Jeff Bezos Biography

Quick Facts on Jeff Bezos

Born on: 12 January 1964

Age: 57

Birthplace: Albuquerque in New Mexico

Zodiac Sign: Capricorn

Education: Princeton University

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Jeff Bezos founded the e-commerce website of Amazon.com in the year 1994. He envisioned and started this multi-billion dollars worth e-commerce business with very few employees working on its software development in his garage. From delivering books in his car to making it to the #1 Forbes richest American, Jeff Bezos has set one of the finest examples of ‘self-made’. Being one of the most successful and richest entrepreneurs dominating the globe, he founded the aerospace organization, Blue Origin, and also owns The Washington Post. 

Jeff Bezos age is 57 years and he has set one of the top success stories with his indomitable entrepreneurial skills and philanthropist ventures. In the year 1990, he was the youngest Senior V.P. at D.E. Shaw investment firm. Jeff Bezos upped his game with entrepreneurship with his online books store Amazon.com. He had quit his job as Senior Vice President and ventured into entrepreneurship in 1994. Later on, he acquired The Washington Post in 2013. He has now turned Amazon.com into an e-commerce giant. Amazon.com has also acquired Whole Foods, in 2017. 

Here’s a Jeff Bezos biography that covers the significant details of Jeff Bezos story. From this biography, you will get a closer look at Jeff Bezos life story and several notable events from Jeff Bezos success story.

Jeff Bezos Early Life 

Jeff Bezos Family and Childhood 

Bezos’s full name is Jeff Preston Bezos. Jeff Bezos birthday is on 12 January 1964, and he was born in Albuquerque in New Mexico. His parents separated when he was barely a year old. Jackie Gise, Bezos’ mother, got re-married after three years of their divorce. His step-father Michael Bezos was a native of Cuba; however, he had fled from there when he was 15 years old. Michael grew up at a Catholic Mission. From learning English to working for multiple odd jobs so as to pay for his university education, Michael had done it all. He completed his engineering at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. He had set an example of making relentless attempts to achieve one’s ambition, for young Jeff. 

Jeff had drawn a lot of his inspiration from his step-father in his childhood. Jeff had two younger siblings, his brother Mark, and his sister, Christina. They moved to Texas when Michael started working for the Exxon Corporation. Michael’s job locations had primarily paved the way for Jeff Bezos education, hence, his schooling was done initially in Texas and then in Florida. By birth Jeff Bezos' country is Mexico, however, he mostly resides in the United States of America.

Jeff Bezos: A Curious Mind

The successful entrepreneur Jeff Bezos age is 57 years now, however, he had an inclination towards experimenting and exploring since his childhood days. He had a curious mind even when he was a toddler. He dismantled his crib using a screwdriver. His siblings, Mark and Christina, were always fascinated with his toys and they used to raid his room to play. To get an alert, young Jeff had devised an alarm to the door of his bedroom, which buzzed when anyone entered his room. 

Jeff had made a reflecting cube with mirrors, to imitate an Infinity Cube, when he was just 12 years old. He wanted to purchase an infinity cube worth 20 dollars but he did not have the money to buy it. Hence he bought small mirrors and the other required parts and devised his own reflecting cube at home. The infinity cube has the mirrors arranged in such a manner that facilitates endless reflections. Jeff enjoyed experimenting so much that he had a room full of his self-made devices. His reflecting cube is among his wonderful inventions and discoveries from his childhood. There was a time when his parents had to ask him to move all his half-done devices and models to the garage to clear the clutter from his room. Over the years, he turned the garage at his home into his very own electronics laboratory. 

Jeff Bezos Education

Jeff Bezos education qualification tells an amazing story of his brilliant mind. Having done his early education in Texas, he attended high school in Florida. He used to take a keen interest in science projects and spent most of his time designing amateur robots, electronic kits, and various new electronic assortments. His family had moved to Florida for his step-father’s job, and there Jeff went to the Palmetto High School, at Miami. His performance at high school was highly commendable and in his senior year, he was elected as the valedictorian and Class President. While attending high school, Jeff never ceased to carry out the science experiments in his very own garage laboratory and came up with his own inventions at school.

Jeff Bezos has done a double major in electrical and computer science engineering, from the prestigious Princeton University. He had initially enrolled in the Physics program at the university, however, later, he switched to the engineering double majors. Jeff had graduated in 1986. He was adept at designing computer software and graduated with the highest honours from Princeton University. He had also earned the Phi Beta Kappa membership at the national honour society in electrical engineering and had set a benchmark in the computer science subject. 

Wife and Children

Jeff Bezos tied the knot with Mackenzie Tuttle in 1993. They both used to work at D. E. Shaw and Co. and had dated for about a few months before getting married. They have three sons and one daughter. They adopted their daughter from China. Also, they both had studied at Princeton University and Mackenzie played an integral role in the success of Amazon.com. They had been married for nearly 25 long years till 2019 when they got divorced. Jeff Bezos’s stake went down from 16% to 12% after his divorce. Mackenzie was the first accountant of Amazon.com and she had helped lay down the business plan for Amazon.com as well. She states that she wants to donate half of her wealth, for the least, to charity. Jeff Bezos is said to have been involved in another relationship now.

Jeff Bezos Work and Career

After graduating, Jeff had received several job offers from renowned organizations, however, he preferred to join a comparatively newer company Fitel that was into the fiber optics industry. Jeff worked to design a computer network for the international finance vertical of Fitel. Two years later, he switched to another job at the Banker’s Trust, based in New York City. He developed systems for the management of investment funds for the organization. In 1990, he joined D. E. Shaw and Co.’s Wall Street investment firm, in the role of computer specialist. Thereafter, climbing up the corporate ladder, he became the Vice-President at D. E. Shaw and Co., in 1992, and their Senior Vice President in 1994. At 28, he was the youngest ever Senior Vice President at Shaw. Having tasted success quite early Jeff Bezos had the mettle to start it from scratch and dream bigger.   

What inspired Jeff Bezos?

Jeff had taken inspiration from several people in his life. His step-father was his first source of inspiration in his childhood. He was inspired by Stephen Hawking, Thomas Edison, and Walt Disney. He was a huge fan of Star Trek and as a child wanted to become an astronaut or a cowboy. He named his pet after a character in Star Trek: The Next Generation. 

The inventor Thomas Edison and astrophysicist Stephen Hawking inspired him a lot. He was highly fascinated by how Disney devised animatronics and electronics in Disney World, Florida. He was inspired by the fact that Disney could bring into life what he envisioned, even though people thought it couldn’t work. Jeff Bezos had achieved something in a very similar path as Disney, where people had no clue how his plan was going to work out, but his conviction in his vision never let him stop. He got along with the appropriate bunch of people and turned his vision into a multimillion-dollar reality. To top it all, Jeff’s Amazon.com had turned into reality in a shorter time than that of Disney. 

Jeff Bezos as the Founder of Amazon.com 

Jeff Bezos is the owner of Amazon company. He conceived the idea of an online book store while he still worked at D. E. Shaw and Co. He left his highly lucrative job at Shaw’s in 1994 and took the plunge into e-commerce. He came across an article in the newspaper, in which he got to know that ‘www’ or the World Wide Web has been growing at a rate of 2300% a year. He was amazed by the potential of commerce in the World Wide Web and started to plan on the category of business he would begin with for good. He wasn’t much clear about the type of mail-order item that would be a utility or a popular choice for e-commerce. He screened through the work and records of mail-order companies trying to zero down to the most appropriate and popular item. Finally, he made a choice for books from the list of 20 items that he had jotted down. He figured out that the enormous pool of choices that one can get in buying or selling books was quite promising for sales.

Jeff Bezos launched his e-commerce business of Amazon.com as an online bookstore on July 6, 1995. The website is named after a river in South America. Jeff arranged the capital investment with the help of his friends and family for his online bookstore. He began with a small team to develop the software and design the webpage of today’s Amazon.com. They worked in the garage of his suburban apartment, in Seattle, Washington. In the initial days of the business, Jeff travelled by his car to deliver the books at the doorstep of the buyers. Though they had the bare minimum publicity, the sales soared up quite promisingly within a short period of time. Jeff told in his interview for Time, that with the sales being surprisingly promising within the first few days of their business, he knew they were “...onto something much bigger than we ever dared to hope.”

Jeff Bezos Recognitions, Challenges, and Achievements

There were nearly 3.5 million titles available on sale at Amazon.com by 1999 end and it had earned the tag of a multi-million dollar corporation. It had expanded by leaps and bounds, with centers operating in Europe, and having onboarded a lot of other music, and video merchandise. Jeff had a worth of 10.5 billion dollars taking into account his personal fortune only. Time magazine had recognized him as the ‘Person of the Year’ for his enormous success in cybercommerce, in 1999.  

However, Amazon.com was soon involved in lawsuits filed by biggies like Walmart and Barnes & Noble. In 2000, the company lost 1.4 billion dollars. Thereafter, to cope with the losses incurred, the organization began with some cost-cutting strategies and laid off 1300 employees. Devising the cost-cutting strategies worked wonders for the company and by the last quarter of 2001, it achieved its highest-ever revenue worth 5.1 million dollars. 

Jeff Bezos and his ex-wife Mackenzie envisioned a philanthropic venture to help the homeless and low-income families. They have jointly raised the Bezos One Day Fund solely to extend support to the pre-existing non-profit organizations for homeless families and to fund an all-new network of non-profit pre-schools for low-income families. Bezos had stated in an interview that the fund is aimed at launching and operating high-quality, fully-sponsored (with scholarships) Montessori-inspired preschools for the underserved communities. He further added that the funds spent in the early education of children is ought to return gigantic dividends in the coming decades. The first-ever free pre-school backed by the philanthropic Bezos One Day Fund was set to be launched amidst the pandemic on 19 Oct 2020. Also, Jeff Bezos has launched an Earth Fund to combat the climate crisis overshadowing our planet. On 17 February 2021, he declared that his fund will sponsor scientists, NGOs, and any activists who will provide a potential plan to curb the climate crisis. 

Amazon.com is striving to provide a better user experience to its customers. In 2011, it had launched Kindle Fire, thus venturing into the market for electronic tablets, it lets its users have an ever-smooth reading experience. Also, the e-commerce magnate had launched Prime Videos on Amazon.com, thereby expanding the business wing of digital entertainment. 

With achieving a scintillating high in cyber commerce and several other mergers and take-overs, Jeff Bezos lifestyle is all glittery and he has a net worth of 204.3 billion dollars. He has been counted as the richest man in America by Forbes thrice in a row. He has stepped down from the role of CEO and is working as the executive chairman for Amazon.com on 5 July 2021.