Jeff Bezos, The kid from Ranch to Mansion

If you are looking for inspiration, then this story is for you, the story of the world’s richest man, the CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos. Jeff is a famous Entrepreneur, E-commerce giant, and the founder of Blue Origin.

Jeff Bezos is known for his dual personality. It just takes seconds him to transform from a kind and compassionate person to a rugged and rough executive. He always gives more than 100% into his works and anticipates the same levels of concentration from his employees.

This is the story of Jeff Bezos.

The early Life

Jeff Bezos was born on 12^th January, 1964, to Ted Jorgenson and Jacklyn Bezos in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Jeff’s biological father was a Unicyclist who performed on country Circuses, and his mother was a teenager when she gave birth to Jeff. The marriage between Ted and Jacklyn lasted only a year, and then Jacklyn married Mike Bezos, who was an illegal immigrant from Cuba to the United States.

Once, he said, “The reality, as far as I’m concerned, is that my Dad is my natural father”. “The only time I ever think about it, genuinely, is when a doctor asks me to fill out a form,”

Mike became an Engineer for a gas company, and the Bezos family moved to Texas. Little Jeff showed outstanding mechanical skills even as a toddler. Once, he made an electric alarm to keep his siblings away from his room. He had loads of electrical stuff inside his apartment, eventually, Jeff’s parents asked to move them to the garage, which he converted as a tiny laboratory. 

Education

Little Jeff attended the river Oak Elementary School from 4th to 6th grades, and he spent the summer at his grandfather’s ranch in Texas. According to Jeff, his first mentor of life was his grandfather, and once said: “he was the one who taught me that it is harder to be kind than clever.”

Bezos’s family then moved to Florida, and Jeff had to change his school to Miami Palmetto Senior high school. This is the place he realized the love he had for the computers and flourished after that. He graduated from there and secured his spot at Princeton University. 

Jeff entered Princeton University with an intention to study physics, which he changed later to consider his two favorites, Computer science, and electrical engineering, and received two bachelor’s degrees. 

Beginning of the career

After graduating, he joined with a newly established Wall Street company named “Fitel,” where he had to fly New York to London every week to build a connection for international business. Then he was picked by D.E Shaw, a company that is specialized in computer science applications for the stock market. Jeff climbed the ladder quickly and became the youngest vice president of the company in 1990. This is where he met his wife Mackenzie, and they married in 1993.

D.E. shaw is where he first had the real taste of online business. When he was in search of new business ventures for the D.E Shaw, he noticed that there was a monthly growth of 2,300% on the internet (World Wide Web), and soon realized the potential of selling products online and resigned from D.E Shaw despite to the requests he received to stay with them. 

First Online Store

Jeff moved away from D.E Shaw in 1994 and came to Seattle for his dream. He first wrote a list for himself to decide what are the products he can sell online. The list included products like computer hardware, software, C.D.s, and books. He elected to go with books, and then U.S. tax laws meant Jeff had no taxes involved in the online selling at the beginning. 

He then drew a plan to expand the business and collected one million dollars from his family and close friends. His Seattle home’s garage was the place for his business at this stage.

Amazon 

Jeff started his business as “Cadabra” in 1994, later he opted to change the name to Makeitso.com, and he purchased few more domains like aard.com, relentless.com, awake.com, bookmall.com, browse.com. Finally, he and his wife settled with the name of Amazon.com 

They started the website in July 1995 and the business took off unexpectedly in all 50 states in America and 45 foreign countries around the world by September 1995. Soon he recruited a dynamic group of teams, and Jeff said: “If we get this right, we might be a $1 billion company by 2000.”

As booksellers, “Barnes and Noble” was the most significant competitor for Amazon in 1996. By that time, the Barnes and Noble sale estimated 2Billion dollars while Jeff Bezos’s Amazon was behind at 16Million. The Riggio brothers (owners of Barnes and Noble) had dinner with Jeff and offered several options to join with them, but he denied them all. 

The rapid growth of Amazon

Jeff added clothing to Amazon in 2002 by partnering hundreds of retail sellers and giants like GAP, and they opened an online sports goods store in 2003, including more than 3000 brands. These expansions allowed Jeff to experiment more with new ideas, most of them came off highly successfully, and several went under the carpet. One classic example is the jewelry business he tried.

Jeff established Amazon branches in countries like the UK, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, and secured customers worldwide. Also, took his business beyond the competitor’s reach. It was quite astonishing to figure out that Amazon had net revenue growth of 122.56% from $ 48.08 Billion to $ 107 .01 Billion within four years (2011-2015). Today Google says his net worth is $ 149 Billion, making him the richest man in the world. 

Blue Origin

Jeff founded Blue Origin in 2004, an aerospace company allowing space travels possible for ordinary people. According to his mother, this was one of the ambitions he had in his younger days. This company is situated in Seattle and owns a rocket launching station and a 26Acre campus. 

Marriage and kids

Jeff and Mackenzie Bezos have three sons and one adopted daughter from China. After twenty-five years of marriage, Jeff and Mackenzie announced their divorce in January 2019. Jeff paid $38 Billion for the settlement.

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