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An American citizen once dreamt of becoming the world’s richest and hoorah, now he is!
This American entrepreneur and e-commerce pioneer, the creator of Amazon, who is also the founder of Blue Origin, a company that aims to make space travel affordable to ordinary people is Jeff Bezos. He always has his customer in mind, no matter what he is working on. Bezos is extraordinarily ambitious, genius and unstoppable in seeking possibilities of modern technology beyond the imaginable.
We know Jeff Bezos as the founder of the biggest e-commerce website in the world, but do we know who really is? Bezos, on his younger years, would spend his summer working enormously on laying pipes, fixing windmills, vaccinating cattles and other farm works at the ranch. Even on his teenage years, he always had this businessman in him, he started his first business at school he called The Dream Institute, an educational summer camp for fourth, fifth and sixth graders. Since then, he has already shown prowess and excellence in managing a business.
Later then, Jeff married MacKenzie Bezos in 1993. Bezos rose quickly through the ranks, and in 1990 became the youngest senior vice president in Bankers Trust’s history. However, Bezos quit D.E. Shaw in 1994 and moved to Seattle to tap into the potentials of the internet market by opening an online bookstore. This was the moment, Amazon made history. He made a list of possible products that he could sell via the Internet, including CDs, software, and hardware. He spent lots of time laying out a business plan on his laptop and calling up possible investors. Jeff Bezos managed to raise $1 million from his family and friends, enough to set up his business in the garage of his Seattle home.
Bezos initially called his company as “Cadabra” way back July, 1994 but eventually, Bezos decided to call it Amazon after looking through the words that start with A in the dictionary. Bezos liked the resonance between one of the planet’s longest rivers and largest bookstore. Jeff and MacKenzie set everything up in their two-bedroom house, with extension cords running down to the garage, and three Sun micro stations on tables that Jeff made from $60 doors. Ironically, staff meetings would take place at the local Barnes & Noble bookstore. When everything was ready, Jeff and MacKenzie hurled up 300 people to try the test site when it was up and running, and the code worked seamlessly on different computer platforms.
On Amazon’s first month, it abruptly exploded selling books in all 50 states and 45 foreign countries. After then, Bezos was determined on taking the company public so as to solidify customer trust but would also outcompete other bookstores who would soon begin setting up websites of their own, Bezos thought.
Barnes & Noble were the biggest competition. They possess the legacy of establishing ‘the book superstore and in 1996, their sales estimated to $2 billion while Amazon was lagging behind with $16 million that same year.
But not all days are showered with abundant rains. Bezos’s also had defeats but as he calls them “uplifting”. Bezos saw the defeats as crucial steps along the way, and first in the series of critical experiments that would expand Amazon to third-party sellers. This one time, he purchased a complete skeleton of an Ice Age cave bear for $40,000 and displayed it in the lobby of Amazon’s then-new headquarters at the Pacific Medical Center building with a sign that reads “PLEASE DON’T FEED THE BEAR.” The most prominent user of these auction projects was, in fact, Bezos himself.
Amazon took another leap towards innovation in technology. Flipping back to the first page from which the company started, Bezos sought to alter the way people acquire books and now all necessities for people’s convenience.
In the past 2 years, Bezos has been declared as the world’s richest person with a networth value estimated to $153.72 Billion surpassing the 22-year record holder Bill Gates with an estimated networth of $102.1 Billion.
How is rich, “rich” for Bezos? Well, he’s 20% richer than the British monarchy and Bezos’ networth is greater than the GDP of Iceland, Afghanistan and Costa Rica – combined.
According to him, "We take risks all the time, we talk about failure." He added, "We need big failures in order to move the needle. If we don't, we're not swinging enough. You really should be swinging hard, and you will fail, but that's okay.”
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Who knows? Maybe sometime in the future, you can be the next Jeff Bezos. Build a business website with iRepublic now and we will see what we can do.