Jeff Bezos, Founder of amazon.com

Jeff Bezos, Founder of amazon.com

Jeff Bezos was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen in Albuquerque, New Mexico  in 1964 to Jacklyn and Ted Jorgensen. Jacklyn’s marriage to his father lasted a little more than a year. When Jeff was four, she remarried, to Miguel Bezos. Miguel was a Cuban who immigrated to the United States alone when he was fifteen years old. After the wedding, the family moved to Houston, Texas. The young Jeff attended primary School in Houston from fourth to sixth grade. Jeff joined a youth pee wee football team and was made captain in a couple weeks because he was the only kid who can remember all the plays.

As a child, he spent summers at his grandfather’s ranch in southern Texas, laying pipe, vaccinating cattle and fixing windmills.Jeff didn’t find out that his father is not his biological father until he was 10. As a teenager, Jeff worked for a summer at McDonald’s and hated it to his core.

Since early childhood, Bezos displayed scientific interests and technological proficiency. He attended Princeton University, intending to study physics, but later returned to his love of computers and graduated with two Bachelor of Science degrees in electrical engineering and computer science.

Immediately after graduating from Princeton in 1986, Bezos worked on Wall Street in the field of computer science field. After a while, he worked on building a network for international trade for a Startup known as Fitel where he was th 11th employee in the company. The job had him flying between New York and London every week and he hated it. He next worked at Bankers Trust. Later on he also worked on Internet-enabled business opportunities at D. E. Shaw & Co.

Jeff couldn’t get over the fact that the Internet was growing 2,400% per year. He decided he’d rather try and fail at a startup than never try at all. Thus despite DE Shaw’s protests and begging he quit his job in 1994 and founded Amazon.

He initially set up the company in his garage and held most of his meetings at the neighborhood Barnes & Noble. Bezos and Kaphan set up a bell to ring every time Amazon.com made a sale. They had to turn it off after a couple weeks because it wouldn’t stop!. Amazon came up with its initial public offering in 1997. Even during the Stock market crisis, Amazon didn’t fail because Users kept coming to the site in bigger numbers and Jeff never promised shareholders anything but a long-term vision.

In 2003, Jeff Bezos almost died in a helicopter crash when the helicopter went out of control and Jeff Bezos was pretty sure he was about to die. After that crash, it’s been only up for Jeff. Amazon.com has expanded beyond selling books, to selling almost everything, including music, video, and even its own gadget, the Amazon Kindle. By 2009, Amazon was up 5000% since its IPO.

In 2000, Bezos founded Blue Origin, a human spaceflight startup company, because of his fascination with space travel. The company was kept secret for a few years; it became publicly known only in 2006.  Blue Origin is one of several start-ups aiming to open up space travel to paying customers.

On August 5, 2013, Bezos announced his purchase of The Washington Post for $250 million in cash. Bezos was also one of the first investors in Google, investing $250,000 in 1998.

As of February 2016, Bezos’ personal wealth is estimated to be US$59.2 billion, which can be partly attributed to a recent surge in Amazon’s stock price, ranking him 4th on the Forbes list of billionaires.

Team TOS