Jeffrey P. Bezos was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to a young teenage mother. By the time Jeffrey was 4 years old, his mother had been divorced and was remarried to Miquel (Mike) Bezos, a Cuban who immigrated to the United States when he was 15 years old. Mike Bezos became Jeffrey’s stepfather and the family moved to Houston, Texas. As a young boy he spent most summers working and helping his grandparents run their 25,000 acre ranch.
Jeffrey was always mechanically inclined and interested in science. At a very early age, he actually took apart his entire crib with a screwdriver. Later on, he turned his parent’s garage into a scientific laboratory. When he was a teen, his family moved to Miami, Florida where he became infatuated with computers. In high school, Jeffrey was the valedictorian of his class and later graduated from Princeton University, summa cum laude, Phi Betta Kappa, with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. Jeff landed a job on Wall Street after graduation in the computer science field. He helped to build networks in order to conduct international trade. Jeff later rose to the position of vice president in finance at Bankers Trust and senior vice president at D.E. Shaw, a firm that provided computer application services to the stock market. In the spring of 1994 Jeff discovered a phenomenal percentage increase, 2,300%, in Internet usage. He studied the top 20 mail order businesses and decided that the sale of books, which currently no mail order company sold, could efficiently be run over the Internet. He immediately dove into learning whatever he could about the book business. Jeff Bezos left his lucrative position in New York and moved to Seattle where he could utilize the resources of Ingram, a book wholesaler. Jeff set up his test site in a 2 bedroom house. Approximately one year later from the time he headed for Seattle, Jeff Bezos officially launched his company which he called Amazon, named for the continuous South American River with its infinite tributaries. Within the first 30 days, Amazon had sold books in all 50 states and 45 different countries, and by September sales reached $20,000 a week.
And so, the birth and rise of Amazon.com began. Jeff Bezos’ goal for Amazon.com was for it to evolve from being the “Earth’s biggest bookstore to the Earth’s biggest anything store.” He introduced the sale of many new items over the years and sacrificed profit in order to increase the market share more quickly. He focused or obsessed on customer service and transformed Amazon to be the “world’s most customer-centric company.” With the introduction of the Kindle in 2007 and the Kindle Fire just last month, he not only runs the world’s largest online store, but controls 95% of the electronic book sales, and is a viable competitor of Apple in the field of technology.
Jeff Bezos has changed our lives not only by the way we shop, but by the way we read, and now are able to interact with the world through Web 2.0.
Academy of Achievement
