and everyone would gather around to see whether anyone knew the customer. It took only a few weeks before it was ringing so often they had to make it stop.

Learn more about some of Amazon's early employees here . 

In the first month of its launch, Amazon sold books to people in all 50 states and in 45 different countries. And it continued to grow. Amazon went public on May 15, 1997.

When the dot-com crash came, analysts called the company "Amazon.bomb." But it weathered the storm and ended up being one of the few startups that wasn't wiped out by the dot-com bust.

Amazon shares have continued to go up since the crash (until the recent market correction). It has now gone beyond selling books to offering almost everything you can imagine, including appliances, clothing and even cloud computing services.

Jeff Bezos was a demanding boss and could explode at employees. Rumor has it he hired a leadership coach to help him tone it down.

Here are some of the strategies  Bezos used in building his Amazon empire. 

Bezos is known for banning PowerPoint presentations at Amazon. Instead he requires his staff to turn in six-page papers on their proposals to encourage critical thinking over simplistic bullet points.

Bezos is also known for creating a frugal company culture that doesn't offer perks like free food or massages.

In 1998, Bezos became an early investor in Google. He invested $250,000, which was worth about 3.3 million shares when the company went public in 2004. Those would be worth about $2.2 billion today. (Bezos hasn't said whether he kept any of his stock after the initial public offering.)

Source: All Things D

What does Bezos do with all his money? In 2012, he donated $2.5 million to defend gay marriage in Washington.

Source: The Washington Post

Bezos has also donated $42 million and part of his land in Texas to the construction of The Clock Of The Long Now, an underground timepiece designed to work for 10,000 years.

In August 2013, Bezos bought The Washington Post for $250 million.

His space company Blue Origin made history last year when it became one of the first commercial companies to successfully launch a reusable rocket.

Bezos' interest in flying has gotten him into trouble in the past. In 2003, Bezos almost died in a helicopter crash in the Texas boondocks while scouting a site for a test-launch facility for Blue Origin.

Source: CNN

But in early 2016, he flew his personal jet to Germany to pick up and bring home the Washington Post reporter who had been detained by Iran.

Bezos is said to own a 5.35-acre estate on Seattle's Lake Washington that includes 200 yards of shoreline.

Source: Curbed Seattle

He also bought a seven-bedroom, $24.5 million mansion in Beverly Hills in 2007. There's a greenhouse, tennis court, pool, and guest house on the property, and it neighbors Tom Cruise's estate.

Source:  Forbes

In January 2017, Bezos bought the Textile Museum, a pair of mansions in Washington, D.C.'s Kalorama neighborhood. The property sold for $23 million and is the largest in Washington.

Bezos also owns three linked apartments totaling 10,000 square feet in New York City's Century Tower.

Source: Forbes

Exactly 20 years after going public, Amazon has a market cap of $457 billion. Barclays predicted Amazon could be the first trillion-dollar company.

Source: Markets Insider

In March, Bezos became the world's second-richest person, right behind Bill Gates. With a net worth of more than $81 billion, Bezos is closing in on the No. 1 position.

Source: Markets Insider , Forbes

But don't expect Bezos to stop experimenting with new ideas anytime soon. In an interview with Business Insider, Bezos said: "What really matters is, companies that don't continue to experiment, companies that don't embrace failure, they eventually get in a desperate position where the only thing they can do is a Hail Mary bet at the very end of their corporate existence."

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(born 1964). American entrepreneur Jeff Bezos was the founder and chief executive officer of Amazon.com, Inc., which began in the mid-1990s as an online merchant of books but later expanded to include a wide variety of products. Under his guidance Amazon became the largest retailer on the World Wide Web .In 2013 Bezos expanded his interests when he bought The Washington Post and affiliated publications for $250 million. He also founded a company that offered spaceflights to tourists.

Jeffrey Preston Bezos was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. While still in high school, he developed the Dream Institute, a center that promoted creative thinking in young students. In 1986 Bezos graduated from Princeton University in New Jersey with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science. He then undertook a series of jobs before joining in 1990 the investment bank D.E. Shaw & Co. in New York, New York. Shortly thereafter, Bezos became the firm’s youngest senior vice president. He was in charge of examining the investment possibilities of the Internet , and its enormous potential sparked his entrepreneurial imagination. In 1994 Bezos quit D.E. Shaw and moved to Seattle, Washington, to open a virtual bookstore. He began developing the software for the site, which he named Amazon after the South American river, while working out of his garage with only a handful of employees. Amazon sold its first book in July 1995.

Amazon quickly became the leader in e-commerce. The site was user-friendly and open 24 hours a day. It encouraged browsers to post reviews of books and offered discounts, personalized recommendations, and searches for out-of-print books. In June 1998 Amazon began selling CDs, and later that year it added videos. In 1999 Bezos added auctions to the site and invested in other virtual stores.

The success of Amazon encouraged other retailers, including major book chains, to establish online stores. As more companies battled for the online market, Bezos saw the need to diversify. By 2005 Amazon offered various products, including electronics, clothes and shoes, and hardware. In late 2007 Amazon released a new handheld reading device called the Kindle—a digital book reader with a wireless Internet connectivity that enabled customers to purchase, download, read, and store a vast selection of books on demand ( see e-book ). In 2010 Amazon moved into making its own television shows and movies with its Amazon Studios division.

Amazon’s yearly net sales increased from $510,000 in 1995 to some $600 million in 1998 and from more than $19 billion in 2008 to almost $233 billion in 2018. Bezos’s net worth was calculated in 2018 at $112 billion, making him the richest person in the world. Two years later Amazon registered record profits. Its revenue in the fourth quarter that year surpassed $100 billion for the first time. The unprecedented numbers were, in part, caused by a rise in home shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic. In July 2021 Bezos stepped down as CEO of Amazon but remained with the company as executive chairman.

Aside from Amazon, Bezos founded a spaceflight company, Blue Origin, in 2000. The company subsequently bought a launch site in Texas. Blue Origin developed a reusable suborbital launch vehicle, New Shepard, which was slated to be used for commercial spaceflights. The company began testing the vehicle in 2015 with unmanned flights. In July 2021—just days after British entrepreneur Richard Branson successfully completed the first commercial spaceflight—Bezos and three others were the first people to travel into space on the New Shepherd. The flight reached an altitude of 66.5 miles (107 kilometers) above Earth.

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Life and career biography of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos

Related stories:.

Jeff Bezos, aka the richest man in the world, created the monster that is Amazon , one of the largest technology companies in the world. Bezos is a household name, but do you even know where the CEO’s surname actually came from? Find out this backstory and more in Ladders’ complete Jeff Bezos profile.

Where is Jeff Bezos from?

Bezos was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. At birth he was actually named Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen. After his mother divorced his father, she married Cuban immigrant Miguel “Mike” Bezos in April 1968. At age four, Miguel Bezos adopted him and his surname was then changed to Bezos. The family then moved to Houston, Texas. In high school, the family moved to Miami, Florida.

What is Jeff Bezos’s net worth* over the years?

September 2014: $30.5 billion

March 2015:  $34.8 billion

September 2015:  $47 billion

March 2016: $45.2 billion

October 2016:  $67 billion

March 2017:  $72.8 billion

October 2017:  $81.5 billion

March 2018: $112 billion

October 2018:  $160 billion

March 2019: $131 billion

*According to Forbes

What is Jeff Bezos’s net worth in 2019?

Forbes last reported Jeff Bezos’s net worth to be $115.4 billion in August 2019.

When did Jeff Bezos reach millionaire/billionaire status?

Bezos became a millionaire in 1997 after he raised $54 million through Amazon’s initial public offering. Bezos hit billionaire status two years later in 1999 at 35-years-old. The value in the CEO’s Amazon shares sent him from millionaire to billionaire status.

He was included on the Forbes World’s Billionaires list with a registered net worth of $10.1 billion. The next year Bezos’s net worth plummeted to $6.1 billion, and $2 billion the following year. Bezos quadrupled his net worth from 2005 to 2007, bringing it to $8.7 billion, but was hurt by the financial crisis and economic recession. His net worth dropped to $6.8 billion, but rose to $12.6 billion in 2010. In 2015 Bezos landed himself on the list of top ten richest people in the world with a total net worth of $50.3 billion.

On March 6, 2018, Bezos officially became the richest person in the world with a net worth of $112 billion.

Jeff Bezos’s career path

After graduating from Princeton in 1988, Bezos had job offers from Intel, Bell Labs, and Anderson Consulting. Bezos turned those down to start at fintech telecommunications start-up Fitel.

Bankers Trust

In 1988 Bezos transitioned into the banking industry, becoming a product manager at Bankers Trust.

D. E. Shaw & Co.

In 1990 Bezos left Bankers Trust to join a newly founded hedge fund, D. E. Shaw & Co. At 30-years-old, Bezos became the hedge fund’s fourth senior vice-president. Bezos worked here until 1994, when he left to start Amazon after writing up the business plan on a road trip from New York to Seattle.

Bezos drew up the Amazon business plan on a road trip from New York to Seattle. In 1993, he left his job at D.E. Shaw to start Amazon from his garage. He received an estimated $300,000 to invest in Amazon from his parents. He originally titled the company Cadabra, but changed it to name it after the Amazon River. Bezos warned early investors that there was a 70% chance that it would fail.

Bezos founded Amazon as an online bookstore, but always planned to expand to other products. In 1998, the site expanded to offer music, videos, and other consumer goods. In 2002, Bezos led the company to launch Amazon Web Services, which compiled data from weather channels and website traffic. The company nearly went bankrupt in 2002, but it rebounded in 2003 after distribution center closures and workforce layoffs. Amazon launched the Kindle in November 2007.

AmazonFresh is a subsidiary that allows Prime members to order groceries online and have them delivered as soon as the same day. Amazon acquired Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in August 2017, furthering its reach in the grocery industry.

Read our Amazon profile to learn more about one of the world’s most valuable brands, according to Forbes.

Blue Origin

Today, our founder shared our vision to go to space to benefit Earth. We must return to the Moon—this time to stay. We’re ready to support @NASA in getting there by 2024 with #bluemoon . pic.twitter.com/UqQyMa9Zcn — Blue Origin (@blueorigin) May 9, 2019

Bezos founded Blue Origin in September 2000. The human spaceflight startup company purchased a large tract of land in West Texas in 2006 for a launch and test facility.

In 2015, Bezos announced that a new orbital launch vehicle was under development. In November of that year, Blue Origin’s New Shepard space vehicle successfully made it to space and reached its planned test altitude. In December 2017, New Shepard successfully landed dummy passengers and adjusted its human space travel start date to 2018, which has since been extended.

In July 2018, Reuters reported that the company plans to charge passengers $200,000 to $300,000 per person.

The New Shepard’s most recent mission way on May 2, its fifth mission to space and back.

On May 9, Blue Origin announced Blue Moon, its large lunar lander that is capable of delivering multiple metric tons of payload to the lunar surface. The company announced that it will be able to put Americans on the moon by 2024 thanks to the Blue Moon lunar lander.

The company also announced Club For the Future, a non-profit that aims to inspire and engage “the next generation of dreamers and space entrepreneurs.” The club, which brings together educators and leader, made its first mission to send a postcard to space and back on a future New Shepard mission.

The Washington Post

Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million. The newspaper has flourished under his ownership, adding more than 200 employees and surpassing one million digital subscribers.

Bezos established Nash Holdings, a limited liability holding company, to execute the purchase. Nash Holdings legally owns the paper as of October 1, 2013. Bezos made his first major change by eliminating the online paywall for subscribers of some local papers in Texas, Hawaii, and Minnesota.

In 2016 Bezos was on a mission to reinvent the newspaper as a media technology company, which ended up being successful as it was profitable for the first time since Bezos purchased it in 2013.

Bezos Expeditions

Bezos makes personal investments through his venture capital vehicle, Bezos Expeditions , which has put money into companies like Airbnb, Business Insider, Twitter, Uber, Grail, and General Assembly.

Jeff Bezos’s education history

Bezos graduated from Princeton University in 1986 with a 4.2 grade point average, earning degrees in electrical engineering and computer science. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest academic honor society in the United States and Tau Beta Pi, the oldest engineering honor society. Bezos was the president of the Princeton chapter of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space.

Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife

Bezos met his ex-wife, then MacKenzie Tuttle, while working for D.E. Shaw in 1992. A year later the couple was married and then moved to Seattle, Washington in 1994.

On January 9, 2019, Bezos and his wife announced their divorce on Twitter after 25 years of marriage.

pic.twitter.com/Gb10BDb0x0 — Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) January 9, 2019

The divorce was finalized on April 4, 2019. Though she could have walked away with much more according to Washington state common law on divorce without a prenuptial agreement, MacKenzie agreed to take 4% in Amazon stock (worth $35.6 billion) and left the remaining 12% to her ex-husband. Bezos also kept all of the couple’s company voting rights.

Jeff Bezos’s children

Jeff and MacKenzie have four children together, three sons and a daughter they adopted from China. The couple’s first son, Prezton Bezos, was born in 2000.

Jeff Bezos’s list of recommended books

• “Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies” by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras
• “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t” by Jim Collins
• “Memos from the Chairman” by Alan C. Greenberg
• “Sam Walton: Made in America” by Sam Walton
• “The Innovator’s Dilemma” by Clayton Christensen
• “The Mythical Man-Month” by Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
• “The Remains of the Day” by Kazuo Ishiguro
• “Creation: Life and How to Make It” by Steve Grand
• “The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvements” by Eliyahu Goldratt
• “Data-Driven Marketing: The 15 Metrics Everyone in Marketing Should Know” by Mark Jeffery
• “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Famous Jeff Bezos quotes

About success

“I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.”

“If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.”

“In business, what’s dangerous is not to evolve.”

“The common question that gets asked in business is, ‘why?’ That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, ‘why not?’”

About building a brand

“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.”

“Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

“The best customer service is if the customer doesn’t need to call you, doesn’t need to talk to you. It just works.”

“A company shouldn’t get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn’t last.”

I think frugality drives innovation just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.

Jeff Bezos car collection

Though Bezos owns a $65 million private jet, he also has recently owned a car that will probably shock surprise you, one that you’ve probably seen driving around your neighborhood at one point in time. As recently as 2013, according to Brad Stone’s book, “The Everything Store,” Bezos drove around in a Honda. In 1999, two years after he became a millionaire, he still drove his 1996 Honda Accord. During the early days of Amazon, Bezos drove packages to the post office in his 1987 Chevy Blazer.

Despite his occasional modest tendencies, Bezos also owns some more high-end luxury vehicles. Here’s the whole list of cars Jeff Bezos has owned, along with the value of each:

Ferrari Pininfarina Sergio ($3 million)

Bugatti Veyron Mansory ($3.4 million)

W Motors Lykan Hyper Sport ($3.4 million)

Koenigsegg CCXR Trevita ($4.8 million )

Lamborghini Veneno ($4.5 million)

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The Great Leaders Series: Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon.com

Jeff bezos is an e-commerce pioneer who started amazon.com to sell books, and expanded into just about everything else..

Jeff Bezos is one of the founding fathers of e-commerce, and part of a select group of entrepreneurs in that field who managed to survive the dot-com bubble without losing control of their companies. Today, his business, Amazon.com, is an Internet goliath that sells everything from books to laptops to gift baskets. Most recently, the company has acquired Zappos, the online shoe retailer, and unveiled the Kindle, the first e-reader to become a breakout hit. This risky move into consumer electronics shows that Jeff Bezos, having pioneered online retail, is not yet ready to give up the pursuit of innovation.

Bezos' mother gave birth to him while she was still in her teens and his stepfather left Cuba for the U.S. at age 15. Growing up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and later Houston, Texas, Bezos was technically precocious; by one account he disassembled his crib with a screwdriver as a toddler. He graduated from science experiments in his parents' garage, to a computer science degree at Princeton, to a successful Wall Street career. But Bezos wouldn't be a household name if, in 1994, he hadn't noticed the Internet's potential for commerce and abandoned a well-paying job at the investment firm D. E. Shaw, to return to the garage and launch Amazon.

After inviting 300 friends and acquaintances to test his creation, Bezos took the site live and, within a month, the company had sold books in all 50 states and in 45 countries. Within two months, sales topped $20,000 a week. As Amazon's growth accelerated, however, skeptics expected that brick-and-mortar retailers like Barnes & Noble or Borders would soon shoulder the young start-up out of the online book market. Others said the company was burning through its cash too quickly. But Bezos did not back down. 'We're going to be unprofitable for a long time. And that's our strategy,' Bezos told Inc . in 1997.

The doom-and-gloom predictions turned out to be wrong. Amazon earned its first full-year profit in 2003 and, by 2008, the company's revenue had reached $4 billion. The company succeeded in large part because it quickly embraced e-commerce innovations that improved its customer experience. Such standard operating procedures one-click shopping, e-mail verification of orders, and customer product reviews were not on the radar until Amazon adopted them.

As if that wasn't enough, Bezos has made venture capital a side project for Amazon, investing millions of dollars with varying success in start-ups such as Talk Market, a video shopping site; Foodista, which is a user-edited cooking encyclopedia; and the infamous dot-com casualty Pets.com. On the side, he also created an entirely separate company called Blue Origin, which aims to devise the technology for commercial space flight.

Bezos has joked modestly that the success of Amazon was due half to luck, half to timing, and the rest was attributable to brains. In truth, the passion he brings to his business is what sets him apart. 'One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves. If you're really interested in software and computer science, you should focus on that,' Bezos told Inc . in 2004. 'But if you're really interested in medicine, and you decide you're going to become an Internet entrepreneur because it looks like everybody else is doing well, then that's probably not going to work. You don't choose your passions, your passions choose you.'

Back to the Greatest Leaders

Further Reading:

America's 25 Most Fascinating Entrepreneurs: Jeff Bezos

Amazon Buys Zappos for More Than $900 Million

Hot Strategy: 'Be Unprofitable for a Very Long Time'

30 Great Entrepreneurs in Their Own Words

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Biographies, Pictures and Facts

Jeff Bezos is an American entrepreneur who has played a vital role in the expansion of e-commerce. He is the founder of Amazon.com , the world’s largest internet retailer. Aged only 49, Bezos is a billionaire with a net worth of 23.2 billion dollars.

Bezos was born on 12th January 1964 in New Mexico. At the time of his birth his mother was only a teenager and her marriage with his father lasted for only a year. She got married to Miguel Bezos when Jeff was five years old. The family migrated to the U.S when Jeff was fifteen. Jeff Bezos was a highly intelligent student with a striking aptitude for science. He graduated from Princeton University Summa Cum Laude with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. After graduating, Bezos worked at Wall Street in the computer science department. After that he built a network for international trade for Fitel. His next job was at Bankers Trust where he assumed the position of vice president. He also worked for D. E Shaw and Co in the computer science field.

Bezos founded Amazon.com in 1994. Bezos had left his well-paying job for this internet venture. He wanted to take advantage of the internet boom and began his work from his garage. He joked that he wanted to have a garage start-up story like Silicon Valley legends from Hewlett-Packard. The business grew unimaginably fast. In 1997, Amazon.com went public and skeptics began wondering whether an internet bookseller can remain in business with giants like Barnes and Noble entering the internet retail market. In just two years, Amazon’s shares were more than twice of its biggest competitors. Most of the investors were members of Bezos’s family including his parents who had invested almost all of their life savings on this venture. A decade later those who had invested in it were billionaires. Bezos’s strategy was to increase Amazon’s shares as quickly as possible so Amazon could become the ‘World’s biggest anything store’.

Bezos is truly responsible for making Amazon what it is today. He treaded cleverly through difficult times and came out successful. He made so many innovations such as the ‘Kindle’ and ‘AWS’. In 2006 Amazon was the top retailer in America with sales of more than 10.7 billion dollars. Amazon now has a host of subsidiaries such as Amazon Local and Living Social. Bezos launched the Amazon Studios in 2012 with plans of presenting its TV shows and feature films online. Amazon’s share prices have gone up a tenfold in less than six years and the entire credit goes to Jeff Bezos. He was named ‘Business Person of the Year’ in 2012 by Fortune magazine. The CEO and President of Amazon.com was named ‘Person of the Year’ in 1999 by Time magazine and in 2008 was selected as one of America’s best leaders. In 2008, he also received an honorary doctorate by Carnegie Mellon University. He was ranked the ‘Second Best CEO of the world’ by Harvard Business Review’. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index lists Jeff Bezos as one of the richest people of the world.

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• Born January 12 , 1964 · Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
• Birth name Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen
• Height 5′ 7¼″ (1.71 m)
• Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com in 1994. Amazon's mission is to be Earth's most customer-centric company. Amazon offers low prices and fast delivery on millions of items, provides thousands of movies and TV shows through Prime Video, designs and builds the bestselling Kindle, Fire and Echo devices and Alexa voice recognition service, and empowers companies and governments in over 190 countries around the world with the leading cloud computing infrastructure through Amazon Web Services. Bezos is also the founder of aerospace company Blue Origin, which is working to lower the cost and increase the safety of spaceflight, and he is owner of the Washington Post. Bezos has launched two philanthropic organizations. The Bezos Earth Fund helps fund nonprofits preserving and protecting the natural world, and The Bezos Day One Fund provides grants to nonprofits to help homeless families and is creating a network of preschools in low-income communities. Bezos graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University in 1986, and was named TIME Magazine's Person of the Year in 1999. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Amazon Official Website
• Spouse Mackenzie Bezos (September 4, 1993 - July 5, 2019) (divorced, 4 children)
• Parents Ted Jorgensen Jacklyn Bezos Miguel Bezos
• Founder and CEO of Amazon.com.
• Forbes magazine named Bezos "the richest man in modern history" when his net worth increased to $150 billion.
• Last name was changed from Jorgensen to Bezos at age four when his mother remarried to Miguel "Mike" Bezos.
• (September 4, 2018) His company Amazon became the second American company (after Apple) to reach one trillion dollars in value ($1,000,000,000,000).
• Suffers from an eye condition called "Ptosis" (aka Blepharoptosis), a drooping or falling of the upper eyelid, sometimes called 'lazy eye'.
• What consumerism really is, at its worst, is getting people to buy things that don't actually improve their lives.
• The common question that gets asked in business is 'Why?'. That's a good question, but an equally valid question is 'Why not?'.
• I don't want to use my creative energy on somebody else's user interface.
• A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.
• There are two kinds of companies: those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.

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Jeff Bezos: Biography of a Billionaire Business Titan Paperback – July 2, 2019

Ranked as one of the richest men in the world, Jeff Bezos is undoubtedly an expert in business and extraordinary entrepreneur. Now, this biography is here to unveil how Bezos’ life and philosophy helped him build one of the web’s largest stores.

From the early days of Amazon to its journey to becoming a massive business empire, Jeff Bezos: Biography of a Billionaire Business Titan delves into Jeff Bezos’ life, achievements, and legacy. Including his family, upbringing, and the daily things that keep him motivated, you’ll discover the secrets of this incredible entrepreneur’s life – and the empire he founded.

Not only that, but this book also contains a detailed wealth of advice from Bezos himself about startup building, running a business, and turning your dreams into realities. This biography is a must-read for anyone interested in Bezos, business, and the world of Amazon.

Buy now to discover how Amazon became the company it is today, and the life of the man behind it all.

• Print length 236 pages
• Language English
• Publication date July 2, 2019
• Dimensions 6 x 0.59 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 1076170196
• ISBN-13 978-1076170194
• See all details

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Independently published (July 2, 2019)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 236 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1076170196
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1076170194
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.5 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.59 x 9 inches
• #3,027 in Scientist Biographies
• #4,281 in Biographies of Business & Industrial Professionals

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Jeff Bezos Biography: Success Story of Amazon Founder

In this success story, we will share Jeff Bezos’s biography, an American entrepreneur and e-commerce pioneer, the creator of the online store Amazon.com. He is also the founder of Blue Origin, a company that aims to make space travel affordable to ordinary people. Bezos always has his customers in mind, no matter what he is working on. His priority is making it as available and easily accessible as possible. A hyper-intelligent, ultra-driven individual, Bezos’s dual-personality can turn him from a compassionate person to a rough executive within seconds. An extraordinarily ambitious person, Jeff Bezos, to this day, seeks to push the possibilities of modern technology beyond the imaginable.

Table of Contents

Jeffrey Preston “Jeff” Bezos” (pronounced BAY-zoes) was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His biological father, Ted Jorgenson, was one of Albuquerque’s top unicyclists and part of a local troupe, the Unicycle Wranglers, who put on performances at county fairs and circuses while Jeff was still a baby. Jeff’s mother, Jacklyn Bezos, was still in her teens when she married Ted, and their marriage lasted for little more than one year.

“The reality, as far as I’m concerned, is that my Dad is my natural father. The only time I ever think about it, genuinely, is when a doctor asks me to fill out a form,” Jeff told Wired in 1999.

Jeff’s stepfather, Mike Bezos, was born in Cuba. He escaped to the United States alone at 15 and worked at the University of Albuquerque. When he married Jeff’s mother, the family moved to Houston, Texas, where Mike became an engineer for Exxon–American, an oil and gas company that flourished from the mid-1940s to the 1970s.

Jeff displayed remarkable mechanical talent from an early age, which fits well with his varied scientific interests. As a toddler, he had managed to dismantle his crib with a screwdriver, and as a teen, he had developed an electric alarm to keep younger siblings out of his room. Jeff’s parents eventually asked him to move all his stuff to their garage, which he converted into a laboratory for his science projects.

How did Jeff Bezos start Amazon?

In 1994, Jeff Bezos quit his job at an investment bank and moved to Seattle, Washington. He opened a virtual bookstore in his garage with a handful of employees, developing the software for Amazon.com.

Where did Jeff Bezos get his money?

The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, made much of his fortune by founding and running the e-commerce giant. He also owns The Washington Post and Blue Origin, a rocket company. He stepped down as CEO of Amazon in 2021 but remained the executive chair of its board.

How did Jeff Bezos become so successful?

Jeff Bezos' wealth comes primarily from his Amazon shares. According to Forbes , he owns about 11% of the company's stock and has sold an estimated $27 billion worth of shares since 1997. He is known for his generous philanthropy, regularly giving to causes such as cancer research and climate change.

Jeff’s ancestors on the mother’s side were early settlers in Texas, and the family owned a large ranch at Cotulla that had been passed on to them over the generations. Jeff’s grandfather, Lawrence Preston “Pop” Gise, was a regional director of The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in Albuquerque and had supervised the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore nuclear labs before retiring to the family ranch.

Jeff Bezos attended River Oaks Elementary School in Houston from fourth to sixth grade. He would spend summers at the ranch working on enormously varied tasks such as laying pipe, fixing windmills, vaccinating cattle, and other farm work. His grandfather, Lawrence Gise, was a huge role model, with his wide-ranging science knowledge and constant presence on the ranch. In a 2010 commencement speech, Jeff told graduates his grandfather taught him, “it’s  harder to be kind than clever .”

Bezos started his first business at school. It was called The Dream Institute, an educational summer camp for fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-graders. There were some books that Bezos required his participants to read. They were The Lord of the Rings novel by J. R. R. Tolkien, Dune novel by Frank Herbert, Stranger in a Strange Land n ovel by Robert A. Heinlein , The Once and Future King n ovel by T. H. White , Watership Down novel by Richard Adams , Black Beauty novel by Anna Sewell , Gulliver’s Travels book by Jonathan Swift , David Copperfield n ovel by Charles Dickens , and Treasure Island novel by Robert Louis Stevenson , along with the plays Our Town  by Thornton Wilder and The Matchmaker by John B. Keane and Thornton Wilder .

The family eventually moved to Florida, and Jeff was transferred to Miami Palmetto Senior High School, where he excelled at his studies and realized his love for computers. He was even invited to participate in the Student Science Training Program at the University of Florida, where he won a Silver Knight Award in 1982 and was a National Merit Scholar. Bezos graduated as the school’s valedictorian and a National Merit Scholar, securing his spot at Princeton University.

Bezos planned to study physics at Princeton University, but he soon decided to return to his love of computers. He graduated from Princeton University with two Bachelor of Science degrees in computer science and electrical engineering. “Mediocre theoretical physicists make no progress. They spend all their time understanding other people’s progress,” Bezos told the Guardian , commenting on his decision.

Early Career

After graduating, Bezos went to Wall Street, where computer science was increasingly in demand, and worked in several firms. The job at Fitel (a startup aiming to build a network to conduct international trade) had him fly between New York and London every week.

Bezos stayed in finance with Bankers Trust, where he rose to vice president and later the investment firm D.E. Shaw. The company specialized in applying computer sciences to the stock market, and Bezos was hired for his overall talent in the field. Jeff met his wife, MacKenzie , at D.E. Shaw, who was also a Princeton graduate. Jeff married MacKenzie Bezos in 1993. Bezos rose quickly through the ranks and, in 1990, became the youngest senior vice president in the company’s history.

Jeff Bezos first came across a digit at D.E. Shaw that would change his life and the course of internet history. While surfing the Web searching for new ventures for D.E. Shaw, Bezos found a statistic that the World Wide Web was growing by 2,300 percent a month. Bezos immediately understood the potential prospects of selling products online. Shaw tried his best to convince Bezos to stay in his firm on a long walk in Central Park, but Jeff decided to try and fail instead of never trying.

Bezos quit D.E. Shaw in 1994 and moved to Seattle to tap into the potential of the Internet market by opening an online bookstore. He decided to draw up a list of products he could sell online, including CDs, software, and hardware. Ultimately, books were the obvious choice because of the wide range of titles. Another advantage of an internet store was a then-recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that mail-order catalogs did not have to pay taxes in states where they did not have a physical presence. In other words – Bezos paid zero tax for the products he sold via the Internet.

Bezos decided that Seattle would be a perfect place for his new business at the time because of the tremendous pool of hi-tech talent. While his wife MacKenzie drove them from Texas, he laid out a business plan on his laptop and called up possible investors. Jeff Bezos managed to raise $1 million from his family and friends, enough to set up his business in the garage of his Seattle home.

Bezos initially incorporated the company as “Cadabra” on July 5, 1994. However, a year later, he considered changing it when his lawyer misheard the word “cadaver,” but that was not the worst. Another alternative was “MakeItSo.com” – a catchphrase from Captain Picard in Jeff’s beloved Star Trek. It could have also been “aard.com,” which would have helped push the company to the front of website listings. Jeff and MacKenzie also registered the domain names Awake.com, Browse.com, Bookmall.com, and Relentless.com (the latter one still redirects to Amazon.com). Eventually, Bezos decided on Amazon.com after looking through the words that start with A in the dictionary. Bezos liked the resonance between one of the planet’s longest rivers and the largest bookstore.

Jeff and MacKenzie set everything up in their two-bedroom house, with extension cords running down to the garage and three Sun micro stations on tables that Jeff made from $60 doors. Ironically, staff meetings would occur at the local Barnes & Noble bookstore. When everything was ready, Jeff and MacKenzie hurled up 300 people to try the test site when it was up and running, and the code worked seamlessly on different computer platforms. After opening the website on July 16, 1995, they told their 300 beta users to spread the word and set up a bell to ring every time Amazon made a sale. The Bell did not stay there for long as Amazon abruptly exploded, selling books in all 50 states and 45 foreign countries within a month. By September 1995, the sales had totaled $20,000 a week.

Bezos was determined to take the company public with an IPO and began recruiting many people. These included a few DESCO employees, executives from competing company Barnes & Noble, software company Symantec, and two people from Microsoft – vice president of engineering Joel Spiegel and David Risher, who would later become head of retail. With a team of extraordinary people in his senior leadership ranks (who would formally become known as the J-Team), Bezos was convinced that “If we get this right, we might be a $1 billion company by 2000.”

Going public would solidify customer trust and outcompete other bookstores who would soon begin setting up their websites, Bezos thought. Barnes & Noble was the most significant competition. They possess the legacy of establishing ‘the book superstore,’ taking little independent bookstores out of business between 1991 and 1997 and revolutionizing bookselling. In 1996, their sales were estimated to be $2 billion, while Amazon was lagging with $16 million that same year.

The Riggio brothers – Leonard Riggio and Steve Riggio – who owned Barnes & Noble, came to Seattle to have dinner to discuss a business deal with Bezos and Tom Alberg, founder and managing partner of the venture capital firm Madrona Venture Group, and a director of Amazon.com. Knowing Leonard Riggio’s character – a tough-as-nails businessman from the Bronx dressed in an expensive suit with a taste for fine art – the pair decided on a strategy of caution and flattery. The Riggios came on hard and threatening and announced that they were planning to open their website – one that would take Amazon out of the competition. They offered various collaborations, including setting up a website and licensing Amazon’s technology. Bezos and Alberg said they would think about it at dinner, but after a phone conversation, they decided this collaboration would not work.

While the Riggios were home setting up their website, Jeff Bezos and Amazon’s first CFO, Joy Covey (April 25, 1963 – September 18, 2013), traveled around the United States and Europe to pitch Amazon to potential investors. They had a solid background, with millions of sales within three years of existing, and an easily accessible single warehouse and inventory, in contrast with other retailers who had their products spread throughout stores around the country. They also used a ‘negative operating cycle,’ which meant that customers would pay with their credit cards when the product shipped, but Amazon would settle its accounts with distributors every few months. Almost every investor asked the two whether they would expand to other categories, and, at the time, Bezos responded that they settled on books. He wanted to get some investments from an IPO but did not want his rivals to follow in his footsteps, withholding lots of valuable data from investors. Everyone believed that once Barnes & Noble came in, Amazon would be “Amazon.Toast.”

On May 12, 1997, three days before the IPO, Barnes & Noble filed a lawsuit against Amazon in federal court for falsely claiming to be “Earth’s Largest Bookstore.” It happened during the seven-week SEC-mandated “quiet period,” meaning that Bezos could not talk to the press before the IPO. Ironically, the lawsuit only gave Amazon more attention. The two companies competed fiercely for around a year after Amazon finally went public. Barnes & Noble boasted a broader catalog, while Amazon tried to track down books from independent dealers and antique shops. Barnes & Noble got a $200 million investment from German media giant Bertelsmann and also took the company public. Bezos then swiftly expanded Amazon’s product line and changed “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore” to “Books, Music and More” – leaving Barnes & Noble, as one writer put it, “ wrapping its arms around the neck of a phantom. ”

The stock traded below its IPO price initially, and Bezos worried the company might lose a significant portion of its investment. On May 15, 1997, the stock price was set for a $12-to-$14 range on NASDAQ (AMZN) on the IPO day. Then, it increased from $14 to $16 before Amazon’s investment bankers settled on the $18 price. Amazon.com raised $54 million in its IPO, and the online bookstore market value reached $438 million. Amazon put 3 million shares on the block. It was a blockbuster year for Amazon as they experienced a 900 percent growth in annual revenue. Bezos’s family had each invested $10 thousand as a backup plan – a significant part of their life savings. As six percent of owners of Amazon, they officially became multimillionaires by the end of the decade, and Jeff was named Time’s Person of the Year in 1999.

The Time magazine featured Jeff Bezos as Time’s Person of the Year in 1999.

Jeff Bezos and his engineers created a system 1-Click ordering process to ease the use of Amazon.com further in the late 90s. The system was determined to preload customers’ credit card information and shipping address, offering to execute a purchase by simply pressing one button. On September 28, 1999, a nineteen-page application for Patent No. 5,960,411 entitled Method and System for Placing a Purchase Order Via a Communications Network was approved. The 1-Click system was officially trademarked to Amazon.com, Inc. Although it received much criticism, some saying that its approval by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) was just a sign of lazy bureaucracy, Bezos didn’t mind. He was determined to exploit the status quo for advantages that would put him above his competition. In 1999, after 23 days of obtaining the patent, Amazon.com, Inc. filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Barnes & Noble and won a preliminary ruling forcing the book giant to add an extra step to the checkout process on their website. Amazon licensed the patent to Apple Inc. in 2000 for an undisclosed amount and would use it to wipe out their new competitor – eBay.com – which appeared on the market in mid-1998.

Amazon & eBay

Starting as a Silicon Valley startup called AuctionWeb on September 03, 1995, eBay proved to be a problematic rival because it was increasing, and unlike Amazon, it was profitable. The company made $5.7 million in 1997 and $47.4 million in 1998, rising to $224.7 million in 1999. The business model was perfect: eBay took a small commission on each sale, but since the sellers were people auctioning their products to the highest bidder, there was no need for storing inventories, mailing packages, and warehouses. The website started with collectibles and baseball cards, but it was well on its way to becoming the ‘unlimited selection’ store that Bezos always wanted.

Bezos invited eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and CEO Meg Whitman to Seattle in the summer of 1998, when eBay had just filed to go public (IPO). The two teams of executives, who would run into each other often in the next ten years, discussed various ways of working together. Omidyar and Whitman suggested creating links so that, for example, if the product could not be found on eBay.com, the customer would be linked to Amazon.com and vice-versa. Bezos suggested the possibility of making a significant investment, which put off the two executives who left thinking that Bezos was offering to buy eBay Inc. for around $600 million. Although no formal propositions were made, the number was roughly the market capitalization that eBay was pursuing in its IPO. Omidyar recalls his tour of the Dawson Street distribution center, being impressed by the automation in the facility and startled by workers with tattoos and piercings. Whitman was not impressed, telling Omidyar , “Pierre, get over it. This is horrible. The last thing we want to do is manage warehouses like this.” The executives of eBay were extremely ambitious – just like Bezos at the start – and thought they were pioneering a new type of virtual commerce. It was pointless to convince them otherwise. Bezos’s famous distinctive laugh also put them off.

After failing to find a middle ground with the executives, Bezos secretly attempted to start his auction project. The project was stationed on the second floor of Columbia Center and was called EBS, for “Earth’s Biggest Selection” (or, as employees joked, eBay by spring). Amazon Auctions launched in March 1999 to a slow start. Bezos started putting lots of energy and money into the project, which included buying a company to broadcast auctions live on the Web and signing with Sotheby’s Auction House to focus on high-end products. The whole effort was meaningless. Customers, who were accustomed to traditional shopping and predictable prices, would find Amazon Auctions through a link on the Amazon leading site – and ended up in a dingy second-hand leftovers market.

Amazon’s Rapid Expansion

The nineties were intense days at the company, but as Jeff Blackburn, responsible for product development and operations at Amazon, recalls, they were the most fun and challenging. Bezos’s ‘uplifting’ defeat was linked to the network effect – where goods or services become increasingly valuable as more people use them. The Internet was still fresh in the 1990s, and companies still grasped how everything works. Bezos saw the defeat as a crucial step along the way and first in the series of critical experiments that would expand Amazon to third-party sellers. The zShops platform that had evolved from Auctions also failed to gain any momentum, and the company accepted that the Web’s small traders were inseparable from eBay due to the network effect. The most prominent user of these auction projects was, in fact, Bezos himself. This one time, he purchased a complete skeleton of an Ice Age cave bear for $40,000 and displayed it in the lobby of Amazon’s then-new headquarters at the Pacific Medical Center building with a sign that reads “PLEASE DON’T FEED THE BEAR.”

Amazon added clothing sales to the product line in October 2002 after partnering with hundreds of retailers, including Land’s End, Nordstrom, and The Gap. They also organized an Amazon Services subsidiary, which allowed customers to order goods from co-branded sites such as Borders and Toys R Us. In 2003, Amazon launched A9 – a commercial search engine focusing on e-commerce sites. Around the same time, they opened an online sporting goods store, offering around 3,000 brands. Amazon’s rapid expansion allowed Bezos to experiment with new product lines and services. Some didn’t work out, like Amazon’s attempt at selling jewelry. While others, like Amazon Prime, which offered free two-day shipping within the United States for an annual fee of $79, proved to be a significant success. Prime’s success led to Amazon’s launch in Italy, France, Germany, the UK, Canada, and Japan over the next decade. In addition to securing customer loyalty, Amazon Prime’s service further distanced Amazon from its competitors.

Amazon took another leap towards innovation in technology development by introducing a series of e-readers, The Amazon Kindle, in 2007. Flipping back to the first page from which the company started, Bezos sought to alter the way people acquire books, and the Kindle series was revolutionary in its purpose. The Kindle is considered primarily responsible for the establishment of the electronic book market internationally. This lightweight reading device helped Amazon secure 95 percent of the U.S. book market until Apple challenged The Kindle’s supremacy with the introduction of the iPad in 2010. In response, Bezos reduced the Kindle’s retail price and added new features.

In 2011, Amazon decided to give Apple a run for its money by introducing the KindleFire – a tablet computer aimed at directly competing with the iPad. “We haven’t built the best tablet at a certain price. We have built the best tablet at any price,” Bezos boasted to ABC News. The KindleFire also introduced a ‘Whispersync’ feature, allowing users with various devices to mark where they stopped in the book and continue reading at the same place on another device – further altering the way we read.

It is remarkable to consider that Amazon’s sales revenue grew by 122.56% from $48.08 billion (2011) to $107.01 billion (2015), but the net income growth remains volatile. For example, Amazon’s negative net income growth dropped by $241 million in 2014. However, in 2015, Amazon’s net income growth was positive, reaching $596 million. However, against the backdrop of rapidly growing sales revenue, the net income growth appears negligible. Bezos plans to forego profits to establish brand-name recognition initially. “To be profitable [now] would be a bad decision,” Jeff told PC Week in 1998. “This is a critical formative time if you believe in investing in the future,” Jeff commented to Entrepreneur.com. Bezos has poured most of Amazon’s revenue into marketing and promotion and hopes to be the No. 1 player in the business. Amazon’s share price grew from $18.00 (May 15, 1997) to $549.42 (February 25, 2016).

In 2006, Jeff Bezos launched Amazon Web Services , which includes a broad set of global computing, storage, database, analytics, application, and deployment services. Now, they boast a mass of various subsidiaries, including a2z, A9.com, Amazon Web Services, Alexa Internet, Audible.com, comiXology, Digital Photography Review, Goodreads, Internet Movie Database, Junglee.com, Twitch, Zappos (the complete list of Amazon’s properties is available at Quora ), which allows business clients to employ Amazon’s online infrastructure technology. In 2012, the site launched Amazon Studios, a crowdsourcing site like Kickstarter focused only on developing feature films and TV shows. Fortune magazine named Bezos “Businessperson of the Year” in 2012.

Blue Origin

Pioneering e-commerce, reinventing the book trade, and becoming one of the most prominent figures on the Internet was only a portion of Bezos’s goals. His long-term plans have always been grand and seemingly out of reach – and the success of Amazon served as a gateway for Jeff to finally realize his wild ambitions. Bezos’s mother keeps a copy of a speech he made while back in school where he declares his goal of establishing a fleet of habitable orbiting space stations, turning Earth into one big nature reserve. This ambition of his was not abandoned.

In 2004, Bezos founded an aerospace company named Blue Origin , aimed at developing new technology for spaceflight, with the ultimate goal of establishing “an enduring human presence in outer space.” The company owns a 26-acre research campus outside Seattle and a private rocket launching facility in West Texas. On November 24, 2015, Blue Origin made headlines when they successfully sent a rocket to suborbital space and landed it safely onto a landing pad after takeoff while testing their New Shepard space vehicle.

The rarest of beasts – a used rocket. Controlled landing not easy, but done right, can look easy. Check out video: https://t.co/9OypFoxZk3 — Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) November 24, 2015

New Shepard is a multi-passenger rocket-propelled vehicle designed to establish travel to suborbital space at competitive prices. The rocket landing has been deemed ‘historic’ as no other space company has pulled off such a feat. The success of this mission means a significant decrease in the cost of spaceflight and a step closer to establishing an opportunity for the general public to engage in space travel.

Just a bit later, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, had a Twitter smack talk regarding their rockets.

@JeffBezos Not quite “rarest”. SpaceX Grasshopper rocket did 6 suborbital flights 3 years ago & is still around. pic.twitter.com/6j9ERKCNZl — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2015

Elon Musk continued the discussion with Jeff Bezos and sent him a tweet meant to describe the difference between orbital and suborbital flights.

It is, however, important to clear up the difference between “space” and “orbit”, as described well by https://t.co/7PD42m37fZ — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2015

It is worth mentioning that both companies, Blue Origin and SpaceX, did an excellent job. However, orbital and suborbital flights are different spaceflights that cannot be compared to see which is better or worse. Soon, one of the Reddit users, zlsa , drew a visual illustration of the SpaceX Falcon 9 vs. Blue Origin New Shepard rockets’ trajectory that helped to clear the difference between those types of spaceflights.

The Washington Post

On August 05, 2013, Bezos was on the news for having entirely purchased The Washington Post for $250 million in cash. “The Post could have survived under the company’s ownership,” company’s chairman and chief executive Donald E. Graham says , “but we wanted to do more than survive. I’m not saying this guarantees success, but it gives us a greater chance of success.” Bezos reaffirmed that he did not seek to alter the values of The Washington Post but merely to fix its focus on the public. “Our touchstone will be readers, understanding what they care about – government, local leaders, restaurant openings, scout troops, businesses, charities, governors, sports – and working backward from there.” The Graham family – descendants of Eugene Meyer, who acquired The Post in 1933 – had owned it for four generations. Bezos said he meant to maintain the existing management, expressing respect and admiration for the Graham family.

Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post from the Graham family for $250 million in cash.

Personality Traits & Leadership Qualities

Bezos is known for his double personality, which turns him from a kind person into a rough executive, inducing fear and respect in his employees. A hyper-intelligent, ultra-driven individual, he expects everyone around him to behave likewise. Amazon staff are said to live in fear of his abrasive flare-ups , including “Why are you wasting my life?” and “Are you lazy or just incompetent?”

Jeff Bezos seems to have no problem running the company while personally reading customer feedback. “We research each of them because they tell us something about our processes. It’s an audit that is done for us by our customers. We treat them as precious sources of information,” senior Amazon vice president Jeff Wilke explains . When there is a real issue, the consequences can be harsh on the employees responsible. An official system within Amazon ranks the severities of its internal emergencies. A Sev-5 would be a relatively standard problem that engineers always solve, while a Sev-1 is an urgent issue that gets everyone on their toes as it requires an immediate response. Another level of severity has employees sweating just at the sight of it. Informally dubbed by the employees, the “Sev-B” is anyone’s greatest nightmare at Amazon. Sev-B is when an employee receives an email from Jeff Bezos containing the notorious question mark. When someone receives it, it has the effect of a ticking time bomb. They drop everything they’re doing and give full attention to the issue that the CEO is highlighting. Within a few hours, the employee has to prepare a formal, thorough explanation of how the problem occurred to a team lead, who will have to review the report before sending it to Bezos. It is the company’s way of ensuring that the customer’s voice is always heard inside Amazon.

Bezos always moves faster, makes his employees work harder, and pursues significant and minor innovations. The superb image of Amazon is not just the everything store but ultimately the everything company. The future has many things in store for Amazon. They still haven’t achieved next-day or even same-day delivery for Prime members, and they are still set to expand their grocery service, Amazon Fresh, beyond Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Jeff Bezos expects Amazon’s mass expansion to as many countries as possible. Also, they want their customers to eliminate the need to buy products from manufacturers by using 3D printer technologies to manufacture their own.

It is unknown whether Jeff Bezos’s wild ideas and active imagination are rooted in his early love for science fiction or if they are his personality traits. Bezos is known for thinking outside the box, re-shaping it, or tossing it in the trash. From revolutionizing how we buy and read books to creating a private spaceflight company aimed at the people to launch a plan for using drones in package delivery, Bezos constantly challenges the norm. He believes that breaking away from the pack and making these extraordinary decisions truly leads to innovation. It is the sole element that all successful leaders seem to possess. Jeff Bezos will only get bigger, and his innovations wilder until he decides to stop or there is no one left to stop him.

Jeff and his wife, MacKenzie Bezos, have four children: three sons and one daughter adopted from China. On January 09, 2019, Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, announced they were getting divorced after 25 years. MacKenzie gave her ex-husband Jeff her interests in Blue Origin and the Washington Post, as well as 75 percent of their previously shared Amazon shares.

Jeff Bezos’s life story shows that he achieved all his success thanks to his strong desire to learn new technologies, his hard work, and his distinctive leadership qualities. We hope you have enjoyed exploring Jeff Bezos’s biography and success story of Amazon and Blue Origin, and it has inspired you to make discoveries.

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Why is Lauren Sánchez’s former yoga instructor suing her? Alanna Zabel says Jeff Bezos’ fiancée stole her book idea – but what is behind the beef?

When the former Fox News anchor released her debut children’s book earlier this month, her former yoga instructor said it was a move motivated by ‘personal jealousy’

“The actions of defendant constitute intentional infliction of emotional distress as they were extreme and outrageous, carried out with the intent to harm plaintiff, driven by personal jealousy, and a personal desire to posture publicly as ‘philanthropic and caring’,” Zabel wrote in her filing without the help of a lawyer. “In a nutshell, defendant has always demonstrated a desire to appear like plaintiff, an authentic, independent, free-spirited, hard working and public service oriented yoga instructor,” she continued.

Zabel first threatened to take legal action back in March when Sánchez made an announcement about her upcoming book.

Here’s what to know about Alanna Zabel.

Alanna Zabel is a yoga, Pilates and fitness expert

Zabel is a wellness expert. According to her website, Az I Am, she has over 25 years’ experience in the fitness and well-being space. With a BA in psychology and human services, she is a yoga and fitness instructor, a sound healer, and the creator of Yoga Barre. She taught Lauren Sánchez yoga from 2007 to 2011.

She has an activewear brand