“Unconventional” is one adjective to describe the founder and CEO of Amazon.com. As a successful Wall Street-er, he abandoned that promising career to start-up a nonexistent business on the opposite coast. No one thought his plans were sensible. Now, his online merchandising model is world renowned.
In just five years, Jeffrey Bezos [pronounced Bay-zohs] took on some of the biggest well-established companies. Competitors like Barnes & Noble were stunned when Amazon.com demonstrated the Internet’s potential. His drive and imagination revolutionized new patterns of buying habits that we today call E-commerce.
Amazon.com is the first online bookseller to present its products dynamically searchable by author, title, or subject. Peer reviews, sample chapters and occasional author interviews at the site fostered buyers’ acceptance. Bezos’ talent has been to understand and meld the technology, the Internet customers’ motivations and those who finance it.
By the end of 1998, more than 4.5 million people from 160 countries had shopped at Amazon.com, sales topping $500M. “We aren’t interested in anyone’s trade secrets,” says Bezos, “but we are very interested in hiring talented people.”
Amazon’s 1600 loyal employees relate to him as a colleague more than the boss. Bezos does, on occasion, deliver products, sold on Amazon.com, directly to his customers. Where have you ever heard of a billionaire CEO doing that before?
“Work hard, have fun, make history,” has been Jeff Bezos’ motto. Investors are very impressed by his business management style. His virtual store is presently valued at about $45,000M, with a personal net worth estimated at $9,000M.
Bezos has brand loyalty and an impressive ratio of repeat business. Amazon.com is third behind Barnes & Noble and Borders. The company has not reported a surplus in it’s five years, plowing profits into other markets.
Jeff is witty, gregarious and keenly interested in anything that computers can revolutionize. He is obsessively in love with his company and work. He walks with a loping gait and is well known for his booming laugh.
Jeff’s father, Miguel, an Exxon Corp. executive, was a 1960s refugee from Cuba. Mother Jacklyn worked in a bank. Jeff has a younger brother and sister, all very close to one another. Wife MacKenzie packs daily vitamins in each day’s socks for his overnight business trips.
As a youth, Jeff was inspired by his grandfather, a retired Atomic Energy Commission manager. Jeff considered being an astronaut or physicist. At age three, he dismantled his crib with a screwdriver to be more like a bed. He became engrossed in tasks at Montessori preschool. His ambition and intrigue to build things, like his own Infinity Cube, brought him notice and mention in the book “Turning On Bright Minds: A Parent Looks at Gifted Education.”
Bezos graduated valedictorian and class president from Miami’s Palmetto High School then studied electrical engineering and computer science at Princeton. He graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa in 1986.
Bezos worked at the intersection of computer science and finance. He joined FITEL, a high-tech startup company in New York. He lead the development of computer systems at Bankers Trust Company becoming the youngest VP by 1990.
Leaping from skilled geek to money manager, Jeff joined D.E. Shaw & Co. and helped develop a technically sophisticated hedge fund. Bezos managed over $250,000M in assets becoming their youngest senior VP in 1992, staying for four years before giving up a promising future to move west.
Bezos read that the Internet was growing 2300% per year. For him, it was an alarm too loud to ignore. An avid reader (30 titles a year), Bezos would combine love for books and his future enterprise. In Seattle he would find a pool of technical talent to help build his Internet business.
For a full year, he and his team developed the database and Web site to sell books, music and videos over the World Wide Web. Extra cash was nearly zero and company profitability less than that.
Amazon was launched in July 1995 and grew rapidly. By 1998, it went public, and in one year it reached $17,000M. Bezos had seen the future and met it brilliantly.
In only a few years, Amazon had exceeding the net worth of century-old Sears. It is now the flagship online shopping site with one million titles, descriptions and articles. Sales are projected to top $1,920M this year. Many other products and company acquisitions are enveloped almost weekly.
The first of its kind shopper outlet is a phenomenon. Jeff Bezos created a business mechanism that delivers vast quantities of specific information rapidly and efficiently. His lower prices and authoritative selection are broader and deeper than traditional retailers can deliver. Through hard work and investments, many of those original employees are today millionaires.