The world’s richest personality, Jeff Bezos was born in New Mexico in 1964. He developed an early interest in computers and went on to Princeton University to study computer science. In addition to that, electrical engineering. While working on Wall Street, he became the youngest senior vice president at the investment firm D.E. Shaw. Shaw is a well-known author.
To launch Amazon.com, a bookstore that became one of the Internet’s biggest success stories, he left his well-paid job four years later. Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013, and Amazon bought Whole Foods in 2017. Amazon announced in February 2021 that Bezos would step down as CEO in the third quarter of that year.
Early Life and Education
This personality was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to a teenage mother, JacklynGise Jorgensen, and his real father, Ted Jorgensen. When he was 4, his mother remarried Mike Bezos, a Cuban immigrant. In 1986, Jeff Bezos received a summa cum laude degree in computer science and electrical engineering from Princeton University.
He developed an early interest in how things worked by converting his parents’ garage into a laboratory and tinkering with electrical creations around his house when he was a child. His family and Jeff Bezos moved to Miami when he was a teenager, where he developed a passion for computers and graduated commencement speaker from high school. While still in high school, he founded the Dream Institute, an educational summer camp for fourth, fifth, and sixth graders.
Career in Finance
After completing his graduation from Princeton, he worked at several Wall Street firms, including Fitel, Bankers Trust, and the investment firm D.E. Shaw. Bezos became D.E. Shaw’s youngest vice president in 1990. Despite the fact that his career in finance was extremely lucrative, Jeff Bezos chose to take a risk and enter the nascent world of e-commerce. He quit his job in 1994, moved to Seattle, and opened an online bookstore to capitalize on the untapped potential of the Internet market.
Founder and CEO of Amazon.com
After asking 300 friends to beta test his site, Amazon.com was launched on July 16, 1995, named after a meandering South American river. Several employees began developing software with Bezos in his garage in the months leading up to the launch, eventually expanding operations into a two-bedroom house outfitted with three Sun Microstation.
The company’s initial success was meteoric. Amazon.com sold books across the United States and in 45 other countries in 30 days with no press promotion. Sales reached $20,000 per week in two months, far faster than Bezos and his startup team had anticipated. As Amazon.com was launched publicly in 1997, many market analysts wondered if it would be able to compete when traditional retailers launched their own e-commerce sites.
Competition
The start-up had not only kept up with but also outpaced its competitors, establishing itself as an e-commerce leader. With the sale of CDs and videos in 1998, Bezos continued to diversify Amazon’s offerings. While many dot coms failed in the early 1990s, Amazon thrived, with annual sales increasing from $510,000 in 1995 to over $17 billion in 2011. Bezos announced in 2018 that the company had surpassed 100 million paid Amazon Prime subscribers.
Till September 2018, Amazon had surpassed $1 trillion in market capitalization. It followed the first company. Apple became an example of this. Workers protested during Prime Day in July 2019. They were expressing their dissatisfaction with the company’s working conditions and grueling pace.
Amazon Unbox
Amazon.com debuted its video-on-demand service in 2006. It was originally known as Amazon Unbox on TiVo before being renamed Amazon Instant Video. With the launch of Amazon Studios in 2013, Bezos debuted a number of the original programs. With the critically acclaimed Transparent and Mozart in the Jungle, the company had a big year in 2014. Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq, the company’s first original feature film, was produced and released in 2015.
In 2016, Bezos stepped in front of the camera for a cameo role in Star Trek Beyond as an alien. Bezos has been a Star Trek fan since he was a child. And in the movie credits on IMDb, he is listed as a Starfleet Official. Amazon consolidated its consumer retail operations in early 2018 to focus on growth areas such as digital entertainment and Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant.
Kindle E-Reader
In 2007, Amazon introduced the Kindle. It was a portable digital book reader that allowed users to buy, download, read, and store their favorite books. With the launch of the Kindle Fire in 2011, Bezos launched Amazon into the tablet market. He announced the new Kindle Fire HD the following September. The company’s next-generation tablet designed to compete with Apple’s iPad. “We haven’t created the best tablet for a specific price range. We’ve created the best tablet for any budget “According to ABC News, Bezos stated.
Amazon Drones
Bezos made headlines when he announced the use of drones to deliver packages to customers, in early December 2013. These drones would be able to carry up to five pounds of cargo and travel within a 10-mile radius of the company’s distribution center.
Owner of ‘The Washington Post
It was August 5, 2013. He made international headlines when he paid $250 million for The Washington Post. Furthermore, to other publications affiliated with its parent company, The Washington Post Co. The transaction marked the end of the Graham family’s four-generation reign over The Post Co., which included Donald E. Graham, the company’s chairman, and CEO, and his niece, Post publisher Katharine Graham. “The Post could have survived under the company’s ownership and been profitable for the foreseeable future,” Graham said in an attempt to explain the transaction. “We wanted to do more than just survive, though. I’m not saying this guarantees success, but it certainly increases our chances.”
Wife and Kids
Bezos and MacKenzie Tuttle met at D.E. Shaw, where he worked as a senior vice president and she worked as an administrative assistant to help pay the bills while she pursued her writing career. The couple dated for three months before getting engaged in 1993 and marrying soon after.
MacKenzie was a vital part of Amazon’s early days. She helped to draft the company’s first business plan and served as its first accountant. Despite her quiet and bookish demeanor, she publicly backed Amazon and her husband. MacKenzie is a novelist by trade, having studied under Toni Morrison at Princeton University during her undergraduate years. She published her first book and novel The Testing of Luther Albright, in 2005, Traps, in 2013 respectively.
Assets sharing of Bezos and Mackenzie
The couple spent more than 25 years of married life but divorced in 2019. Bezos and MacKenzie are the parents of four children: three sons and a daughter adopted from China. Jeff’s share in Amazon reduced from 16 %to 12 % as part of the divorce settlement. MacKenzie announced her intention to donate at least half of her fortune to charity.
Jeff Bezos’ Net Assets
In 1994, in his garage in Seattle, Jeff Bezo founded Amazon e-commerce giant. He will become CEO in late 2021 and Chief Executive Officer. Amazon said it employed 175,000 extra workers in the midst of the pandemic. He reportedly gave $100 million in April 2020 to Feed America. It is a non-profit organization that manages food banks and food stores all over the country. In the coronavirus pandemic, Amazon was critical of U.S. Senators and the general public for their treatment of warehouse workers. The Amazon figure for 2019 was $280.5 billion.
