Biography of Jeff Bezos


American entrepreneur Jeff Bezos founded and headed the Amazon service. com, and in 2013 bought the “The Washington Post”.

The beginning of life and career

Jeffrey Preston Bezos was born on January 12, 1964 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His mother, who gave birth to him at a young age, was Jacqueline Guise Jorgensen, and his biological father was Ted Jorgensen. Jeff’s parents had been married for less than a year, and when Jeff was four, his mother married an immigrant from Cuba, Mike Bezos.

From an early age, Jeff Bezos showed an interest in how things are arranged. He turned the garage into a laboratory, and the whole house was equipped with various electrical gizmos. When he was a teenager, his family moved to Miami. There he developed a love for computers, and at a school where he studied perfectly, he was even entrusted with a farewell speech at graduation. In high school, he created his first business – “Dream Institute”

– an educational summer camp for students of the fourth, fifth and sixth grades.

Bezos continued his studies in the computer field at Princeton University, which he graduated with honors in 1986 with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. After graduation, he worked on Wall Street in such firms as Fitel, Bankers Trust and the DE Shaw investment firm, in which he met his wife Mackenzie, and then became the youngest vice president in 1990. Despite a successful career in the financial sector, Bezos decided to take a chance and only deal with the then emerging world of e-commerce. He quit his job in 1994 and moved to Seattle, where he began using the potential of commercial Internet sites that had not been disclosed at the time by opening a bookstore online store.

The pioneer of Internet business

For his company, Bezos opened an office in the garage, in which, along with several employees, he began work on the code for the site. Later they moved to a small house, in which there were three computers with the necessary programs, and there they created the first version of the site.

After 300 friends tested the site, Bezos opened it for everyone on July 16, 1995. The site was named Amazon in honor of the winding South American river.

The success of the company was dizzying. Without starting advertising, the site began selling books in the US, as well as in 45 other countries. Two months later, sales were $ 20,000 a week. The growth of the company was faster than Bezos assumed with his team.

The company’s shares were launched on the market in 1997. Many market analysts doubted that after entering the e-commerce market of well-known companies, the Amazon business will go worse. But two years later, Amazon not only remained in the ranks, but also bypassed all its competitors in the e-commerce market.

Over time, other products appeared in the store, such as audio and video discs in 1998, and later in the range of clothes, electronics, toys and much more. All this became possible thanks to a large partnership with retail suppliers. While in the early nineties many companies offering similar services went bankrupt, Amazon flourished. In 1995, goods were sold for $ 510,000, and in 2011 the goods were sold for more than $ 17 billion.

In 2007, Amazon introduced Kindle, a portable e-book that allowed users to buy, download, read and store custom book collections. In the same year, Bezos decided to tackle a business that was absolutely far from the company Amazon. He announced an investment in “Blue Origin” – a company from Seattle, which deals with technologies for space tourism.

In 2011, Bezos led Amazon and the tablet market, introducing the Kindle Fire. And in September 2012 was introduced Kindle Fire HD, a tablet of the next generation, which was a competitor to iPad tablets. “We did not create the best tablet for a price, we just created the best tablet,” Bezos said.

Purchase “The Washington Post”

Bezos appeared on the headlines of newspapers around the world, when on August 5, 2013, it was announced that they had bought the “The Washington Post Co.” – a company that owned a newspaper and other organizations whose value was $ 250 million. This deal ended the Graham family rule, which lasted four generations.

Donald Graham was president of the company and CEO, and his niece, Catherine Weymouth, was a publisher.

“The Washington Post” would exist further without sale, bringing a certain income in the visible future, but we wanted more than existence. I’m not talking about unequivocal success, but now we have much more chances of success than before selling, “Graham said, commenting on the deal.

On August 5, in his address to the workers, Bezos wrote: “The values ​​of the publication do not require rethinking, and, of course, we will experience changes in the coming years.” This is natural, and would have happened even without a deal. The Internet changes almost every detail of the news business. reduces the time between the publication of news, which leads to a decrease in the usual sources of income, it opens up new forms of competition, some of which do not have, or have an extremely low price for collecting information. We do not have a map of our path, Our main goal will be people, understanding what they think about the government, its leaders, about new restaurants, about scouts, business, charity, governors, sports, and in reverse order.

Recent Projects

In early December 2013, Bezos again got into the headlines when he announced a new, experimental initiative – the Amazon Prime Air program, whose goal is to implement drones to carry out various human actions to deliver goods to customers. According to Bezos, the drones will be able to deliver goods weighing up to 2 kilograms and are able to cover a distance of up to 16 kilometers from the company’s delivery center. He said that the drones will be able to fly to the streets in four to five years.

Quotations

Our main goal will be people, understanding what they think about the government, its leaders, about new restaurants, about scouts, business, charity, governors, sports and in the reverse order I am touched and optimistic about the very idea of ​​something new. “


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Biography of Jeff Bezos