Jeff Bezos: Ceo of Amazon.Com

Jeff Bezos: CEO of Amazon.com

Jeff Bezos is a pioneer of e-commerce and part of a select group of entrepreneurs who managed to survive the dot-com bubble without losing control of their companies. Bezos is an innovator. He isn’t about fitting the mold, he’s about recreating it. Now at the age 49, Bezos is a self-made billionaire with a net worth of 25.2 billion. (Forbes) He is now ranked 19th on the Forbes billionaire list and 12Th in the United States. He is also ranked 27th on the most powerful peoples list. (Forbes) Bezos was able to start up a company, with a seventy percent chance of failing, in a tiny garage and turn it into something extraordinary. No one, including Bezos, could have ever imagined that Amazon would become what it is today.

Jeff was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on January 12, 1964. When Jeff was only a year old his parents relationship ended, leaving Jeff without knowing his natural father. Shortly after, Jeff’s mother married Mike Bezos. Mike immediately accepted Jeff as his own and has been his father ever since. Even at a young age, Jeff was an innovator always trying to change his world. Once, he found a screwdriver and took his crib apart because he felt he was too old to sleep in one. Instead of getting upset with Jeff, his family encouraged his creativity. Jeff’s grandfather once bought him an electronics kit in which he used to make all kinds of things including an alarm that would go off if one of his siblings tried entering his room. When he was twelve, Jeff was fascinated by infinity cubes, but they were too costly for his mother to buy him one. An infinity cube is a set of mirrors and lights that reflect off one another to make you feel like you’re looking into infinity. Jeff decided to buy the parts himself and was able to construct an infinity cube simply by looking at one. Jeff was always constructing something new and eventually his parents banished his experiments and creations to the garage which became a sort of laboratory for him. Jeff’s biggest influences were Thomas Edison and Walt Disney. He didn’t like Walt Disney because of Mickey Mouse like other kids; he admired Disney for his use of electronics for the rides and characters. (King of Amazon)

Jeff wasn’t a mad scientist who spent all his time in the garage. Every summer he would go to his grandfather’s ranch in Texas where he would ride horses, brand cattle, and help with the ranch work. Though it was much different from his life at home, he enjoyed it. “You have to have a lot of patience,” Bezos said, “on a ranch in the middle of nowhere.”(King of Amazon pg13) Jeff wasn’t destined to be a rancher though. His family and friends were sure he would become a scientist. After high school, he decided on Princeton University where he would study physics. This didn’t last long though. Shortly after starting, Jeff became uncomfortable in his classes because he felt