Although the crash was viewed as a setback, news outlets noted how far the company went from its founding-to-date in advancing spaceflight. Two people I always would read about were Thomas Edison and Walt Disney. You end up wanting to do more of it and more of it and more of it. Weve got thousands of investors counting on us. Imagine a world where some incredibly artificially intelligent computer could actually do a better job than the invisible hand of allocating resources, and were to say, There shouldnt be this many chickens, there should be this many chickens, just a few more or a few less. ", and "Why are you ruining my life?". [80] While preparing to introduce the bill, Sanders opined: "Instead of attempting to explore Mars or go to the moon, how about Jeff Bezos pays his workers a living wage? You know, I missed that whole thing, and I dont have the kind of relationship with my son that I wished I had, and so on and so on. That summer, therapid rise in thevalue of Amazon shares boosted thevalue of thefoundersstakeby over $1 billionin a single day. When the test site was up and running, Jeff asked 300 friends and acquaintances to test it. "[163] During the 1990s and early 2000s at Amazon, he was characterized as trying to quantify all aspects of running the company, often listing employees on spreadsheets and basing executive decisions on data. Yes, Jeff Bezos does have a degree and from a very prestigious university. Its just that the level of visibility is so much higher. [83] However, Sanders countered that the companies targeted by his proposal have placed an increased focus on part-time workers to escape benefit obligations. Here's how the e-commerce giant got its name", "Jeff Bezos convinced 22 investors to back his new company Amazon in 1994. [101], In 2015, Bezos announced that a new orbital launch vehicle was under development and would make its first flight in the late-2010s. [288][289] Saudi Arabia has denied the claim. Jeff Bezos: Very rarely. It certainly matters online, where word of mouth is so very, very powerful. [250], In March 2003, Bezos was a passenger in a helicopter that crashed in West Texas while surveying land to buy for Blue Origin; the other 3 occupants in the helicopter were pilot Charles "Cheater" Bella, Amazon lawyer Elizabeth Korrell, and local rancher Ty Holland. Then I wanted to be an astronaut. Its great. On July 1, Bloomberg announced that Amazon stock set a record high at . It was too embarrassing. Id get to UPS and I would sort of bang on the glass door that was closed. From then on, I started working at the intersection of computers and finance, and stayed on Wall Street for a long time, ultimately worked for a company that did this thing called quantitative hedge fund trading. And, I think thats very good. "[280] Despite Bezos's support for an open borders policy towards immigrants, Amazon has actively marketed facial recognition software to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Amazon now boasts a host of diversified subsidiaries, including AmazonLocal and LivingSocial. At a certain age the basic things about people are largely set. Bezos: $1,681,840 annually. I remember, just to show you how stupid I can be my only defense is that it was late. [305][306][307] Later that year, in November, Bezos announced $791M of donations to established, well-known groups, with $100M each going to Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, World Resources Institute and World Wildlife Fund, and the remainder going to 11 other groups. In fact, I wrote the first draft on the car trip from the East Coast to the West Coast. [111] He launched nine days after Richard Branson launched onboard the Virgin Galactic Unity 22 mission. She . Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle reached space in 2015 and afterwards successfully landed back on Earth; he flew into space on Blue Origin NS-16 in 2021. I only got to go through school once so I dont know, but I have a feeling I was lucky. What do you think enabled you to see what you saw and to act on it? He was succeeded as CEO by Andy Jassy. [43] He first worked at Fitel, a fintech telecommunications start-up, where he was tasked with building a network for international trade. [79] This followed revelations by the non-profit group New Food Economy which found that one third of Amazon workers in Arizona, and one tenth of Amazon workers in Pennsylvania and Ohio, relied on food stamps. Despite this interview question, Jezz Bezos' SAT score is undisclosed but we do know that he graduated as valedictorian from high school and had a 4.2 GPA in college. [64] On August 4, 2016, Bezos sold another million of his shares for $756.7million. The company would be called Amazon, for the seemingly endless South American river with its numberless branches. [109] In July 2018, it was announced that Bezos had priced commercial spaceflight tickets from $200,000 to $300,000 per person. Its highly unusual, and that started me about thinking, What kind of business plan might make sense in the context of that growth?. But Ill add one other thing to what I said earlier. And, even if it does work, according to some metric, financial success, or whatever it might be, I suspect it leaves you ultimately unsatisfied. Will I regret missing the beginning of the Internet? [296][297] A year later in June, he tweeted that he would announce two philanthropic foci by the end of summer 2018. [95], After its founding, Blue Origin maintained a low profile until 2006 when it purchased a large tract of land in West Texas for a launch and test facility. On October 10, 2017, he made an estimated $6.24billion in 5 minutes, slightly less than the annual gross domestic product of Kyrgyzstan. I think part of it is if you have a facility with that thing, of course its satisfying to do it and so in a way thats self-reinforcing. [18], Ted Jorgensen drank and struggled financially. [11][311][312] In November 2021, Bezos pledged to donate $2 billion towards restructuring food systems and nature conservation at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference. I think in large part because I never expected to have the means to be a philanthropist, but I think that if you win a lottery of this kind of size, that one of the things that, over time, you have an obligation to do, is to think about the ways that that wealth can be used in a highly leveraged way. We Have 4 Guesses", "Jeff Bezos to fund schools where 'child will be the customer' with new charity", "Jeff Bezos to Create $2 Billion Fund for Homeless, Preschools", "Jeff Bezos Unveils Multibillion-Dollar Plans For Charitable Giving", "Jeff Bezos donates $33million to scholarship fund for 'dreamers', "Backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, Breakthrough Energy Ventures places first bets on power storage", "Jeff Bezos donates $10million to organization that helps veterans run for office", "Amazon founder Jeff Bezos commits $10bn to fight climate change", "Jeff Bezos: World's richest man pledges $10bn to fight climate change", "Bezos Earth Fund announces first grants totaling $791M of his $10B pledge to help planet", "Bezos Earth Fund gives nearly $800 million to climate groups in first round of grants", "Jeff Bezos names first recipients of his $10 billion Earth Fund for combating climate change", "Twitter boss pledges $1bn for coronavirus relief", "Why Jeff Bezos's $100 million donation to food banks won't satisfy his critics", "Jeff Bezos Pledges $2B for Nature Conservation as World Leaders Address Deforestation, Emissions", Jeff Bezos's tuition-free preschool is expanding to new locations in Texas and Florida. [57] In 2002, Bezos led Amazon to launch Amazon Web Services, which compiled data from weather channels and website traffic. Maybe for some people it would be. Jeff Bezos was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen in Albuquerque, N.M., on Jan. 12, 1964. When Bezos was in high school and college, he had his heart set on becoming a theoretical physicist. We have so many customers who treat us so well, and we have the right kind of culture that obsesses over the customer. My wife is working on a novel, and thats about as opposite as you could get in some ways, because when youre working on a novel you are really counting on yourself. in electrical engineering and computer science; he was also a member of Phi Beta Kappa. [52] In addition, he regarded "Amazon," the name of the world's largest river as fitting for what he hoped would become the world's largest online bookstore. Jeff Bezos: In a strange way, no. So, what you do with those early investment dollars if you have $300,000 and then you have a million dollars what you do with those early precious capital resources is you go about systematically trying to eliminate risk. Because remember. [48][53][54] He warned many early investors that there was a 70% chance that Amazon would fail or go bankrupt. Bezos rose quickly at Shaw, becoming a senior vice president, and was looking forward to a bright career in finance when he made a discovery that changed his life and the course of business history. In all, he graduated with a 4.0 GPA. He incorporated the company. And, if you couldnt be Captain Kirk, then it started to separate. Yet Amazon flowed on like its mighty namesake, still expanding, but also showing profits, while other promising start-ups faded from the scene. I think people should carefully reread the first part of the Declaration of Independence, because I think sometimes we as a society start to get confused and think that we have a right to happiness, but if you read the Declaration of Independence, it talks about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Nobody has a right to happiness. Many classics can be downloaded free of charge; all new titles were initially priced at $9.99. It would mean sacrificing a secure position in New York, but he and his wife, Mackenzie, decided to make the leap. The family later moved to Miami, Florida, during Bezos High School days. [115] The sale closed on October 1, 2013, and Nash Holdings took control. When he married Jeffreys mother, the family moved to Houston, where Mike Bezos became an engineer for Exxon. "[81] He later said: "Bezos could play a profound role. He was an Immigrant who came into the U.S. from Cuba in 1968. At D. E. Shaw, a firm specializing in the application of computer science to the stock market, Bezos was hired as much for his overall talent as for any particular assignment. [103] He has repeatedly called for increased inter-space energy and industrial manufacturing to decrease the negative costs associated with business-related pollution. [112], On August 5, 2013, Bezos announced his purchase of The Washington Post for $250million in cash,[113] at the suggestion of his friend, Don Graham. "Even when he was in high school, all the teachers who. I mean, I had two parents who loved me incredibly. If you do bad things, if you go murder somebody, that would be bad and that would be an act of commission that you would regret. "[91], In September 2000, Bezos founded Blue Origin, a human spaceflight startup. We still have a tremendous amount of hard work ahead of us, but we have all the assets in place now. The letter demanded "Fair wages; fair benefits for retirement, family leave and health care; and a fair amount of job security. They would always take pity on me and sort of open up and let us ship things late. [55] Although Amazon was originally an online bookstore, Bezos had always planned to expand to other products. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was a smart and enterprising kid, as Brad Stone writes in his 2013 book "The Everything Store.". The vision of Jeff Bezos had prevailed, and the world of commerce had changed forever. When the Internets stock market bubble burst, Amazon re-structured, and while other dot.com start-ups evaporated, Amazon was posting profits. You know, if you look over long periods of time, look over hundreds of years, and look at the average sort of life cycle of a new technology, what you find is that its getting compressed and compressed and compressed, so the rate of change is getting faster and faster. When I was 15, and they were 10 and 9, I had no time for them whatsoever. There are so many things that can go wrong. . Our garage was basically science fair central, and my mom is a saint, because she would drive me to Radio Shack multiple times a day to the point where she would finally say, Okay. [291] In 2013, he pledged $500,000 to Worldreader, a non-profit founded by a former Amazon employee. [146] Bezos has been characterized as a notoriously opportunistic CEO who operates with little concern for obstacles and externalities. Its more what were used to. [150][151] His physical appearance increased the public's perception of him as a symbolically dominant figure in business and in popular culture, wherein he has been parodied as an enterprising supervillain. [316], "Bezos" redirects here. At that point theres a little bit more pressure, because if you fail you have nobody to blame but yourself. ", "Are you lazy or just incompetent? I was drawn to that more and more and that turned out to be a great thing. [149] His physical transformation has been compared to the transformation of Amazon; he is often referred to as the metonym of the company. There are a lot of people who are very smart, very hardworking, very few ever have the planetary alignment that leads to a tiny little company growing into something substantial. My grandfather did sort of all of his own veterinary care on the cattle. [277] In November 2019, when the contract was awarded to Microsoft instead, Amazon filed a lawsuit with allegations that the bidding process was biased. [109] He announced that New Shepard would begin transporting humans into sub-orbital space by November 2018. [71], In March 2018, Bezos dispatched Amit Agarwal, Amazon's global senior vice president, to India with $5.5billion to localize operations throughout the company's supply chain routes. The Amazon CEO Keeps His Beliefs to Himself", "What we know, and don't know, about Jeff Bezos' religious beliefs", "Amazon Chief Survives Helicopter Crash in Texas", "Amazon founder Jeff Bezos reveals Star Trek Beyond alien cameo", "Jeff Bezos, long known for guarding his privacy, faces his most public and personal crisis", "Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and wife MacKenzie to divorce after 25 years of marriage", "Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos are getting divorced after 25 years of marriage", "What Jeff Bezos' intimate-message breach teaches us about digital security", "Jeff Bezos' girlfriend Lauren Sanchez greeted him when he returned from his spaceflight. Jeffrey P. Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My back hurts, this is killing my knees on this hard cement floor, and this person said, Yeah, I know what you mean. And I said, You know what we need? My brilliant insight. [11] He further expanded his residential holdings in February 2022, purchasing a $16.13-million-dollar apartment at a 24-story boutique condominium, located across from Madison Square Park in the Flatiron neighbourhood, where he already owns all the units on the top floors. Forensic analysis of Bezos's mobile phone conducted by advisory firm FTI Consulting, concluded it "highly probable" that the hack was achieved using a malicious file hidden in a video sent in a WhatsApp message to Bezos from the personal account of the crown prince on May 1, 2018. A guy named Shel Kaphan, who built all of our early systems. Jeff Bezos: Well, I had what I considered to be an idyllic childhood. [22] Gise, her husband and her son left the area and asked Jorgensen to discontinue contact, to which he agreed. These were angel investors. [52] He accepted an estimated $300,000 from his parents as investment in Amazon. Since I was a little kid I have always been interested. I was a good student. [136][137] Journalist Mark O'Connell criticized Bezos's relentless customer focus as "very small" in terms of impact on humanity as a whole,[138] a sentiment technologist Tim O'Reilly agreed with. [165] Bezos does not schedule early morning meetings and enforces a two-pizza rulea preference that meetings are small enough for two pizzas to feed everyone in the boardroom. At a certain point in time the company has a much bigger influence over its future outcome, and it needs a lot less luck, and instead it needs the hard work. [49] Prior to settling on Seattle, Bezos had investigated setting up his company at an Indian reservation near San Francisco in order to avoid paying taxes. [292], In September 2018, Business Insider reported that Bezos was the only one of the top five billionaires in the world who had not signed the Giving Pledge, an initiative created by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett that encourages wealthy people to give away a majority of their wealth. Its a very difficult thing. Jeff Bezos: I was constantly booby-trapping the house with various kinds of alarms and some of them were not just audible sounds, but actually like physical booby-traps. And I found I mean this was a very small library, smaller than the room that were sitting in now but it had an extensive science fiction collection because it just so happened one of the residents of this 3,000-person town had been a science fiction fan, and donated their whole collection. The code worked seamlessly across different computer platforms. When Jeffrey Preston Bezos graduated from Miami Palmetto Senior High in 1982, he had big plans to change the world. [51] Bezos used the $54million raised during the company's 1997 equity offering to finance aggressive acquisition of smaller competitors. He is now focusing more of his energy on his aerospace initiative Blue Origin. [204] However, just months later in October 2016, his wealth increased by $16.2billion to $66.5billion, unofficially ranking him the third-richest person in the world, behind Warren Buffett. [56] In response to critical reports from Fortune and Barron's, Bezos maintained that the growth of the Internet would overtake competition from larger book retailers such as Borders and Barnes & Noble. Our timing was good, our choice of product categories books was a very good choice. Jeffreys grandfather was a regional director of the Atomic Energy Commission in Albuquerque. [308][309][310] In April 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Bezos donated $100 million to food banks through Feeding America. We were doing our day jobs, which might have been computer programming all the different things that ten people will do in a tiny start-up company. The first centibillionaire on the Forbes Real Time Billionaires Index and the second ever to have eclipsed the feat since Bill Gates in 1999,[8] Bezos was named the "richest man in modern history" after his net worth increased to $150billion in July 2018. He stayed in the finance realm with Bankers Trust, rising to a vice presidency. And then, we learned that the mainframe programmers in some central location somewhere in Houston had already programmed this computer to play Star Trek. Jacklyn was only 17 years old when she gave birth to her son. [140] Throughout the early 2000s, he was perceived to be geeky or nerdy. Bezos once worked in a McDonald's for a short time during his high-school days. So, it really was a decision that I had to make for myself, and the framework I found which made the decision incredibly easy was what I called which only a nerd would call a regret minimization framework. So, I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, Okay, now Im looking back on my life. Jorgensen was a Danish American unicyclist born in Chicago to a family of Baptists. [209] His wealth's rapid growth from 2016 to 2017 sparked a variety of assessments about how much money Bezos earned on a controlled, reduced time scale. [102] Later in November, Blue Origin's New Shepard space vehicle successfully rocketed into space and reached its planned test altitude of 329,839 feet (100.5 kilometers) before executing a vertical landing back at the launch site in West Texas. [256][257][258] Subsequently, National Enquirer revealed that Bezos had an affair with media personality Lauren Snchez; the affair with Sanchez had lasted for months. If I ever get the chance Id like to go investigate the moon and Mars and tool around our solar system a little bit. Day 1 Families Fund grants, the amounts of which vary in monetary terms, will be sent to 40 organizations across the country. Those were sort of my two biographical heroes. [130] They were positively identified as belonging to the Apollo 11 mission's S-1C stage from July 1969. So, stress doesnt come people get stress wrong all the time in my opinion. Bezos was accepted to Princeton University for reasons that are not surprising considering his good grades and impressive academic background. Once you are looking at the odds in a realistic way its very important for entrepreneurs to be realistic and so if you believe on that first day while youre writing the business plan that theres a 70 percent chance that the whole thing will fail, then that kind of relieves the pressure of self-doubt. He then joined D. E. Shaw & Co, a newly created hedge fund with a strong emphasis on mathematical modelling from 1990 until 1994. Things that Disney invented, like Disneyland, the theme parks, they were such big visions that no single individual could ever pull them off, unlike a lot of the things that Edison worked on. [298] Bezos announced in September 2018 that he would commit approximately $2billion to a fund to deal with American homelessness and establish a network of non-profit preschools for low income communities. I have no idea where it came from. The things I got into trouble on were like I lost my library privileges one time which was really inconvenient for me for laughing too loudly in the library. I think what you do is think about the great expanse of time ahead of you and try to make sure that youre planning for that in a way thats going to leave you ultimately satisfied. From the beginning, Bezos sought to increase market share as quickly as possible, at the expense of profits. [59][failed verification] In November 2007, Bezos launched the Amazon Kindle. And, certainly I always had a facility with computers. [70] On July 27, 2017, Bezos momentarily became the world's wealthiest person over Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates when his estimated net worth increased to just over $90billion. It was a very different era, but back in 1995 it was very difficult to raise money.