It’s no secret that Amazon.com is dominating
multiple aspects of our daily lives. We can
find just about everything we could possibly
need on their site, and if you have Amazon
Prime, you only wait two days for free delivery.
For our digital media, we can read books on
the Kindle, listen to music with Alexa, and
watch on-demand movies and TV series. This
all started with an idea that exploded into
a digital revolution. So, who is the man behind
the trillion dollar company? On today’s
episode of Biographics, we’re talking about
Jeff Bezos.
Early Life
On January 12th, 1964, a 17-year girl named
Jacklyn Gise gave birth to a baby boy named
Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen in Albuquerque,
New Mexico. She was married to Jeff’s biological
father, Ted Jorgensen for just one year while
she finished earning her High School diploma,
but the relationship was not meant to last,
and they got a divorce. Jacklyn later remarried
a man named Mike Bezos, who was a Cuban immigrant
who earned a college scholarship in the US.
They had two children together, and they gave
also Jeff the last name Bezos.
Jeff grew up in a very loving and supportive
family. His stepfather, Mike, was very resourceful
and hardworking. His mother was very loving
and supportive, and she was especially concerned
about making sure her son got the best education
possible. She put Jeff into a Montessori School.
The idea behind this educational method is
to allow a child to excel in their natural
talents, so they choose what they want to
learn at their own pace, instead of forcing
every child to learn the same things at the
same time. Jeff was extremely focused on his
school work, even from a young age. After
the alloted time in each subject was up, his
teachers had a hard time getting him to move
on to the next topic. In preschool, they had
to pick him up while still sitting in his
chair and move him just to break his concentration.
Jeff Bezos spent his summer vacations living
with his grandparents and helping them run
their ranch in Texas. His grandparents owned
an airstream trailer, so they would go on
long road trip vacations together as well.
During these road trips, he would find excuses
to do math problems on a scrap of paper, like
their average gas mileage, and how much they
were spending on groceries. Even though he
helped around the ranch with the chores, he
did not particularly enjoy the outdoors, and
he preferred to watch TV and read books.
At a very early age, Jeff Bezos was showing
signs that he was a genius. His grandfather
was also a very intelligent man, and he could
see the potential in Jeff’s future. So he
gave him some very valuable advice, which
stuck with him for the rest of his life. Bezos
explained, “It’s harder to be kind than
clever. Cleverness is a gift. Kindness is
a choice, and choices can be hard. You can
seduce yourself with your gifts, if you’re
not careful. ” He spent the rest of his
life reminding himself that no matter how
much he accomplished, he would try to stay
down-to-earth.
At home, his mother allowed him to have a
workshop in their garage, where he built a
solar cooker, a hovercraft, and even installed
a security alarm on his bedroom door. He was
competing in science fairs, reading science
fiction novels, and watching episodes of Star
Trek on TV. When he was just 10 years old,
he found a teletype computer at his school.
He and his friends found out that there was
a Star Trek game pre-programmed into the system
called Trek73, so he and his friends used
the computer to play the game. This sparked
his interest in computer programing, and it
would carry on for the rest of his life.
Jeff Bezos started his first business in High
School. He was disappointed by the quality
of his town’s local summer camp where kids
were just playing games outside most of the
day and not really learning anything. So he
founded a new camp called The Dream Institute.
They allowed kids from the fourth, fifth,
and sixth grade to attend, and focused on
teaching children about important works of
literature in a fun and exciting way. The
business was a success, and many of these
kids who were doing their summer reading would
then go on to get better grades in school.
Not surprisingly, he was the valedictorian
of his High School class, and during his graduation
speech, he said that he believed that one
day, human beings would colonize space. After
graduation, he attended Princeton University
and earned a degree in computer science. His
first job was at a startup called Fitel. While
working there, he was expected to fly between
New York and London nearly every week to get
his job done, which was costing the company
a tremendous amount of money. He realized
that this was not the most efficient way to
run a business, and it got him thinking about
all of the different things he would do more
efficiently if he ran his own company one
day.
His next job was at Banker’s Trust, which
gave him some experience in the financial
industry. Next, he worked for an investment
firm on Wallstreet called D. E. Shaw. He helped
to develop software for trading stocks online.
As the years went on, Jeff Bezos was staying
on top of the news about the growth of the
Internet. He realized that every single year,
the number of people who were using the internet
was increasing by 2,300%. Even though the
World Wide Web had many naysayers, he knew
that the internet wasn't just a passing fad,
and it would become apart of people’s daily
lives in the future. He knew early on to take
advantage of this, and Bezos figured that
if he could he could genuinely create an online
business that would help people make their
lives easier, it would last. His motto was,
“Think about the customer, and then work
from there.”
Personal Life
Before Jeff Bezos met his wife, MacKenzie,
he said that he was looking for “a resourceful
woman”, because he always admired how his
own parents would work as a team to make due
with their circumstances. He later joked that
he meant he was looking for a McGyvery of
sorts, like someone who could “get me out
of a third-world prison.” He was lucky to
find her while he was still at his job working
for D.E. Shaw.
MacKenzie Tuttle was a fellow Princeton alumni
who was applying to work for the firm. Since
Jeff Bezos was the one in charge of hiring
new candidates, he saw her resume, and even
before meeting her, he knew that she was clearly
a very intelligent and capable woman.
When she arrived for the job interview, he
felt cupid’s arrow strike him in the heart.
Even though office romances are sometimes
frowned upon, they fell in love. Even though
he secretly admired her, he did not want to
cross the line, so MacKenzie actually made
the first move to ask him out for lunch. They
were dating for just three months before they
got engaged, and they got married in 1993.
When Jeff Bezos turned 30 years old, they
had been married for only a year. He told
his wife about his idea for an online bookstore,
and that he wanted to quit his job in order
to pursue it. They decided to leave New York
City in 1994. Bezos chose to start his company
in Seattle, because it is also the location
of Microsoft, so there was a lot of talent
in the tech industry living there for him
to find employees. It’s also far cheaper
to start a company there compared to New York
or Silicon Valley.
They now have several children together, and
they built a rock solid foundation together
long before Amazon.com ever existed. Once
the company began to do well, Mackenzie was
able to fulfill her dream of becoming a published
author. Today, Jeff Bezos still puts family
first. He says that he refuses to take any
meetings before 10AM, because spending time
with his family and have breakfast with his
children before they go to school is far more
important to him than anything else.
The Beginning of Amazon
When Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos first moved
out to the west coast to start Amazon.com
in 1994, and at that time, the website only
sold used books. In his mind, Jeff Bezos imagined
a bookstore with millions of titles, and he
knew that would eventually be the end-goal.
MacKenzie did the accounting, and he began
building the website and sourcing inventory.
In the beginning, they ran the company out
of their garage. After receiving an order
for a book, Jeff would then go to thrift stores
and used book shops looking for the book that
was requested, and then send it to the customer
in the mail. If he could not find it, he would
source it from somewhere else online, just
to make sure the sale went through. This way,
they were able to run the company without
using very much physical space storing a library
of books. When they were ready to hire a team
to help them run the business out of their
house, the staff of an Amazon.com was only
8 people. Since the company did not have very
much money, he asked his employees to make
desks out of old doors. Even to this day,
the door desk is still a tradition in the
Amazon.com offices.
Before bringing the website live on the world
wide web, Bezos sent it to 300 of his friends,
so that they could test it beforehand. When
the team was getting ready to officially launch
the site in 1995, they had set up the computer
to ding every time that there was a sale.
In the beginning, everyone would shout and
cheer every time there was a new sale, but
within just a few days, there were so many
sales, that they grew tired of the noise and
they had to turn it off. The website was so
popular, they were getting business through
word-of-mouth without paying a dime for press
coverage. Jeff’s idea was working, and it
was clear to the team that the company would
become a success.
The reason why Amazon.com succeeded so quickly
was that Bezos was filling a very real need
for people. It was the very first online bookstore,
even two years before Barnes and Noble began
selling their stock on the internet. Ever
since then, Amazon continued to pioneer various
aspects of incorporating the internet into
people’s daily lives, and he says that for
7 years, there was no similar competition
out there who were even thinking on the scale
that he was.
In 1997, Bezos wanted to take Amazon.com public.
Thankfully, he still had connections on Wallstreet,
so he knew exactly how to approach investors
with a business plan. He fully admitted that
he did not actually intend to make any profits
for the first 5 years that the company was
operating. Jeff Bezos gave stock options to
all of his original employees, and this made
them very motivated to make the company succeed.
After a couple years, every single one of
those 8 original employees had become multi-millionaires.
After a while, Bezos wanted to sell far more
than just books. He emailed 1,000 random customers
asking what sort of items that would want
to buy on the internet. Soon enough, he was
getting replies of items in just about every
category. He realized that he wanted to grow
Amazon into a store that sold everything,
and he began using the same method that he
had with books; listing a product online,
buying the item in person, and then shipping
it to the customer.
Of course, this only helped the company grow
even more. But even after earning millions
of dollars, Bezos continue to drive his beat-up
old Honda. He wanted to show his employees
that he still stood by his core values of
frugality and resourcefulness. Instead of
spending that money on himself, he re-invested
the money to make Amazon.com better. They
bought out other competing online book retailers,
and brought them into the fold. He also decided
to give anyone in the United States the opportunity
to sell on the Amazon.com platform as third-party
sellers, which only made the platform stronger,
because it expanded their inventory.
Every decision Jeff Bezos made for the expanding
business was with the future in mind. When
he learned about e-books, he gave people the
opportunity to self-publish their work online
for the first time and earn an income for
themselves. Next, he developed the Kindle
e-reader to give people a place to read all
of their e-books. When he knew digital streaming
service became popular, he jumped on that
bandwagon, too. The list goes on and on. Today,
Amazon.com is one of the most massive corporations
in the world, and they have dipped their toes
into so many different industries at this
point, it’s hard to keep track.
Amazon has been criticized for putting independent
bookstores out of business. Even major corporations
like Borders Books could not compete. According
to Amazon.com’s former manager, Mike Daisey,
“(Amazon is) designed from the ground up
to be a shark. It’s designed to dissolve
and destroy other businesses by undercutting
them”. However, Jeff Bezos argues that he
should not be blamed for the downfall of these
other businesses, because the future was coming
no matter what, whether it was him, or someone
else.
Jeff Bezos says that whenever he makes a major
business decision, he imagines himself at
80 years old, and if he would be proud of
his actions looking back. If the answer is
“yes”, he listens to his intuition, and
goes for it. By listening to his heart, he
has become one of the most successful people
in the world.
Leadership
Amazon.com has been so incredibly successful,
and a lot of people attribute it to Jeff Bezos’
skills in leadership. He has a list of core
values for Amazon, and he always abides by
those rules himself, in order to set a good
example for his employees. At the end of the
Dot-Com bubble, the value of Amazon’s stock
went from $113 per share all the way down
to $6 per share. For many members of the original
team, they lost millions of dollars in their
stock portfolio, and this was enough to destroy
the vast majority of those early internet
businesses. One of the many reasons why Amazon
survived was that Jeff Bezos wasn’t judging
the business success on the stock price. He
knew that people were still using the website,
and that it was growing every day.
As we mentioned before, Bezos always made
his customers his number one priority. Whenever
he received a very serious complaint, he would
never try to reprimand his employees for making
a mistake. Instead, he would forward a particularly
troubling customer complaint to the managers
of each department with a simple question
mark in the subject line. According to former
employees, getting one of these question mark
e-mails was terrifying, and they would quickly
do everything they could to fix the problem
immediately. When the issue was resolved,
Bezos would simply reply with a smiley face.
If he sees a bad experience with a customer,
he used it as a case study to improve the
company overall, and not just an individual
experience.
Amazon is now available in 16 countries, so
he has had to give up much of the power over
those branches of the company, since he can’t
be everywhere at once. Some countries are
actually trying to fend off Amazon’s monopoly
over certain industries. In France, for example,
there is a law that no book store, whether
it be online or in person, is allowed to discount
a book more than 5% off the retail price,
and they cannot give free shipping to entice
buyers. This way, independent bookshops in
France are still thriving. Only time will
tell just how many nations will adopt Amazon.com
in the future.
To Infinity and Beyond
By a stroke of genius, Jeff Bezos has managed
to run Amazon.com with little to no profits,
despite the fact that they are bringing in
billions of dollars in revenue every year.
This is because he is always thinking about
the future, and trying to grow the business
to keep pushing the envelope in what it is
going to do next. Bezos is still a true trekkie
at heart, so it’s really no surprise that
he is creating a private space company called
Blue Origin. Just like he said during his
High School graduation speech, he still believes
that someday, it will be very normal for people
to be live and working in space, and he wants
to be on the forefront of the future.
At the time that we’re making this video,
Jeff Bezos is worth 137.6 billion dollars,
and that makes him he wealthiest man in history.
Amazon.com has been valued at over a trillion
dollars. And, of course, there is always the
chance that this wealth will continue to grow.
But he isn’t just hoarding all of this money
to himself. He created the Bezos Family Foundation,
and asked the world what charitable cause
he could help pay for. He received 47,000
emails with suggestions about where the money
should go, and he spends a lot of time reading
some of the best ideas for the causes that
matter. He said, “All of the best decisions
are made with instinct, intuition, heart.”
Jeff Bezos says that he wants to give his
money away to many of these charities, and
invest more in startup business ideas that
will help humanity. He decided to begin this
journey by opening tuition-free Montessori
pre-schools in underprivileged communities,
so that children can have the same opportunities
that he did. He also wants to open homeless
shelters that allow an entire family to stay
there together, instead of splitting men and
women apart. As time goes on, we will see
just how much Jeff Bezos uses his money for
good, and he is always open to suggestions.
