American entrepreneur, founder and CEO of the world’s largest online shopping retailer Amazon.com and the owner of The Washington Post – Jeffrey Preston Bezos is now the wealthiest man of the world with a net worth of $100 billion. He embraced his failures and turned them into his success.
Here is a brief of his fearless journey:
Some of the genius philosophies of Bezos:
- “Every well-intentioned, high-judgment person we asked told us not to do it. We got some good advice, we ignored it, and it was a mistake. But that mistake turned out to be one of the best things that happened to the company.”
- “When the world changes around you and when it changes against you, what used to be a tail wind is now a headwind, you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn’t a strategy.”
Infographic Content:
From 1964 – 1994 (Early Stage / How he started?)
- 1964 – Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico
- At age 5 – Star Trek fan, wanted to become an astronaut
- 1982 – Went to Princeton University
- 1986 – Graduated summa cum laude with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering
- 1987 – Joined a startup
- 1988 – Wanted to start his own company but got a job on Wall Street
- Met his wife, Mackenzie
- 1990 – Became the youngest senior vice president at D.E. Shaw
- Realized the untapped potential of internet
- 1994 – Quit job with the idea of “The Everything Store.”
1995 (The Birth of Amazon)
- Set up an office in his garage, invested $10,000, and developed the software
- Invited 300 friends to beta test the site and launched the online bookstore Amazon.com
- In 2 months – sales reached $20,000 a week, total $510,000 in 1995
From 1997 – 2017 (The Rise of Innovations and Inventions – Achievements and Failures)
- 1997 – Amazon.com went public and became an e-commerce leader in 2 years
- Introduced CDs, videos, clothes, electronics, and more
- 1998 – Purchased Junglee: price comparison search site & spent $170 million. It was disbanded in few months.
- Launched e-reader- Kindle in 2007
- 2007 – Launched Amazon WebPay (similar to PayPal) but closed in Oct 2014
- 2000 – Founded a rocket company Blue Origin
- 2011 – Introduced TestDrive but shut it down in 2015
- Sales crossed $17 billion in 2011
- Broke internet with purchasing The Washington Post for $250 million
- Dec 2013 – Announced to start “Amazon Prime Air” – delivery services using drones
- July 2014 – Launched Fire Phone, had $170 million loss, got criticized and discontinued it soon
- 2015 – Launched Amazon Destinations but shuttered the service in 6 months – “I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.”
- Became the world’s richest person (net worth over $100 billion) surpassing Microsoft founder Bill Gates – July 2017 (Forbes)
- November 2017 – Amazon’s share price increased by more than 2.5%
