[283][284], In March 2018, Bezos met in Seattle with Mohammad bin Salman, the crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, to discuss investment opportunities for Saudi Vision 2030. [70] On July 27, 2017, Bezos momentarily became the world's wealthiest person over Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates when his estimated net worth increased to just over $90billion. Their returns? In fact, I spent all my summers on my grandfathers ranch not far from where were sitting right now, not far from San Antonio. As the companys capitalization soared, Bezos embarked on a risky strategy of expansion, forgoing immediate profits to secure an ever-larger share of the Internet market, not only in books, but in music, videos, electronics, toys and clothing. [76] During July 2018, a number of members of the U.S. Congress called on Bezos to detail the applications of Amazon's face recognition software, Rekognition. And you know, that was a very bold and trusting thing for them to do because they didnt know. [209] His wealth's rapid growth from 2016 to 2017 sparked a variety of assessments about how much money Bezos earned on a controlled, reduced time scale. Bezos started to wear tailored clothing; he weight trained, pursued a regimented diet and began to freely spend his money. [51] In 2000, Bezos borrowed $2 billion from banks, as its cash balances dipped to only $350million. Jeff Bezos: Very rarely. Today its easy because weve got millions of customers counting on us, and thousands of investors counting on us, and thousands of employees all counting on each other. Bezos started the interview by promising that he was only going to ask two questions and that the first one would be a "fun" brainteaser. [45][51] Three years after Bezos founded Amazon, he took it public with an initial public offering (IPO). So, we are at a point now where we have all of the things we need to build an important and lasting company, and if we dont, it will be shame on us. [264], On April 4, 2019, the divorce was finalized, with Bezos keeping 75% of the couple's Amazon stock and MacKenzie getting the remaining 25% ($35.6billion) in Amazon stock. "Even when he was in high school, all the teachers who. [267] Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Bezos have supported the legalization of same-sex marriage, and in 2012 contributed $2.5million to Washington United for Marriage, a group supporting a yes vote on Washington Referendum 74, which affirmed a same-sex marriage law enacted in the state. ", "Bezos Not Concerned About Competition, Possible ULA Sale", "Jeff Bezos lifts curtain on Blue Origin rocket factory, lays out grand plan for space travel that spans hundreds of years", "Jeff Bezos says he wants to fly into space 'as soon as possible', "Later, Vader! [308][309][310] In April 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Bezos donated $100 million to food banks through Feeding America. Jeff Bezos: I was constantly booby-trapping the house with various kinds of alarms and some of them were not just audible sounds, but actually like physical booby-traps. You go home and you say to your wife you want to throw all that over and get in the car and go to Seattle. The company began as an online bookstore and has since expanded to a variety of other e-commerce products and services, including video and audio streaming, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. Literally in the first 30 days we had orders from all 50 states and 45 different countries, and we were woefully unprepared from an operational point of view to handle that kind of volume. So, if I find that some particular thing is causing me to have stress, thats a warning flag for me. [169][170] Bezos maintains the email address jeff@amazon.com[171] as an outlet for customers to reach out to him and the company. On October 10, 2017, he made an estimated $6.24billion in 5 minutes, slightly less than the annual gross domestic product of Kyrgyzstan. Jeff set up three Sun microstations on tables hed made out of doors from Home Depot for less than $60 each. Here's who's eligible to attend and why Bezos says 'the child will be the customer. What were your intentions when you left Princeton? Jeff Bezos: I was very, very lucky because in fourth grade which for me would have been around 1974 I had access to a mainframe computer. You know, things mysteriously because of that invisible hand tend to work out. [314], In November 2022, Bezos granted a $100-million Courage and Civility Award to singer Dolly Parton in recognition of her charity work focused on improving children's literacy around the world. Jeff Bezos was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen in Albuquerque, N.M., on Jan. 12, 1964. In addition to The Washington Post, the leading daily newspaper in the nations capital, the sale included a number of smaller local newspapers in the Washington, D.C. area. I remember in fourth grade we had this wonderful contest which was the people in the class, whoever there was some prize I cant even remember what it was whoever could read the most Newbery Award winners in a year and I read through I didnt end up winning. My calculus teacher in high school, Mr. Bohr, he had a big influence on me, Ms. Del Champs, who taught chemistry in high school, Ms. Ruehl, who taught physics. ", "Amazon is celebrating its 25th birthday. That summer, therapid rise in thevalue of Amazon shares boosted thevalue of thefoundersstakeby over $1 billionin a single day. [276] Controversy over this was raised when General James Mattis accepted a headquarters tour invitation from Bezos and co-ordinated the deal through Sally Donnelly, a lobbyist who previously worked for Amazon. There was a period where my brother and sister wouldnt go see a movie with me. [62] In October of that year, Amazon was recognized as the largest online shopping retailer in the world. Every decade that goes by, theres more important discoveries per unit time than there were in the previous decade. What we need is packing tables.. Did you have heroes or role models when you were growing up? [23], After Mike had received his degree from the University of New Mexico, the family moved to Houston, Texas, so that he could begin working as an engineer for Exxon. Here's what you need to know about the sale", "The Washington Post closes sale to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos", "Jeff Bezos Makes His First Major Move at the Washington Post", "The Washington Post Is a Software Company Now", "How Jeff Bezos Reacts to 'Negative' Amazon Articles in the Washington Post", "The Story of Jeff Bezos' $250,000 Investment into Google in 1998", "New Yorker: Bezos' Initial Google Investment Was $250K in 1998 Because 'I Just Fell in Love with Larry and Sergey', "Google's co-founders and other Silicon Valley billionaires are trying to live forever", "We can learn a lot about Jeff Bezos' health strategy by looking at his investments", "Why Jeff Bezos Might Be the One to Crack the Health Care Challenge", "Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Team Up to Try to Disrupt Health Care", "Jeff Bezos Wants Ideas for Philanthropy, So He Asked Twitter", "Billionaire Bezos adds to eclectic interests", "Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos Flip the Switch on New Bezos Center for Innovation at MOHAI, Kicking Off Saturday Launch Celebration", "The Engines That Propelled Us into Space, Recovered From the Ocean Floor", "Rocket Engine Part Recovered by Amazon CEO Has Apollo 11 History", "Bezos Salvage Team Plucks Apollo Rocket Engines from Atlantic", "Apollo F-1 Engine Preview | The Museum of Flight", "As Apollo 11 moon landing anniversary nears, space fans get ready to celebrate", "Altos Labs Launches with $3B and a Focus on Reversing Disease, Aging", "The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon", "Amazon Uses '60 Minutes' To Unveil Automated Delivery Drones", "If Jeff Bezos really wanted to rule the world, he'd pose for corny photos like he used to", "Is Jeff Bezos a Horrible Boss and Is That Good? [59][failed verification] In November 2007, Bezos launched the Amazon Kindle. Some researchers have found that SAT scores can predict a student's income and . Bezos was accepted to Princeton University for reasons that are not surprising considering his good grades and impressive academic background. Shortly after getting married to Jeff's mother, Mike adopted Jeff as his son and changed his last name to Bezos. Jeff Bezos: Not the computer per se, but I do often have concerns about the role that technology more generally may play in the years ahead. I cant handle more than one trip to Radio Shack per day. So, there was a lot of that kind of stuff going on in our house. I would encourage anybody to try to spend time not only with their parents but with their grandparents. Will you please get your parts list straight before we go? You literally dialed a regular phone and picked up the handset and put it in this little cradle. [166] Instead of using presentation slides, Bezos requires high-level employees to present information with six-page narratives. Two years later, the market value of shares in Amazon was greater than that of its two biggest retail competitors combined, and Borders was striking a deal for Amazon to handle its Internet traffic. I think its always hard to know why youre drawn to a particular thing. [290], Bezos donated to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center several times between 2009 and 2017. I think you learn different things from grandparents than you learn from parents. Can that be a problem? Thats how small companies get a little bit bigger, and then a little bit bigger, and a little bit bigger, until finally, at a certain stage, you reach a transition where the company has more control over its future destiny. We were packing these things, everybody in the company, and I had this brainstorm as I said to the person next to me, This packing is killing me! And, I think thats very good. In 1994, Jeff Bezos was a 30-year-old vice president of a New York investment firm, newly married, with a secure and prosperous future ahead of him. Jeff Bezos: I think one of the things thats most important to me is one of the notions that the United States was founded on, and that is liberty. Looking ahead, is there some idea or problem or challenge that interests you? Bezos rose to be the 5th richest person in the world hours before market close; he gained $7billion in one hour. Khashoggi was killed in late 2018, in Turkey's Saudi consulate for his critical stance and journalism against the Saudi government and its leader. That $250,000 investment resulted in 3.3million shares of Google stock, worth about $3.1billion in 2017. In 2011, Amazon introduced the Kindle Fire, a mini tablet computer with a color touch screen, to compete directly with the iPad. [92] Bezos has long expressed an interest in space travel and the development of human life in the Solar System. Weve got thousands of investors counting on us. In all, he graduated with a 4.0 GPA. [191] He was first included on the Forbes World's Billionaires list in 1999 with a registered net worth of $10.1billion, which placed his on the 19th position in the world and 10th in the USA. From the beginning, Bezos sought to increase market share as quickly as possible, at the expense of profits. [285] In March 2019, Bezos's security consultant accused the Saudi government of hacking Bezos's phone. [141][142][143], Bezos was seen by some as needlessly quantitative and data-driven. ", "Are you lazy or just incompetent? ", and "Why are you ruining my life?". The great teachers somehow convey in their very attitude and their words and their actions and everything they do that this is an important thing youre learning. Jeff Bezos: No. If a young person came to you for advice, How do I make the most out of my life? what would you say to them? [109] He announced that New Shepard would begin transporting humans into sub-orbital space by November 2018. I was probably unnaturally on the side of not getting in trouble. When we launched that store in July of 1995, we were shocked at the customer response. Amazon also took the handheld e-reader to a new level of comfort and convenience with the Kindle Paperwhite, an illuminated touchscreen device that can be read comfortably in a darkened room. Also, he was an active member of Quadrangle Clun at Princeton . In a second round of fundraising, about a year later or so, we raised a million dollars, and I had to talk to about 60 different people. When the company went public in 1997, skeptics wondered if an Internet-based start-up bookseller could maintain its position once traditional retail heavyweights like Barnes and Noble or Borders entered the Internet picture. It just is, and to pretend that its not will lead you to do strange and unnatural things. Things never go smoothly. Also, he was an active member of Quadrangle Clun at Princeton . Jeff's stepfather is Miguel "Mike" Bezos. Bezos retained his interest in The Washington Post and Blue Origin, as well as voting control of the shares received by his ex-wife. He was high school valedictorian, a National Merit Scholar,[35][36] and a Silver Knight Award winner in 1982. So that was, I think, a very good decision to not do that. Jeffrey Preston Bezos (/bezos/ BAY-zohss;[2] n Jorgensen; born January 12, 1964) is an American entrepreneur, media proprietor, investor, and commercial astronaut. Before starting off Amazon, Jeff Bezos served as the Senior Vice President at D.E.Shaw. [75] Weeks later, Bezos recouped his losses when academic reports out of Stanford University indicated that Trump could do little to regulate Amazon in any meaningful way. My dads first question was, Whats the Internet?Okay. Jeff Bezos was convinced that this global network, primarily the domain of academics and government scientists, could become a vibrant new venue for commerce, with the right product and the right plan. [11][311][312] In November 2021, Bezos pledged to donate $2 billion towards restructuring food systems and nature conservation at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference. From its 26-acre research campus outside Seattle and a private rocket launching facility in West Texas, Blue Origin is testing New Shepard, a multi-passenger rocket-propelled vehicle designed to travel to and from suborbital space at competitive prices. Although the crash was viewed as a setback, news outlets noted how far the company went from its founding-to-date in advancing spaceflight. And that started a love affair for me with people like Heinlein and Asimov and all the well-known science fiction authors that persists to this day. [298] Bezos announced in September 2018 that he would commit approximately $2billion to a fund to deal with American homelessness and establish a network of non-profit preschools for low income communities. What was Jeff Bezos GPA? Amazon.com ended 2015 with net revenue of $107 billion. In sixth grade, at 12 years old, he practiced statistical analysis by . People wanted to be different. Early in 2017, Bloomberg News estimated that Jeff Bezos had a net worth of $75.6 billion, making him the second wealthiest person in the world, second only to Microsoft founderBill Gates. [25] Jeff's maternal grandfather was Lawrence Preston Gise, a regional director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in Albuquerque. [197] After the financial crisis and succeeding economic recession, his net worth would decrease to $6.8billiona 17.7% drop. He went to work at Fitel, a start-up company that was building a network to conduct international trade. What was Steve Jobs GPA? [275] A 2018, $10billion contract known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) project, this time with the Pentagon, was allegedly written up in a way that favors Amazon. Since I was a little kid I have always been interested. Well, that means that the number of chickens is roughly right, even though theres nobody deciding how many chickens there should be. Jeffreys maternal ancestors were early settlers in Texas, and over the generations had acquired a 25,000-acre ranch at Cotulla. What kind of responsibility goes along with the kind of success youve had? [45][43], In spring 1994, Bezos read that web usage was growing at a rate of 2300% a year and eventually decided to establish an online bookstore. Jeff Bezos education played a key role in fuelling his drive towards innovation. Now its much more normal. Jeff Bezos: If you are a lottery winner, as I am, then one of the things that you get a chance to do at some point in your life is to be a philanthropist and so, I didnt grow up hoping, Boy! In its mission statement, Blue Origin identifies its ultimate goal as the establishment of an enduring human presence in outer space. What it means is theres something that I havent completely identified perhaps in my conscious mind that is bothering me, and I havent yet taken any action on it. "[163] During the 1990s and early 2000s at Amazon, he was characterized as trying to quantify all aspects of running the company, often listing employees on spreadsheets and basing executive decisions on data. And, even if it does work, according to some metric, financial success, or whatever it might be, I suspect it leaves you ultimately unsatisfied. Those were sort of my two biographical heroes. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science and electrical engineering. You should have a right to pursue it, and I think the core of that is liberty. From then on, I started working at the intersection of computers and finance, and stayed on Wall Street for a long time, ultimately worked for a company that did this thing called quantitative hedge fund trading. So, you really need to be very clear with yourself. I can only imagine that by the time Im 70 I will realize I know nothing. It was the first time in 80 years that the newspaper had passed from the control of the Graham family, descendants of Eugene Meyer, who bought the paper in 1933. How do you deal with that kind of pressure you must have felt during the past year? [39], Bezos portrayed a Starfleet official in the 2016 movie Star Trek Beyond, and joined the cast and crew at a San Diego Comic-Con screening. We werent betting on the Internet, his mother has said. Jeff Bezos: Its very interesting, because the Internet in general and Amazon.com in particular, is still Chapter One. When I was at Princeton I was president of SEDS, which stands for Students for the Exploration and Development of Space. [28][29] Jeff displayed scientific interests and technological proficiency and once rigged an electric alarm to keep his younger siblings out of his room. [196] From 2005 to 2007, he quadrupled his net worth to $8.7billion. In 2004, he founded an aerospace company, Blue Origin, to develop new technology for spaceflight, with the ultimate goal of establishing an enduring human presence beyond Earth. Its supposed to be hard to raise a million dollars. He asked me on the cell phone what name would you like the company incorporated under. So, that is a very interesting fact, I think, that a free market economy which by necessity involves a lot of liberty just happens to work well in terms of allocating resources. Im a lottery winner of a certain kind, and I suspect if you were to survey lottery winners you would find that the core things about them dont really change because they won the lottery. All of this eventually led you to Princeton? [65] A year later, Bezos took on 130,000 new employees when he ramped up hiring at company distribution centers. [30][31] The family moved to Miami, Florida, where Jeff attended Miami Palmetto High School. With e-book sales increasing by 200 percent a year, Bezos predicted that e-books would overtake paperbacks and become the companys bestselling format within a year. [140] Throughout the early 2000s, he was perceived to be geeky or nerdy. Well, that might even lead to more aggregate wealth. I think people should carefully reread the first part of the Declaration of Independence, because I think sometimes we as a society start to get confused and think that we have a right to happiness, but if you read the Declaration of Independence, it talks about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Nobody has a right to happiness. The family later moved to Miami, Florida, during Bezos High School days. It wasnt like what people think of today. Were there any teachers you remember that had an influence on you? [131][132] The engines are currently on display at the Seattle Museum of Flight. How much did Jeff Bezos make in 2020? When he was a teenager, the family moved to Miami, Florida. Bezos and his team continued improving the site, introducing such unheard-of features as one-click shopping, customer reviews, and e-mail order verification. [303] In September 2018, Bezos donated $10million to With Honor, a nonpartisan organization that works to increase the number of veterans in political office. [247] Bezos and his now ex-wife MacKenzie are the parents of four children: three sons and one daughter adopted from China. I went to work for a start-up company, but one in New York City that was building a network for helping brokerage firms clear trades. "[157], During the late 2010s, Bezos reversed his reputation for being reluctant to spend money on non-business-related expenses. At D. E. Shaw, a firm specializing in the application of computer science to the stock market, Bezos was hired as much for his overall talent as for any particular assignment. [68] On February 1, 2018, Amazon reported its highest ever profit with quarterly earnings of $2billion. )", "America produced the largest number of billionaires in the world", "Jeff Bezos moves to top spot on Forbes' annual billionaires list", "Here's Why Jeff Bezos Is Not Truly The Richest Person in History", "Jeff Bezos Had a Record-Breaking One-Year Net Worth Jump", "Forbes Billionaires 2018: Meet The Richest People on the Planet", "Jeff Bezos world's first centibillionaire: Amazon boss' journey to beat Bill Gates to the top of Forbeslist", "Jeff Bezos Is Worth $112 Billion, Overtaking Bill Gates as the Richest Man in the World", "Bezos' Billions: The Wealth of a 'Centi-Billionaire', "Jeff Bezos Is Making an Insane $230,000 a Minute Right Now", "Here's How Much Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Would Be Worth if He Never Sold a Single Share", "Jeff Bezos is rich enough to buy many of the world's stock markets outright", "Is Jeff Bezos's Massive Wealth Becoming a Problem? I think in large part because I never expected to have the means to be a philanthropist, but I think that if you win a lottery of this kind of size, that one of the things that, over time, you have an obligation to do, is to think about the ways that that wealth can be used in a highly leveraged way. So, you want to start a company. So, stress comes from ignoring things that you shouldnt be ignoring, I think, in large part. He went to work at Fitel, a start-up company that was building a network to conduct international trade. I knew that if I failed I wouldnt regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. This is just a very common sort of thing that folks in far away places do. Things that Disney invented, like Disneyland, the theme parks, they were such big visions that no single individual could ever pull them off, unlike a lot of the things that Edison worked on. [256][257][258] Subsequently, National Enquirer revealed that Bezos had an affair with media personality Lauren Snchez; the affair with Sanchez had lasted for months. He also invented a music player called the Synapse Media Player, which was reviewed by PC Magazin. [119], Bezos makes personal investments through his venture capital vehicle, Bezos Expeditions. [94][248] Bezos and MacKenzie have not disclosed their religious status. No. I have no idea where it came from. Jeff Bezos: Yeah. New Shepard will allow researchers to conduct more frequent experiments in a microgravity environment, as well as providing the general public with an opportunity to experience spaceflight. This is great. Jeff Bezos: I dont know if this is true for everybody but I suspect it is. Jeff graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor's degree in Engineering and Computer Science with a 4.2 GPA. In 2021, he announced that he will be one of the crew on board Blue Origins first manned space flight. Our garage was basically science fair central, and my mom is a saint, because she would drive me to Radio Shack multiple times a day to the point where she would finally say, Okay. [239], Bezos is the owner of the Y721, a luxury superyacht estimated to cost more than $500,000,000. [18], Ted Jorgensen drank and struggled financially. While Whole Foods stores will continue to sell high-end delicacies and organic produce, they will also serve as delivery locations for Amazons online retail business, extending the companys reach into ever more areas of the economy. Do you have any doubts about the future of Amazon.com? And we had a teletype that was connected by an old acoustic modem. Fortune magazine named Bezos its 2012 Businessperson of the Year.. [217] Bezos's net worth increased by $33.6billion from January 2017 to January 2018. His one line consisted of a response to an alien in distress: "Speak Normally." So I found one of the great things Princeton taught me is that Im not smart enough to be a physicist. One day that spring, Jeffrey Bezos observed that Internet usage was increasing by 2,300 percent a year. We went ahead and incorporated under that name. After graduation, Jeff Bezos found employment on Wall Street, where computer science was increasingly in demand to study market trends. In typically methodical fashion, Bezos reviewed the top 20 mail order businesses, and asked himself which could be conducted more efficiently over the Internet than by traditional means. You know, I left this Wall Street firm in the middle of the year. [41][42], After Bezos graduated from college in 1986, he was offered jobs at Intel, Bell Labs, and Andersen Consulting, among others. We do know that he went to Philips Exeter, perhaps the best prep school in the nation. Its technically a very hard problem. [278][279] On July 6, 2021, the Pentagon cancelled the JEDI contract with Microsoft, citing that "due to evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy, and industry advances, the JEDI Cloud contract no longer meets its needs. Jeff Bezos: I was very difficult to punish for my parents because they would send me to my room, and I was always happy to go to my room because I would just read. I only got to go through school once so I dont know, but I have a feeling I was lucky. [22] Gise, her husband and her son left the area and asked Jorgensen to discontinue contact, to which he agreed. How do you explain to someone who has no idea what you do, why you do it? With a grade point average of 2.50 and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree (B.S. As you can see, Bezos earns in a day what the average person with a decent-paying job earns in an entire month. She . [7] The company has recruited prominent scientists such as Juan Carlos Izpisa Belmonte (known for work on rejuvenation through reprogramming), Steve Horvath (known for work in epigenetic aging clocks), and Shinya Yamanaka (the Nobel Prize-winning inventor of cellular reprogramming in mammalian cells). And, were a team of thousands of employees all counting on each other. When Bezos was in high school and college, he had his heart set on becoming a theoretical physicist. Jeffrey P. Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. [269], After the 2016 presidential election, Bezos was invited to join Donald Trump's Defense Innovation Advisory Board, an advisory council to improve the technology used by the Defense Department. In 2013, Jeff Bezos purchased the newspaper division of The Washington Post Company for $250 million. I think its the core essence of the American Dream. [125][126], Bezos also supports philanthropic efforts through direct donations and non-profit projects funded by Bezos Expeditions. [159][160], Day 1: start upDay 2: stasisDay 3: irrelevanceDay 4: "excruciating, painful decline"Day 5: death, Bezos has stated "it is always Day 1" to describe his growth mindset. "[254] Bezos's family corporation Zefram LLC is named after Zefram Cochrane, a character from Star Trek. A local newspaper quoted his intention "to get all people off the earth and see it turned into a huge national park". Business customers can employ Amazons online infrastructure technology through Amazon Web Services. Forensic analysis of Bezos's mobile phone conducted by advisory firm FTI Consulting, concluded it "highly probable" that the hack was achieved using a malicious file hidden in a video sent in a WhatsApp message to Bezos from the personal account of the crown prince on May 1, 2018.
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