The Full Biography and Net Worth of Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder, and CEO is currently the richest man in the world. An American entrepreneur and investor who took the top spot from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
Related: The Biography and Net Worth of Kim Kardashian
Jeff Bezos hasn’t always been a billionaire titan and didn’t set out to be CEO of an e-commerce juggernaut that he is today but being an idealist and visionary said “I didn’t think I’d regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all”.
Background
Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964, and originally known as Jeffery Preston Jorgensen. His parents Ted Jorgensen and Jacklyn Gise Bezos got divorced when he was 17 months. His mother remarried to Mike Bezos who gave Jeff his surname.
The Tech visionary attended River Oaks Elementary School in Houston, later moved to Miami Palmetto Senior High School and graduated from Princeton University where he obtained his bachelor’s degree in 1986.
Upon graduation, he started working with Taiwanese mobile phone company FITEL, subsequently worked for bankers trust, went on to work with the founder of CNET Halsey Minor to launch a news-by-fax-service company though the venture failed.
He later became the youngest senior vice president at a hedge fund called D.E Shaw. It was with D.E Shaw that he came up with the idea of a digital book that formed the foundation for the rest of his career.
Bezos got married in 1992 to Mckenzie Bezos, they had three boys and adopted their daughter in China. He announced his divorce on January 9, 2019.
Breakthrough
In 1994, Jeff Bezos launched the company Amazon for the sole purpose of selling books online but being mainly focused on long term thinking and customer service, he diversified and welcomed the idea of selling other products after many consultations from his customers. In 1998, he expanded the site to offer music videos and other consumer goods.
Currently, Amazon is the world’s largest trading center and sells different products which are mostly offered by external suppliers who depend on Amazon data management services. In 2007, Amazon introduced an electronic book reader (The Kindle) which is the company’s best-sold product.
Amazon went public in 1997 and looking at the numbers as of 2015, 20% of the revenue came from media and 80% came from other goods.
In 1997, 3 million shares were floated for a rate of $16 per share. Since 1998-1999, there has been split into the shares and as a result, there are now 30 million shares in circulation. The business has been profitable ever since 2000.
Investment
Jeff Bezos literally has a lot of ideas that span a broad range of investments, starting from real estate to the retrieval of rocket ship engines from the ocean floor. He has substantial holdings in real estate both on the east and west coast.
Jeff Bezos acquired $2 million dollar homes in Beverly Hills. He has a property in Washington Post and a 10,000 square foot apartment in the Century Tower in Manhattan. His 165,000 acre Corn Ranch in Texas was bought as a base for his aerospace company Blue Origin.
He invested in media, health sector and communication sector which facilitates connecting with people. He invested in Twitter, Inc. ZocDoc, Inc., TeachStreet, Inc., committed about $50 million to the popular business news website “Business Insider”.
He also invested about $112 million and $35 million respectively in the travel sector. He also financed Airbnb and transportation service Uber. He also provided cloud computing services. he invested in Glassybaby which makes glass-blown holders for votive candles. Finally, his notable investment successes are Workday, Inc., which provides human resource services on the cloud.
Expeditions
In 2000, Jeff Bezos founded a test site for the vertical-landing manned suborbital New Shepard rocket called “Blue Origin”. In 2015, Jeff announced the new orbital launch vehicle under development and in November same year, Blue Origin Sheperd space vehicle made it to space and reached its planned altitude.
In 2017, it successfully landed dummy passengers and extended its human space travel start date. The company also announced the launch of Blue Moon which would be able to put Americans on the moon. And capable of delivering multiple metric tons of payloads to the lunar surface.
The company also announced to launch a club for the future that aims at bringing together educators and leaders to inspire and engage the next generation of dreamers and space entrepreneurs. This club, made its first mission into space to send a postcard and back on the future New Shepard mission.
Net Worth
Currently, Jeff Bezos is worth about $116 billion dollars
