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Jeff Bezos
Founder and CEO, Amazon- Amazon
- Blue Origin
- The Washington Post
Jeff Bezos' Journey so far ...
- Even before beginning his journey as an entrepreneur, Jeff Bezos was a successful corporate executive. He was the youngest- ever senior vice-president of the Wall Street investment bank D.E. Shaw & Co. during his tenure
- In the early ‘90s, the World Wide Web or the Internet was in its nascent stage and Bezos was contemplating investment opportunities for the firm. That’s when the possibilities of the technology and its massive growth -- around 2000% annually -- caught his attention
- He left his corporate job in 1994 and moved to Seattle to start his own company
- Initially, an online book store, the company’s primary development process began from the garage of his rented house with five employees
- Amazon.com was finally open for the public in July 1995, and with over 1 million titles claimed itself to be ‘Earth’s Biggest Book Store’
- Bezos had a clearly thought- out service which made navigating through the website really easy. Soon, Amazon allowed customers to post reviews, offered discounts and had a personalised book- recommendation mechanism in place
- Amazon’s popularity was growing fast and by the end of 1996 the company’s sales grew to over $15 million
- Amazon went public in 1997 with shares priced at $18 a piece
- The company diversified its offerings in the summer of 1998 to include CDs followed by the addition of videos later that year
- By the next year, Bezos had started investing in other e-commerce businesses operating in sectors such as pharmaceuticals
- In 2005, Amazon further diversified and now its product line, among others, included clothing items, electronics and hardware goods
- The same year, Amazon Prime -- a membership program through which US customers could avail two-day shipping services for eligible orders -- was also introduced
- Bezos took his company to the next level by introducing their cloud-computing service -- Amazon Web Services (AWS) -- in 2006
- In 2007, the company released an e-book reader called Kindle which soon became one of their best- selling products
- Bezos ventured into the entertainment business with his production house Amazon Studios in 2010
- In 2013, he acquired the publishing company The Washington Post for $250 million
- On July 27, 2017, Jeff Bezos replaced Bill Gates as the richest person in the world. Though his first term in the top spot lasted only for a few hours, he came back strong and within a few months he not only became the richest, his net worth also exceeded the $100 billion mark on November 27, 2017, making him a centibillionaire
- By 2018, Amazon’s annual sales had grown to around $233 billion
- Bezos has invested in several start-ups and successful ventures including Twitter, Airbnb and Uber. His other ambitious projects include the 10,000-year clock planned to be built into the Sierra Diablo mountain range in Texas, the F-1 engine retrieval project, etc.
- Currently, Jeff Bezos owns around 11% stake in Amazon and continues to be the richest person in the world
- Jeff Bezos founded an aerospace company called Blue Origin in 2000 with the aim to promote space travel using reusable launch vehicles
- In a historic suborbital flight on June 20, 2021, the Amazon founder accompanied by a hand-picked group blasted into space aboard his company Blue Origin's New Shepard launch vehicle and returned safely to Earth. The rocket reached an altitude of about 106 kilometres
Before you go ...
- Bezos originally wanted to name his company ‘Cadabra’ -- taken from the word ‘abracadabra’
- He was paid an annual salary of $81,840 in 2019 which is the same he has been drawing for over two decades
- He has played cameo roles in Hollywood movies such as Tooth Fairy and Star Trek Beyond