Jeff Bezos - Biograhy
The Washington Post is owned by businessman Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon, founded the space exploration firm Blue Origin, and serves as its CEO. Bezos is also the originator and forerunner of e-commerce. He is among the world's wealthiest due to his prosperous business endeavors. Bezos was drawn to computers at a young age and attended Princeton University to study electrical engineering and computer science. His birth took place in 1964 in New Mexico. After earning his degree, he worked on Wall Street before joining D.E. Shaw in 1990 as its youngest senior vice president.
After working for a prosperous company for four years, Bezos quit to found Amazon.com, one of the biggest success stories on the Internet. Following the purchase of The Washington Post by Bezos in 2013, Amazon acquired Whole Foods in 2017. Amazon announced Bezos' departure as CEO in the third quarter of the year in February 2021.
Education and the Early Years
Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen, mother, and Ted Jorgensen, his biological father, welcomed Bezos into the world on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Less than a year was spent in married life for the Jorgensens. Bezos' mother wed Mike Bezos, a Cuban immigrant, again when he was 4.
Bezos earned a computer science and electrical engineering degree with honors from Princeton University in 1986. Bezos was fascinated with how things worked; as a young child, he turned his parent's garage into a laboratory and installed electrical wiring throughout his house. While still a high school student, he established his first business, the Dream Institute, a summer camp that teaches fourth- through sixth-graders.
Finance as a Career
Bezos found employment at several Wall Street firms after graduating from Princeton, including Fitel, Bankers Trust, and investment firm D.E. Shaw. Bezos chose to venture into the fledgling e-commerce sector despite having an extremely lucrative job in finance. To capitalize on the untapped Internet market, he left his job, moved to Seattle, and established an online bookstore in 1994.
Wife and Children
Bezos and MacKenzie Tuttle met while employed by D.E. Shaw, where he served as a senior vice president and as an administrative assistant to help support her writing career. They dated for three months, got engaged, and were married in 1993.
By working on the company's early business strategy and serving as its first accountant, MacKenzie greatly aided in the foundation and expansion of Amazon. She was quiet and a voracious reader, but she publicly endorsed Amazon and her husband. By profession, MacKenzie is a novelist who studied under Toni Morrison while attending Princeton University. Her first book, The Testing of Luther Albright, came out in 2005, and her second book, Traps, came out in 2013.
Bezos' ownership of Amazon was reduced as part of the divorce settlement from 16 to 12 percent, valuing his share at about $110 billion and MacKenzie's at more than $37 billion. She announced that half of MacKenzie's riches would be given to charity. Three children total and a girl they adopted from China make up Bezos and MacKenzie's family.
Personal Life
The National Enquirer published an 11-page exposé detailing Bezos' adulterous relationship with TV anchor Lauren Sanchez right after the media magnate announced his split from MacKenzie in January 2019.
Bezos then started looking into the intentions of The National Enquirer and American Media Inc., the publication's parent firm. The next month, Bezos claimed in a lengthy medium post that AMI had threatened to publish pornographic images if he didn't drop the probe.
Naturally, I don't want my images public, but I also won't partake in their well-known practices of corruption, extortion, political favors, and attacks on other people, Bezos stated. I would rather get up, turn this log over, and look inside to see what creeps out.
Bezos speculated in the same piece that there might be a connection between AMI's operations and the Saudi Arabian government. She and Bezos appeared in front of the public for the first time at Wimbledon in July of that year.
Amazon.Com's Founder and CEO
After inviting 300 friends to beta test it, Bezos launched Amazon.com on July 16, 1995, taking its name after the raging South American river. In the months before the firm was founded, a small group of employees started working on software with Bezos in his garage; eventually, they moved their operations into a two-bedroom house with three Sun Microstation.
In the early 1990s, when many .coms failed, Amazon prospered, with annual revenues rising from $510,000 in 1995 to over $17 billion in 2011. The media mogul addressed Amazon Prime's 100 million paying customers in his 2018 annual shareholder letter. Amazon became the second firm to ever reach that milestone in September 2018, just a few weeks after Apple, when its valuation surpassed $1 trillion.
On Prime Day in July 2019, employees demonstrated against the company's challenging working conditions and hectic environment. Along with Amazon Instant Video, Amazon Studios 2006 saw the launch of Amazon.com's video-on-demand service. Before changing its name to Amazon Instant Video, Amazon Unbox was known on TiVo.
Bezos launched various original programs in 2013 with the launch of Amazon Studios. Transparent and Mozart in the Jungle, two critically regarded films, helped the industry have a successful year.
The Seattle Times stated in 2018 that Amazon had scaled back its consumer retail division to concentrate on expanding markets like digital entertainment and Alexa, Amazon's virtual personal assistant.
E-Reader Kindle
A portable digital book reader called the Kindle was revealed by Amazon in 2007 and allows users to choose, buy, download, read, and store their chosen books.
Bezos introduced Amazon into the tablet market with the Kindle Fire, which debuted in 2011. The company's new tablet, the Kindle Fire HD, developed to compete with Apple's iPad, was presented by him in September of that same year. "We didn't make the best tablet available to make the most money. We created the best tablet that money can buy, "Bezos reportedly added via ABC News.
Drones by Amazon
Early in December 2013, Bezos made headlines by revealing "Amazon Prime Air," a ground-breaking initiative by Amazon that employs drones to deliver products to customers. He asserted that within a 10-mile radius of the company's distribution hub, these drones would be able to transport up to five pounds worth of merchandise.