Jeff Bezos

Here is another paper that I have come across that I think all of you will enjoy. Who knows, maybe you'll learn an interesting fact. Enjoy!

Jeff Bezos is a man who can take a crib down at the age of three, becoming senior Vice President at 28, to starting a multi-million dollar company out of his own garage. He became one of the world’s wealthiest people at the early age of thirty three. And by 1997, he was worth a value of 178 million dollars. Since then his value has increased as well as his company which is now one of the biggest online store.

Jeff was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His mother, Jackie Gise divorced his father soon after Jeff’s birth. She married Mike Bezos in 1968 and Mike adopted Jeff soon after. Jeff’s two half siblings, Christina and Mark were born in 1970 and 1971. The family lived in Houston Texas while Mike worked as a petroleum engineer for Exxon. Later on they moved to Miami. At the early age of 10, Jeff’s family members noticed how smart Jeff was. Jeff spent time with educational games and toys, and built things such as amateur radios and an infinity Cube. He was able to turn an electric alarm into a security system to keep his siblings out of his room. Like every child at his age, he was interested in football. Although his parents thought that his team players would squash him, he was maid captain of the defensive team.

After the move to Florida, Jeff enrolled to Miami Palmetto Senior High School. During that time he attended the Student Science Training Program at University of Florida. That program helped Jeff receive the Silver Knight award. He also won several academic awards the previous years. He was elected to be president of his class his senior year, and then was named valedictorian of his class. After graduation he went off to Princeton University, first planning on getting his physics degree, then changed to computer science. By the time he graduated in 1986, he had been elected to the national honor society Phi Beta Kappa. His overall GPA was 3.9.

During his senior year, Jeff met recruiters from different well known companies. Jeff declined offers from those big companies, and instead talked with handler for international financial business called FITEL. He was the eleventh employee at FITEL and was manager of administration and development. Eight months later, he was promoted to associate director of technology and business development. He was able to improve the computer protocols of the company, eventually saving some 30 percent of its previous cost of communications.

After Jeff realized that FITEL was not exceeding his expectations, he moved to Global Fiduciary Services as assistant vice president. He headed a six-person department and designed programs that enabled the bank’s clients to check the status of their investments at any time, which was an innovation at the time. In 1990, the board of directors elected Jeff as vice president, the youngest in the bank’s history.

After meeting with headhunters about finding a new job that was not related to finance, who met David Shaw from D.E. Shaw & Co. The firm programmed computers to make decisions on when to buy or sell stocks. Jeff liked the company and began working there on December 1990 as a vice president. Two years later, he became the company’s youngest senior vice president at the early age of 28. That was also the same year when he met his future wife, Mackenzie. By the end of 1993, the Shaw firm asked Jeff to explore new internet business opportunities.

While Jeff was researching about this growing thing called the internet, he was becoming interested in the thought of e-commerce, and the thought that Shaw could be the first mover in that direction. Jeff thought of what things that could be sold well over the internet and thought that books would be a top seller. He soon discovered that no book seller dominated the book industry, nor were books being sold at great numbers.

He then realized that a book catalog on the internet could hold millions of titles, while a bookstore’s supply would be limited. Jeff researched and discovered that books were the best product to sell over the internet. Jeff took the idea to the Shaw firm, but was turned down. He left to pursue his idea and headed west.

In Seattle, Jeff began to pursue his idea. He turned his garage space into a work place using a flush door, angle irons, and 4 X 4-inch posts as a desk, which would eventually become the symbol of the company, and used in all of the offices. He named his site Amazon.com, resembling the Amazon River, calling it earth’s biggest selection. He hired very smart people to become employees. Eventually they had enough employees and online customers that they moved to a two story building in the city.

By late 1996, Jeff let Amazon.com go public, selling stocks at $18 a share and 3 million shares available. Jeff owned another 9 million shares, making him worth 177.8 million dollars. Later on, Amazon.com branched out to selling music CDs, video, to eventually anything on the web and could be found anywhere in the world bringing in 1.4 billion dollars in 1999, and making Amazon.com worth 32 billion dollars. At 35, Jeff was named the Person of the Year by Time Magazine. He continued to make Amazon.com grow with different ideas.

In 2007, Jeff announced that Amazon would be creating a device known as the Kindle which is an electronic device to read books. It used “E Ink” to give it a print-like appearance. Jeff was awarded an honorary doctorate in Science and Technology from Carnegie Mellon University in 2008. Also in 2008, he was selected to be one of America’s best leaders by U.S News and World Report. Today, Jeff and Mackenzie live north of Seattle.