Jeff Bezos is the founder & chairman of Amazon, the world’s largest e-commerce & cloud-computing company. Jeff Bezos currently owns about 9% of Amazon shares worth $207 billion which makes Bezos the second richest person in the world.
With his unwavering focus & sheer determination, Bezos makes a small garage company into a worldwide giant.
In 2023, 37% of online retail sales will be done on Amazon and the company makes billions of dollars in revenue every year & also contributes to the US economy by giving thousands of opportunities to students.
Here is the story about how Jeff Bezos turned Amazon into a $2 trillion company.
Early Life & Career
Jeff Bezos was born & lived in New Mexico, US. From always being a bright student in academics, he is always curious about innovating new things in school.
After getting a degree in electrical engineering & computer science from Princeton University. He got job offers from big companies like Intel & Bell Labs, but he chose to work in a startup Fitel.
In 1990, he joined D.E. Shaw & Co. and soon became senior vice president, handling the investments related to the Internet. At the age of 30, Jeff was earning a six-figure salary.
Realization of Internet Growth
He later realized that the usage of the Web was growing by 2300% a year and he thought that the future would be of the Internet. This sparks him to start his own internet company.
Building Amazon
In 1994, he quit his job at D.E. Shaw & started working on an online bookstore idea where users can buy books from a collection of millions of books.
He raised $1 million from friends & family and moved to Seattle Washington where he established his online books business inside a garage.
With a team of 5 people working on the project like developing the site, establishing networks for books & many more. After almost a year they finally launched their site on the internet.
Bezos initially incorporated the company as Cadabra, Inc. But after changing multiple names, Bezos finally settled on Amazon as the Brand name.
Amazon sold its first book online in July 1995, a science book titled Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies. By 1996, Amazon had made over $15 million in sales and had over 100 employees working in the company.
In 1997, Amazon went public for IPO, its share price started at $18. The company raised $54 million from IPO, making the company valuation of $438 million.
Many big competitors like Barnes & Noble launched their online companies but didn’t compete with Amazon. As Bezos rapidly invests & expands its company business, now the company deals in more products like books, music, toys & games, etc which makes it difficult for other companies to replicate.
Later Amazon introduced various models & products like Amazon Prime which gives special features like 1-day delivery, Amazon Kindle a digital content book, and many more.
Expanding Business & Acquisitions
In 2006, Amazon entered into the cloud computing business by launching AWS services. In 2021, AWS made total sales of over $14.8 billion, accounting for 13% of Amazon’s yearly revenue.
With its steady growth rate, AWS is the leading competitor to Microsoft’s Azure, with more than 32% market control.
In 2017, Amazon acquired food market chain Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. The main objective behind this acquisition is to grab a stronger foothold in the grocery business, giving the company 431 physical stores in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, etc with more than 90,000 employees.
In 2021, it was announced that Amazon would acquire MGM Studios and will be operating alongside Amazon Prime Video.
With more than 4,000 films & 17,000 TV shows will now become a part of Amazon Prime Video streaming services. By this Prime Video gives tough competition to Netflix, HBO Max & other streaming companies.
Many acquisitions are done like Twitch for a billion dollars, to enter in live-streaming platform. Brought Ring for around $839 million for home security appliances, and many more acquisitions to expand company business in every sector and make Amazon a fully diversified company. For more about Amazon businesses, you can see Investopedia article on 6 Companies Owned by Amazon
Taking Risking Bets in New Industries
Bezos is known for his willingness & courage to take risks. Jeff always says “If you are doing business, then have the courage to face challenges”.
In the last two decades, amazon tried various businesses and became successful in most of them but a few businesses taught Jeff life lessons.
Blue Origin, is a private space company founded by Jeff Bezos in 2000. The main goal behind starting the company is to preserve Earth by searching for a suitable Earthlike atmosphere Planet or relocating Industries to space that are harming Earth or finding energy sources in space.
In 2021, Blue Origin sent 6 celebrities including the host of Moring America Michael Strahan, Alan Shephard’s daughter Laura Shephard & other 4 people into space.
In recent years, NASA may also partner with Amazon’s Blue Origin to launch spacecraft & to build a new space station before 2030.
Fire Phone was the biggest failure for Amazon as it gave the company a loss of $170 million, remembering Bezos to stay away from the Mobile Industry.
The major reason behind this failure was that the phone came too Late in the market, at that time 72% of the US Market was using Android, and the remaining used iPhone.
Lessons to Learn From Jeff Bezos
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Customer Centric Approach
Jeff believes that customer satisfaction is the most important aspect of building a business. Always trying to make customer’s lives better by innovating new things.
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It’s Easier to Invent The Future Rather than Predict It
Jeff always believes in innovation, when he started Amazon he was the first to launch an online bookstore which later became the world’s biggest e-commerce company.
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Stronger Believer in Data & Analytics
Jeff always makes decisions after checking data & growth of the company business. A strong believer in Data gives a cutting edge to its competitors in many products.
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