Jeff Bezos

Jeffrey Preston Bezos is an American technology entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist.

Jeff Bezos is a founder, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Amazon.com and owner of ‘The Washington Post.

About Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos was born on 12th January 1964 in New Mexico and raised in Houston, Texas United States. Bezos had a huge love of computers and he studied computer science and electrical engineering at Princeton University.

Early Career

In 1986 after graduation Jeff start working in a fintech telecommunications start-up, Fitel, where he was given the task to build a network for international trade. Later he joins the banking industry when he became a product manager at Bankers Trust and he worked there from 1988 to 1990.
In 1990 he joined a newly founded hedge fund, D. E. Shaw & Co and worked there until 1994 and became D. E. Shaw’s senior vice-president at the age of 30. In 1994 Jeff Bezos quit his lucrative job in the investment firm to open Amazon.com, an online bookstore that became one of the Internet’s biggest success stories of all time.

Amazon

In 1993, Bezos left his job at D. E. Shaw and decided to start an online bookstore. On 5th July 1994, he founded Amazon in his garage after writing its business plan while travelling from New York to Seattle.
Jeff Bezos named his new company Amazon because the name begins with the letter A, which is at the beginning of the alphabet and after the Amazon River in South America. He borrowed approx. $300,000 from his parents and invested in Amazon.
In the first few months after starting his new venture Bezos thought that there is a 70% chance that Amazon would fail or go bankrupt.The initial success of the company was rapid. With almost no promotional activity, Amazon.com sold books across the United States and in 45 other countries within the first 30 days.
In the first two months, sales reached $20,000 a week, growing faster than Bezos and team had anticipated.
Originally Amazon was an online bookstore, but Jeff Bezos had always planned to expand to other products.
Bezos diversified into the online sale of music CDs and video and later also expanded to clothes, electronics, toys and more through major retail partnerships.
In the late ’90s, while many dot.coms companies went bust, Amazon keeps flourishing  with yearly sales that jumped from $510,000 in 1995 to over $17 billion in 2011. On 1st February 2018, Amazon reported it’s highest ever profit with quarterly earnings of $2 billion.

Kindle & Blue Origin

In 2007, the Amazon released a handheld digital book reader, Kindle that allowed users to buy, download or read and store their book selections.
In the same year, Jeff Bezos announced that he has invested in a Seattle-based aerospace company, Blue Origin that develops technologies to offer space travel to paying customers.

Washington Post

On 5th August 2013, Bezos made headlines worldwide when he announced that he purchased The Washington Post and other publications affiliated with its parent company for $250 million.

This iconic deal marked the end of the four-generation reign over The Post Co. by the Graham family.

Net Worth

On 27th July 2017, Jeff Bezos became the world’s richest person when his estimated net worth increased to just over $90 billion. On 24th November 2017, Bezos’s wealth surpassed $100 billion for the first time and he was formally become the wealthiest person in the world by Forbes on 6th March 2018, with a net worth of $112 billion.
In July 2018 Jeff Bezos was named the “richest man in modern history” by Forbes after his net worth increased to $150 billion.

Wife and Kids

While working in D.E. Shaw Bezos met his future wife, MacKenzie Tuttle and married in 1993 (announced their divorce in 2019). They have four children together 3 sons and adopted daughter from China.