Jeff Bezos : (Founder and CEO of Amazon.com)

Jeff Bezos, whose actual name is Jeffrey Preston Bezos, played a significant role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, Inc., an online retailer of books and later of a variety of commodities. He was created on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Amazon became the largest online store and the industry benchmark under his direction.

Early life and career

When he was still a high school student, Bezos established the Dream Institute, a place that promoted young children's creative thinking. He graduated from Princeton University with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science in 1986, and he worked in a variety of capacities before joining the New York investment bank D.E. Shaw & Co. in 1990. Bezos, the organization's youngest senior vice president, was tasked with investigating the investment possibilities offered by the Internet. Its enormous potential—the use of the Web was rising by more than 2,000% annually—stirred his commercial mentality. In 1994, he left D.E. Shaw and moved to Seattle, where he opened an internet bookshop. Bezos began developing the website's software in his garage while employing a tiny workforce. Amazon, which is named after a river in South America, sold its first book in July 1995.

Amazon.com

Amazon quickly ascended to the top of the online retail sector. The always-open website encouraged users to post their own book evaluations and offered savings, personalized book suggestions, and searches for out-of-print books. In June 1998, it began selling CDs; later that year, it also began selling DVDs. In 1999, Bezos increased his investments in online ventures and introduced auctions to the website. The success of Amazon encouraged the opening of online storefronts by other merchants, including well-known book businesses.

By 2005, Amazon was offering a variety of products, including consumer electronics, apparel, and hardware as Bezos saw the need for diversification as more companies fought for customers on the Internet. In order to further diversify, Amazon introduced Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2006, a cloud computing business that eventually became the biggest of its type worldwide. Late in 2007, Amazon unveiled the Kindle, a wireless Internet-connected digital book reader that lets users instantly purchase, download, read, and store a large range of books. Amazon stated that Kindle book sales have surpassed hardcover book sales in 2010. Amazon began creating its own television shows and movies with the establishment of its Amazon Studios subsidiary. The yearly net sales of Amazon increased dramatically, going from $510,000 in 1995 to over $600 million in 1998 and from more than $19.1 billion in 2008 to roughly $233 billion in 2018. In 2018, the operating earnings of the company were mostly driven by AWS. Amazon reported record earnings two years later, and for the first time, its fourth-quarter revenue surpassed $100 billion. The COVID-19 outbreak increased home purchases, which in turn helped explain why the numbers were so historically high.

In February 2021, Bezos announced that he will step down as CEO of Amazon at the end of the year. He did wish to stay on as executive chairman of Amazon, though.

Other activities

In addition to Amazon, Bezos founded Blue Origin, a spaceflight company, in 2000. Soon after, Blue Origin bought a launch site in Texas with the intention of launching the New Glenn orbital launch vehicle in 2020 and the New Shepard crewed suborbital spaceship in 2018. 2013 saw Bezos purchase The Washington Post and allied publications for $250 million. As of 2018, Bezos was believed to have a net worth of $112 billion, making him the richest person in the world.

 

Personal life

Following their encounter at D.E. Shaw in 1993, Bezos married Mackenzie Tuttle. The National Enquirer released a report the day after the couple announced their divorce in January 2019 that claimed Bezos had an extramarital relationship. Bezos then began investigating how the tabloid had access to his private text messages. Then, in February, he posted a lengthy essay online in which he accused American Media Inc. (AMI), the publisher of the Enquirer, of engaging in "extortion and bribery" by allegedly threatening to publish nude photos of Bezos and making other demands. Later, his lover's brother allegedly leaked the texts, according to the Bezos-led investigation.