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HOW THE AMAZON FOUNDER BECAME
THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD
HOW THE AMAZON FOUNDER BECAME
THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD
HOW THE AMAZON FOUNDER BECAME THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD
Net Worth And Success Story
Jeff Bezos has been hailed as the richest man in the world, inching out long-time titleholder and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. In 2020, he became the first person to have a net worth surge above $200 billion. His current estimated net worth is $142.2 billion, according to Forbes.
Majority of his earnings came from his online shopping retail site Amazon.com with record-breaking profits from Amazon Prime Day. Huge portions also stemmed from his acquisition of Whole Foods in 2017 and The Washington Post in 2013. Adding to the Bezos Empire are big brands and promising companies. These include Zappos, Living Social, Audible, Alexa, Stack Overflow, Business Insider, Twitter, and even video streaming website Twitch.
Early Life and Education
Bezos was born on January 12, 1964 to Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen and Ted Jorgensen in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His birth name was actually Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen. When his mother remarried Cuban immigrant Miguel “Mike” Bezos, Jeff was adopted and he took the surname Bezos.
Even at his tender age, Bezos had been known as the young tinkerer in the family, often seen pulling apart electrical contraptions and figuring out how these worked. He eventually turned the family’s garage into his very own laboratory. He started tinkering and rigging various appliances and equipment he found in the house.
The Bezos family moved to Miami when the billionaire was in his teenage years. He completed his high school education at Miami Palmetto Senior High School, where he graduated class valedictorian. This is also the location of his first ever business, which he called the Dream Institute. The goal of his newly formed company was to provide an educational summer camp for children in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade.
In 1986, Bezos graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University with a B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Following his graduation, he worked for several Wall Street firms including Fitel, Bankers Trust and D. E. Shaw & Co, New York. By 1990, Bezos was hailed as D. E. Shaw & Co’s youngest vice president. Despite his remarkable success in the finance industry, he opted to quit his job and start his own business.
The Amazon Story: How Did Jeff Bezos Start and Grow Amazon
What Inspired Bezos
Inspired by a research he found while working at D.E. Shaw, Bezos started his journey in the world of e-commerce. “I found this fact on a website that the web was growing at 2,300 percent per year,” Bezos told CNBC in an interview. This fact prompted him to create Amazon.com in 1994.
Funding and Expansion
Amazon started out as an online retailer of books. From his garage in Seattle, Bezos started developing the site with a few employees. The Amazon test site was launched in July 1995. Just a month after its launch, Amazon was able to sell books across the United States and 45 countries.
But Bezos had a vision from the start that he wanted Amazon to sell more than just books. After a few years, it expanded to offer music, videos, and other consumer goods. It eventually grew and included a wide array of products and services in its inventory such as toys, jewelry, electronics, clothes, shoes, and watches.
While the initial start-up capital for the company came from Bezos’ parents, Bezos was able to raise an $8 Million round of funding from Kleiner Perkins by 1996. Amazon went public in 1997 with an initial price offering of $18 per share.
Amazon Today
Amazon is now the world’s largest online retailer. The company even offers audio and video streaming services as well as other cloud infrastructure services made available via the Amazon Web Services branch. On top of the extensive list of items available on the site, Bezos also spearheaded initiatives to constantly improve customer experiences including improvements like e-mail order verification, one-click shopping, and user reviews.
Bezos once again made headlines when he introduced “Amazon Prime Air” in 2013. The goal of this new initiative is to have drones, which are remote-controlled aerial devices, deliver products to Amazon customers.
In 2020, as the pandemic hit and people made more online purchases, Amazon thrived even more and revenues grew 38% to $386 billion.
Other accomplishments
In 2013, Bezos became the talk of the country when he bought The Washington Post along with the other publications associated with The Washington Post Co. This acquisition ended the four-generation reign of the Graham family over the company.
Bezos also founded Blue Origin in September 2000, a spaceflight company that is now working towards its goal to transform space travel by sending tourists to space.
Net Worth And Success Story
Jeff Bezos has been hailed as the richest man in the world, inching out long-time titleholder and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. In 2020, he became the first person to have a net worth surge above $200 billion. His current estimated net worth is $142.2 billion, according to Forbes.
Majority of his earnings came from his online shopping retail site Amazon.com with record-breaking profits from Amazon Prime Day. Huge portions also stemmed from his acquisition of Whole Foods in 2017 and The Washington Post in 2013. Adding to the Bezos Empire are big brands and promising companies. These include Zappos, Living Social, Audible, Alexa, Stack Overflow, Business Insider, Twitter, and even video streaming website Twitch.
Early Life and Education
Bezos was born on January 12, 1964 to Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen and Ted Jorgensen in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His birth name was actually Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen. When his mother remarried Cuban immigrant Miguel “Mike” Bezos, Jeff was adopted and he took the surname Bezos.
Even at his tender age, Bezos had been known as the young tinkerer in the family, often seen pulling apart electrical contraptions and figuring out how these worked. He eventually turned the family’s garage into his very own laboratory. He started tinkering and rigging various appliances and equipment he found in the house.
The Bezos family moved to Miami when the billionaire was in his teenage years. He completed his high school education at Miami Palmetto Senior High School, where he graduated class valedictorian. This is also the location of his first ever business, which he called the Dream Institute. The goal of his newly formed company was to provide an educational summer camp for children in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade.
In 1986, Bezos graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University with a B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Following his graduation, he worked for several Wall Street firms including Fitel, Bankers Trust and D. E. Shaw & Co, New York. By 1990, Bezos was hailed as D. E. Shaw & Co’s youngest vice president. Despite his remarkable success in the finance industry, he opted to quit his job and start his own business.
The Amazon Story: How Did Jeff Bezos Start and Grow Amazon
What Inspired Bezos
Inspired by a research he found while working at D.E. Shaw, Bezos started his journey in the world of e-commerce. “I found this fact on a website that the web was growing at 2,300 percent per year,” Bezos told CNBC in an interview. This fact prompted him to create Amazon.com in 1994.
Funding and Expansion
Amazon started out as an online retailer of books. From his garage in Seattle, Bezos started developing the site with a few employees. The Amazon test site was launched in July 1995. Just a month after its launch, Amazon was able to sell books across the United States and 45 countries.
But Bezos had a vision from the start that he wanted Amazon to sell more than just books. After a few years, it expanded to offer music, videos, and other consumer goods. It eventually grew and included a wide array of products and services in its inventory such as toys, jewelry, electronics, clothes, shoes, and watches.
While the initial start-up capital for the company came from Bezos’ parents, Bezos was able to raise an $8 Million round of funding from Kleiner Perkins by 1996. Amazon went public in 1997 with an initial price offering of $18 per share.
Amazon Today
Amazon is now the world’s largest online retailer. The company even offers audio and video streaming services as well as other cloud infrastructure services made available via the Amazon Web Services branch. On top of the extensive list of items available on the site, Bezos also spearheaded initiatives to constantly improve customer experiences including improvements like e-mail order verification, one-click shopping, and user reviews.
Bezos once again made headlines when he introduced “Amazon Prime Air” in 2013. The goal of this new initiative is to have drones, which are remote-controlled aerial devices, deliver products to Amazon customers.
In 2020, as the pandemic hit and people made more online purchases, Amazon thrived even more and revenues grew 38% to $386 billion.
Other accomplishments
In 2013, Bezos became the talk of the country when he bought The Washington Post along with the other publications associated with The Washington Post Co. This acquisition ended the four-generation reign of the Graham family over the company.
Bezos also founded Blue Origin in September 2000, a spaceflight company that is now working towards its goal to transform space travel by sending tourists to space.
QUOTES, BUSINESS ADVICE & LIFE LESSONS
Jeff Bezos spends his life inventing and pioneering billion dollar businesses. We gathered some of his most valuable financial and business advice you can learn from. Here are the quotes and key lessons from the Amazon founder.
1. Think like an owner
“One of the responsibilities of ownership and definitely deep inside the Amazon culture, is to think about the fundamentals of the business and not the daily fluctuations in stock prices.”
In his interview with Business Insider, Jeff Bezos highlights the importance of thinking like an owner rather than a renter. He emphasizes that people take better care of the things that they own and therefore think in the long term.
2. Earn trust with customers
“I think the most important thing that we’ve done over the last 20 years is earn trust with customers.”
Gaining trust from customers is one of the key drivers of Amazon’s success. Bezos thinks that businesses should not ask for trust from their customers, but rather follow this recipe for earning trust: do hard things well and repeat.
3. Time horizons matter
“If we think long term, we can accomplish things that we couldn’t otherwise accomplish.”
For Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s business innovations and success like Kindle, Amazon Web Services, and Amazon Prime, would not be possible if they focused on short-term financial results.
4. Maintain your sense of wonder
“It’s a gift if you can keep your childlike sense of wonder.”
Bezos puts value in keeping his passions. According to him, this passion and sense of wonder helps with creativity and having fun. “Many kids and grownups do figure out over time what their passions are…. What happens though sometimes is we let our intellectual selves overrule those passions. That’s what needs to be guarded against.”
5. Always focus on the customers
“All the success that we have is at its root primarily due to the fact that we have put customers first.”
To know more about how Jeff Bezos thinks, check out our free resource on books he recommends.
PODCAST EPISODES ON JEFF BEZOS
PODCAST EPISODES ON
JEFF BEZOS
Learning from Jeff Bezos – Blue Origin, Being a Founder, Profitability and More – TIP199
Learning from Jeff Bezos – Blue Origin, Being a Founder, Profitability and More – TIP199
Learning from Jeff Bezos – Blue Origin, Being a Founder, Profitability and More – TIP199
Preston Pysh and Brian Rutherford talk about the success of Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos. On todays’ show we play the best Q & A’s we could find from Jeff.
Billionaire Jeff Bezos: The Secrets to His Success – TIP011
Billionaire Jeff Bezos: The Secrets to His Success – TIP011
Billionaire Jeff Bezos: The Secrets to His Success – TIP011
Listen to The Investor’s Podcast’s episode wherein Preston and Stig discuss Brad Stone’s book, The Everything Store. Learn more about his journey to success and his tips and tricks on making it big in business and investing.
Get to listen to more free episodes of The Investor’s Podcast and discover the secrets to success and other books about other Billionaires by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, or Soundcloud.
