Story of an Amazon warrior
10 things you may not know about Jeff Bezos.
He was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen in 1964 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to a teenage mother and showed early technical know-how. He took his Cuban stepfather’s surname. His maternal grandparents owned a large ranch in Texas.
He graduated from Princeton with BSc degrees in electrical engineering and computer science, then worked on Wall Street for Bankers Trust and on internet business at a hedge fund company.
He founded Amazon in 1994, operating out of his garage and was making US$20,000 a week in sales within two months. Reportedly, he was always keen on gathering data on educated shoppers with money.
In July, he briefly became the richest person in the world, nudging out Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, because his 17% stake in Amazon topped US$90 billion. Bezos recently asked people on Twitter what he should spend his money on.
He is said to be an intense, micromanaging individual who loves his work: “I dance into the office every morning.”
In 2013, he bought the 140-year-old newspaper the Washington Post for $U250 million, reportedly without negotiation or due diligence, after an approach by former owner Don Graham. He says he watched the Watergate hearings at his grandfather’s house when he was 10.
He funded spaceflight start-up Blue Origin out of his own pocket, having been interested in science fiction since he was a child. The plan is for reusable spacecraft to fly passengers to space and back, competing with Richard Branson and Elon Musk, and eventually for people to live in space. He played a Starfleet official in the 2016 film Star Trek Beyond.
He has banned PowerPoint presentations and requires employees to compose six-page narrative memos with coherent sentences and clear arguments.
He was one of the first investors in Google, and Bezos Expeditions has invested in Airbnb, Twitter, Uber, AI and robots, games, quantum computing and life-extension companies among others. Was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 1999 and is a member of the influential Bilderberg Group. He was named World’s Worst Boss by the International Trade Union Confederation in 2014.
He has four children with wife MacKenzie. He and his family have given significant amounts to philanthropic causes.