Jeff Bezos is considered the richest person in the world: he probably owns $ 200 billion. But how did he actually get his fortune?
California – Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After graduating from high school in Miami, he studied electrical engineering and computer science at Princeton University. In 1986 he completed his bachelor’s degree with top marks and initially worked for the Taiwanese mobile communications company FITEL.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos founds his company on Wall Street
Jeff Bezos’ dizzying success is inextricably linked to his Amazon empire. Its origin, however, does not lie in the start-up mecca of California’s Silicon Valley – but on New York’s Wall Street. In 1990 Jeff Bezos worked for the asset manager DE Shaw & Co.
| Surname | Jeff Bezos |
| birthday | January 12, 1964 |
| place of birth | Albuquerque, USA |
| Estimated value | $ 200 billion |
This company revolutionized Wall Street by introducing data analytics. It was Jeff Bezos’ task to look for new business areas for the company – especially in the then still new Internet. He and David E. Shaw quickly came up with the idea of setting up an online book store. The reason: books have a particularly large number of different articles. In contrast to the bookseller around the corner, the aim was to offer all books. That was the first big innovation.
Jeff Bezos exempts Amazon customers from VAT
Amazon went online in July 1995. He had previously separated from DE Shaw & Co in order to pursue his idea on his own. He took an estimated $ 300,000 from his parents and invested them in Amazon. The business grew relatively quickly, which is why the idea of selling products other than books soon came up. The next big change was the analysis of customer behavior made possible by the Internet. With the help of this data analysis, Amazon was able to reach new customers very quickly. At the same time, an aggressive strategy was pursued to force the competition out of the market: For 20 years, Amazon made no profits to offer service that the competition could not afford. For example, Amazon exempted its customers from VAT.
| Company name | Amazon |
| legal form | Corporation |
| founding year | 1994 |
| Seat | Seattle, Washington |
| Management (since 3rd quarter 2021) | Andy Jassy |
| Number of employees | 1.298.00 (as of February 2021) |
| sales volume | $ 386 billion |
The next big change was that Amazon no longer just sold its products itself, but opened up as a platform for other sellers. This not only brought an enormous increase in customers to Amazon. The platform received a commission for every product sold. But the real benefit was that Amazon could dictate the rules. The pressure of competition intensified among the providers very quickly. Book publishers in particular suffered.
Jeff Bezos: Amazon Prime is the most successful subscription model in history
The conflict between Amazon and the publishers intensified when Amazon launched the first e-reader. This enabled Amazon to gain the upper hand in pricing with the publishers. The next innovation followed in 2005: the subscription offer Amazon Prime, which not only exempted customers from shipping costs, but also promised delivery within two days, which was still very unusual in the USA at the time.
The fast delivery time at Amazon Prime required an enormous infrastructure. That’s why Amazon built logistics centers all over the United States. Since then, however, Amazon has also been criticized for the sometimes precarious working conditions. For example, employees were monitored in order to optimize logistics with the help of data analysis.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has ambitions in space with Blue Origin
Jeff Bezos has expanded his entrepreneurial activity to other fields as well. The avowed Star Trek fan founded the private space company Blue Origin in 2000. Its headquarters are in Kent (Washington State). The company’s original vision is to develop reusable spacecraft to bring people to the edge of space.
Blue Origin has been bringing paying customers and celebrities to the edge of space since 2021 – including actor William Shatner, aviation pioneer Wally Funk and the daughter of the first American in space, Laura Shepard Churchley. Blue Origin is also working on the Blue Moon lunar lander, but suffered a defeat against SpaceX by Elon Musk in the battle for a NASA contract.
In 2013, Jeff Bezos turned over $ 250 million for the prestigious Washington Post newspaper. On February 2, 2021, Jeff Bezos announced that he would step down from his position as CEO at Amazon in the third quarter of 2021 and instead take over the executive chairmanship of the board of directors. (Joshua Schößler)
