Remember the song, Bezos by Bo Burnham trending on tik tok, Instagram or wherever you open in 2020? It was about this admirable personality. Jeffrey Preston Bezos (Jeff Bezos), initially named Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen, an American entrepreneur and investor. Founder of the world’s largest e-commerce company, named Amazon. Bezos is the third richest person in the world today.
| Born | January 12, 1964, Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S. |
| Citizenship | American |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur, Investor, Computer engineer, media proprietor |
| Title | Founder and CEO of Amazon, Founder of blue origin, Founder of bezos expeditions. |
| Education | BSE in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University. |
| Spouse | Mackenzie Scott |
| Childrens | 4 |
| Net worth | $139.3B |
Early Life of Jeff Bezos
Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque in New Mexico. He was born to teen parents where his mother Jacklyn Gise, was a 17-year-old high school student. His father, Ted Jorgensen was a 19-year-old unicyclist.
Jeff’s mother filed for divorce against her husband when he was only 17 months old due to Jorgensen’s drinking habits as he drained the family financially. After their divorce, his mother married a Cuban immigrant Miguel Bezos, who adopted Jeff, changing his title officially to Bezos. The family soon moved to Houston, Texas.
Early Education
Jeff’s first school was a Montessori in Albuquerque when he was two years old. He then attended the River Oaks Elementary School in Houston, after he moved there with his mother and stepfather.
When the family moved to Miami, Florida, he attended Miami Palmetto High School. He was also a valedictorian in his high school.
Bezos attended the Student Science Training Program at the University of Florida.
He then pursued his Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree (B.S.E.) in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University.
He was a member of the Phi Beta Kapha in his college days.
Jeff Bezos’ Career
After graduating from Princeton University, he turned down a job offer from Intel and Bells Labs. To work for a start-up firm named Fintel, a telecommunications start-up. He worked there as a member in building a network for international trade.
He then left his job and worked at Bankers Trust from 1988 to 1990 as a product manager.
Bezos then joined D. E. Shaw & Co, a newly created hedge fund. He was the fourth senior vice president of the company by age 30.
He read that web usage at the time was growing at the rate of 2300% a year, which gave him the idea to open up an online bookstore that sold books at an affordable rate compared to offline stores.
Jeff Bezos and his then-wife Mackenzie Scott left their respective jobs and founded Amazon in a garage in Washington. He firmly believed that everyone “should follow something they were very passionate about and not to chase what the hot passion of the day was.” And that is exactly what he did with his life, while starting Amazon. He named his company Amazon inspired by the Amazon River in South Africa, which is known to be the largest river in the world. They also named it Amazon because During this time website listings were in alphabetical order, which resulted in its appearance first on the web page.
His first Investors were his parents who invested about $300,000.
Initially, Amazon only sold books in every U.S. state but then it spread to 45 other countries and today it is all around the world.
By 1998, He had diversified Amazon for online sales of music and video, and by the end of that year, he had expanded the company’s products to include a variety of consumer goods.
Annual sales skyrocketed from $511,000 in 1995 to over $3 billion in 2001.
In 2002, seeing the success of Amazon, he launched Amazon web services, which compiled and organized data. It was quite a success and is going to be strong even today. About 40% of Amazon’s revenue is through Amazon web services.
In November of 2007, he launched the Amazon Kindle, a digital ebook reader.
In October 2013, Amazon became the largest online shopping retailer in the world.
The Blue Origin
In 2000, Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin, a human spaceflight startup. Jeff had always shown interest in space travel, which he also mentioned in his valedictorian speech.
The startup maintained a low profile until 2006 when they officially came out for testing in West Texas. Jeff clearly said that he aimed to in reducing the cost of space travel for humans while also increasing the safety of extra-terrestrial travel. In September 2011, one of the company’s unscrewed prototype vehicles crashed during a short-hop test flight. It was a major setback for the company but it did not stop the company.
Later in November of 2015, Blue Origin’s ‘New Shepard’ space vehicle successfully rocketed into space and reached its planned test altitude of 100.5 kilometres. Ever since he has repeatedly ordered for increase inter-space energy and industrial manufacturing to decrease the negative costs.
In December 2017, ‘New Shepard’ successfully flew and landed dummy passengers, amending and pushing its human space travel.
Jeff Bezos’ Other Expeditions
In 2013, he announced his purchase of The Washington Post on the recommendation of his friend Don Graham.
In 1998, he became one of the first shareholders in Google.
He also invested in Unity Biotechnology, a life-extension research firm hoping to slow or stop the process of aging.
He cofounded Altos Labs alongside Yuri Milner. Altos Labs is a biotechnology company dedicated to harness cellular reprogramming to develop longevity therapeutics.
Jeff Bezos’ Achievements
In 1999, He received his first major award when ‘Time’ named him ‘Person of the Year’.
In 2008, U.S. News & World Report selected him as one of ‘America’s best leaders’.
In 2011, ‘The Economist’ gave him and ‘an Innovation Award’ for Amazon Kindle.
Bezos was named ‘Businessperson of the Year’ by The Fortune in 2012.
In 2018, at the Explorers Club’s annual dinner, he got “Buzz Aldrin Space Exploration Award” in recognition of his work with Blue Origin.
Jeff Bezos received Germany’s 2018 Axel Springer Award for Business Innovation and Social Responsibility in 2018.
In 2019, He was inducted into the Living Legends of Aviation, after being awarded with the “Jeff Bezos Freedom’s Wings Award” and the “Kenn Ricci Lifetime Aviation Entrepreneur Award”.
In February 2023, He was honoured with the “Légion d’honneur” the highest French order of merit.
Jeff Bezos’ Net Worth
As of 2023, his net worth was estimated to be $134 billion.
How is Jeff Bezos as a leader?
Bezos firmly believes in life-work harmony instead of life-work balance because he believes balance means only choosing one at a time. He believes that work and life are interconnected together instead of being two different things.
Journalist Walt Mossberg dubbed the idea that someone who cannot tolerate criticism or critique shouldn’t do anything new or interesting and named it “The Bezos Principle”. Which denotes he does not appreciate criticisms.
Jeff Bezos’ Personal Life
While he was working at D. E. Shaw, he met novelist MacKenzie Tuttle, who was then a research associate at the firm.
This couple married a year later and moved to Seattle, where they founded Amazon together.
The couple have four children together. Three sons and an adopted daughter.
In 2019, the couple announced their separation after 25 years of marriage. Their divorce was finalized on April 4th, 2019.
Unknown Facts on Jeff Bezos
1) His biological father had not met him until they reconciled and made amends in their relationship in 2015.
2) As a kid, he turned his parent’s garage into an engineering workshop, experimenting with electrical components.
3)According to Vizaca.com, he makes $3,715 per second.
4) He Made a Cameo Appearance on the Movie Star Trek Beyond.
5) His Maternal grandfather was Lawrence Preston Gise, was his biggest supporter and encouraged him to pursue his dream.
Famous Quotes and Life Lessons by Jeff Bezos
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
– Jeff Bezos
Be proud of not your gifts but your hard work and choices.
– Jeff Bezos
Be stubborn on the vision but flexible on the details.
– Jeff Bezos
Conclusion
Despite all his troubles and challenges, Jeff Bezos, the man who made the future of e-commerce, is reaping the fruit of his hard work. Coming from a humble background of being raised by teen parents to the third richest person on earth, he sure has come a long way.
