Jeffrey Preston Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on January 12, 1964. He is an American entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Amazon.com. In 2015, he was ranked the fifth richest man in the world, and by 2017, he had reached third place on the Forbes list.
His mother, Jacklyn Gise, was only 17 years old when he was born. Little is known about his biological father. His stepfather, Miguel Bezos, was born in Cuba to a Spanish family. After marrying Jacklyn shortly after Jeff’s birth, Miguel adopted him and gave him his surname.
Later, the family moved to Miami, where Jeff attended Miami Palmetto Senior High School. He went on to study at Princeton University.
Bezos earned a degree in computer science and electrical engineering from Princeton in 1986. He worked for a fiber optics company and later at a Wall Street hedge fund.
His first major project came from a brilliant idea: to offer an online book catalog that compiled publications from various publishers, allowing users to search and order titles from a digital inventory.
This project, which did not yet have the name Amazon, began in the garage of a house he rented with his wife in the city of Bellevue. They bought several servers and started processing all the data themselves.
With more than 200,000 titles available at launch, and offering the novel option to purchase books via email, Amazon quickly became a major success.
Over the years, Amazon evolved into one of the world’s most influential online businesses. Since the first recorded sale on June 16, 1995, Bezos expanded the platform to include CDs, DVDs, toys, clothing, food, and much more.
His visionary business mindset not only revolutionized book sales but also encouraged many people to read more.
In 2014, Bezos was controversially named the “worst boss in the world” by unions at the 3rd Congress of the International Trade Union Confederation.
Today, he is the largest shareholder of Amazon.com, owner of The Washington Post, and founder of the space exploration company Blue Origin.