Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder and CEO of Amazon, is one of the most famous advocates of using SAT scores in the hiring process. Im a lottery winner of a certain kind, and I suspect if you were to survey lottery winners you would find that the core things about them dont really change because they won the lottery. ", "Jeff Bezos Buys David Geffen's Los Angeles Mansion for a Record $165 Million", "Amazon founder Jeff Bezos buys 'most expensive home' in Los Angeles", "Jeff Bezos Drops $16 Million on Another Manhattan Pad to Create a 'Vertical' Dream Home", "Rotterdam Is Dismantling a Historic Bridge for Jeff Bezos's Superyacht", "Expecting the Unexpected From Jeff Bezos", "Washington Post' May Find Conflicts in Amazon Coverage", "More than 400 Washington Post staffers wrote an open letter to Jeff Bezos calling out his 'shocking' pay practices", "More Than 400 Washington Post Staffers Wrote an Open Letter to Jeff Bezos Calling Out His 'Shocking' Pay Practices", "Quoted: She Said, He Said MacKenzie Bezos Vs. [30][31] The family moved to Miami, Florida, where Jeff attended Miami Palmetto High School. Undergraduate students with a 3.0 or higher GPA were eligible to join this fraternity. In 2007, Amazon introduced a handheld electronic reading device the Kindle. And I found I mean this was a very small library, smaller than the room that were sitting in now but it had an extensive science fiction collection because it just so happened one of the residents of this 3,000-person town had been a science fiction fan, and donated their whole collection. And, certainly I always had a facility with computers. Was Jeff Bezos a good student? They would always take pity on me and sort of open up and let us ship things late. My back hurts, this is killing my knees on this hard cement floor, and this person said, Yeah, I know what you mean. And I said, You know what we need? My brilliant insight. [125][126], Bezos also supports philanthropic efforts through direct donations and non-profit projects funded by Bezos Expeditions. [86], In February 2021, Bezos announced that in the third quarter of 2021 he would step down from his role as CEO of Amazon to become the Executive Chairman of the Amazon Board. Jeff Bezos: Pretty well. He was succeeded as CEO by Andy Jassy. [103] He has repeatedly called for increased inter-space energy and industrial manufacturing to decrease the negative costs associated with business-related pollution. Jeff Bezos: I went to my boss and said to him, You know, Im going to go do this crazy thing and Im going to start this company selling books online. This was something that I had already been talking to him about in a sort of more general context, but then he said, Lets go on a walk. And, we went on a two-hour walk in Central Park in New York City, and the conclusion of that was this: he said, You know, this actually sounds like a really good idea to me, but it sounds like it would be a better idea for somebody who didnt already have a good job. He convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. [208] When the 2017 list was issued, Bezos's net worth was registered at $72.8billion, adding $27.6billion from the previous year. A lot of people and Im just not one of them believe that you should live for the now. [292], In September 2018, Business Insider reported that Bezos was the only one of the top five billionaires in the world who had not signed the Giving Pledge, an initiative created by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett that encourages wealthy people to give away a majority of their wealth. We tried to get a lot of the little housekeeping details done even before we arrived in Seattle. $4,608 daily. [76] During July 2018, a number of members of the U.S. Congress called on Bezos to detail the applications of Amazon's face recognition software, Rekognition. Jeff Bezos: Thats for sure. I remember in fourth grade we had this wonderful contest which was the people in the class, whoever there was some prize I cant even remember what it was whoever could read the most Newbery Award winners in a year and I read through I didnt end up winning. In addition to. Its a point of pride. I would drive these things to UPS so we could get the last one, and we would wait till the last second. A $70 million portion of the donation will support the renovation of the National Air and Space Museum and $130 million will launch a new education center at the museum. My calculus teacher in high school, Mr. Bohr, he had a big influence on me, Ms. Del Champs, who taught chemistry in high school, Ms. Ruehl, who taught physics. It will always be different. [149] His physical transformation has been compared to the transformation of Amazon; he is often referred to as the metonym of the company. I was probably unnaturally on the side of not getting in trouble. This is the way it works for me. [159][160], Day 1: start upDay 2: stasisDay 3: irrelevanceDay 4: "excruciating, painful decline"Day 5: death, Bezos has stated "it is always Day 1" to describe his growth mindset. What drew you to computer science? The success of Amazon has allowed Bezos to explore his lifelong interest in space travel. So, with a lot of hard work we raised that million dollars from about 20 different angel investors who invested about $50,000 each, and that was the original money that really funded Amazon.com. Who Will Win? [205] After sporadic jumps in Amazon's share price, in July 2017 he briefly unseated Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates as the wealthiest person in the world. [28] His relative lack of philanthropy compared to other billionaires has drawn a negative response from the public since 2016. To me, that would be incredibly stressful, because the amount of self-discipline required to have the follow through to do that, even though nobody will say a single negative word if you just give up, thats hard if you ask me. The first centibillionaire on the Forbes Real Time Billionaires Index and the second ever to have eclipsed the feat since Bill Gates in 1999,[8] Bezos was named the "richest man in modern history" after his net worth increased to $150billion in July 2018. In all, he graduated with a 4.0 GPA. You know, I think I read like 30 Newbery Award winners that year, but somebody else read more. [255], In January 2019, Bezos and his wife Mackenzie released a joint statement which revealed that they would be getting divorced after 25 years together. You know, if you make a customer unhappy they wont tell five friends, theyll tell 5,000 friends. You literally dialed a regular phone and picked up the handset and put it in this little cradle. One day that spring, Jeffrey Bezos observed that Internet usage was increasing by 2,300 percent a year. I always got along well with them and theyre such extraordinary tools. Fortune magazine named Bezos its 2012 Businessperson of the Year.. [204] However, just months later in October 2016, his wealth increased by $16.2billion to $66.5billion, unofficially ranking him the third-richest person in the world, behind Warren Buffett. Jeff Bezos: I think one thing I find very motivating and I think this is probably a very common form of motivation or cause of motivation is, I love people counting on me, and so, you know, today its so easy to be motivated, because we have millions of customers counting on us at Amazon.com. [268] Bezos donated $100,000 towards a movement against a Washington state income tax in 2010 for "top earners". [315], On November 22, 2022, Jeff Bezos awarded $123 million to organizations that are engaged in relocating homeless families to permanent housing. Those were sort of my two biographical heroes. In September 2022, he was ranked second on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans with a net worth of $151 billion. Some researchers have found that SAT scores can predict a student's income and . He worked on Wall Street in a variety of related fields from 1986 to early 1994. [290], Bezos donated to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center several times between 2009 and 2017. His wealth surpassed $100billion for the first time on November 24, 2017, and he was formally designated the wealthiest person in the world by Forbes on March 6, 2018, with a net worth of $112billion. We had so many orders that we werent ready for, that we had no real organization in our distribution center at all. [201][202] A year later, Bezos entered the top ten when he increased his net worth to a total of $50.3billion. Bezos was very much influenced by his grandfather and considered him his role model. How do you deal with stress, with pressure, with setbacks, with disappointments? One of our ten employees was six-two; he went around like this the whole time. [266], According to public campaign finance records, Bezos supported the electoral campaigns of Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, two Democratic U.S. senators from Washington. Jeff Bezos Biological Father Ted Jorgensen. [121][122] He also invested in Unity Biotechnology, a life-extension research firm hoping to slow or stop the process of aging. Nobody is going to care, so you set about doing the simple things first. I never wanted to be Bones. [39] To push Amazon forward, Bezos developed the mantra "Get Big Fast", establishing the company's need to scale its operations to produce market dominance. [51] He favored diverting Amazon profits back into the company in lieu of allocating it amongst shareholders in the form of dividends. Ranchers and anybody I think who works in rural areas they learn how to be very self-reliant, and whether theyre farmers, whatever it is theyre doing, they have to rely on themselves for a lot of things. His net worth continued to grow, and in July 2018 was estimated by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index to be over $150 billion, roughly $55 billion greater than that of anyone else on Earth. That is actually something I should have mentioned. Jeff Bezos: I think there are a couple of things. [218] During March 9, Bezos earned $230,000 every 60 seconds. On July 14, 2021, the Smithsonian Institution announced it would receive a $200 million donation from Jeff Bezos the largest gift to the Smithsonian since the Institutions founding gift from James Smithson in 1846. I think in large part because I never expected to have the means to be a philanthropist, but I think that if you win a lottery of this kind of size, that one of the things that, over time, you have an obligation to do, is to think about the ways that that wealth can be used in a highly leveraged way. Then Bezos called his bluff", "Why Amazon's collaboration with the CIA is so ominous and vulnerable", "DoD's $10B cloud contract comes under protest 11 days after final RFP", "Microsoft wins Pentagon's $10bn cloud computing contract", "Amazon suing Pentagon over $10B cloud contract, alleging 'bias', "Pentagon cancels $10 billion JEDI cloud contract that Amazon and Microsoft were fighting over", "Amazon Pushes ICE to Buy Its Face Recognition Surveillance Tech", "Amazon's growing spending on Seattle politics includes a spate of donations from Jeff Bezos' 'S Team', "Jeff Bezos donates $100M to the Obama Foundation in honor of Congressman John Lewis", "Jeff Bezos donates to Obama Foundation in honor of John Lewis", "Saudi crown prince meets Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in Seattle", "Saudi Arabia 'hacked Amazon boss's phone', says investigator", "Jeff Bezos hack: Amazon boss's phone 'hacked by Saudi crown prince', "Jeff Bezos hack: Saudi Arabia calls claim 'absurd', "Fred Hutch receives $35million donation, largest ever, from Bezos family", "Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and family donate $20M to Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center", "Jeff Bezos is the richest man in modern history here's how he spends on philanthropy", "Unanswered questions about Jeff Bezos' new $2billion philanthropic fund", "Jeff Bezos just gave $1million to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press", "Jeff Bezos wants to give more money to charity. What was Steve Jobs GPA? [164] Journalist Walt Mossberg dubbed the idea that someone who cannot tolerate criticism or critique shouldn't do anything new or interesting "The Bezos Principle". Paul Souders/Getty Images According to CNBC, Bezos, then Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen, was barely 17 years old and a junior in high school when she gave birth to her son in 1964. [212] He is considered the first registered centi-billionaire (not adjusted for inflation). The family later moved to Miami, Florida, during Bezos High School days. Born in Albuquerque and raised in Houston and Miami, Bezos graduated from Princeton University in 1986. [275] A 2018, $10billion contract known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) project, this time with the Pentagon, was allegedly written up in a way that favors Amazon. I knew that that would haunt me every day, and so, when I thought about it that way, it was an incredibly easy decision. You know, if you look over long periods of time, look over hundreds of years, and look at the average sort of life cycle of a new technology, what you find is that its getting compressed and compressed and compressed, so the rate of change is getting faster and faster. Answer: We don't know his GPA. [116] In March 2014, Bezos made his first significant change at The Washington Post and lifted the online paywall for subscribers of a number of U.S. local newspapers in Texas, Hawaii, and Minnesota. So that was good luck. But, there was a stack of manuals and me and a couple of other kids stayed after class and learned how to program this thing, and that worked well for maybe about a week. Its kind of an incredible tool that weve built here in the 20th Century. Our timing was good, our choice of product categories books was a very good choice. [209] His wealth's rapid growth from 2016 to 2017 sparked a variety of assessments about how much money Bezos earned on a controlled, reduced time scale. We need knee pads! He has also supported Democrats U.S. representative John Conyers, as well as Patrick Leahy and Republican Spencer Abraham, U.S. senators serving on committees dealing with Internet-related issues. [68] On February 1, 2018, Amazon reported its highest ever profit with quarterly earnings of $2billion. [139] His business practices projected a public image of prudence and parsimony with his own wealth and that of Amazon. Bezos once worked in a McDonald's for a short time during his high-school days. The place where people come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online. Amazon moved into music CDs, videos, toys, electronics and more. This is great. This percentage increase ascended him to the 43rd spot on the ranking from 68th. Here I was, giving myself a 30 percent chance. When I was 15, and they were 10 and 9, I had no time for them whatsoever. After graduation, Jeff Bezos found employment on Wall Street, where computer science was increasingly in demand to study market trends. Getty. [305][306][307] Later that year, in November, Bezos announced $791M of donations to established, well-known groups, with $100M each going to Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, World Resources Institute and World Wildlife Fund, and the remainder going to 11 other groups. Alumnus of the Phi Beta Kappa organization at Princeton, Bezos was a Phi Beta Kappa member. [24] Jeff attended River Oaks Elementary School in Houston from fourth to sixth grade. There are a lot of people who are very smart, very hardworking, very few ever have the planetary alignment that leads to a tiny little company growing into something substantial. I took a deep breath as he stood up and uncapped a pen . What does the American Dream mean to you? [95], After its founding, Blue Origin maintained a low profile until 2006 when it purchased a large tract of land in West Texas for a launch and test facility. Jeff Bezos was convinced that this global network, primarily the domain of academics and government scientists, could become a vibrant new venue for commerce, with the right product and the right plan. [61] In 2013, Bezos secured a $600-million contract with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on behalf of Amazon Web Services. Id get to UPS and I would sort of bang on the glass door that was closed. [9] In August 2020, according to Forbes, he had a net worth exceeding $200billion. [64] On August 4, 2016, Bezos sold another million of his shares for $756.7million. I think this is something about which theres a lot of controversy. People are always very curious about that. Fortunately, there are a lot of different people motivated by a lot of different things. What did you set out to do? I was a good student. And, a lot of these discoveries tend to have two uses. I think it was a great experience. Their returns? With e-book sales increasing by 200 percent a year, Bezos predicted that e-books would overtake paperbacks and become the companys bestselling format within a year. The company would be called Amazon, for the seemingly endless South American river with its numberless branches. ", "Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Hits Record $151 Billion After Strong Amazon 'Prime Day', "Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150 Billion", "Jeff Bezos Is Now the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150 Billion", "Jeff Bezos becomes the richest person in modern history amid Amazon Prime Day kickoff", "Is Jeff Bezos Really the Richest of Them All? Im going to go do this crazy thing. [69] Due to the growth of Alibaba in China, Bezos has often expressed interest in expanding Amazon into India. ", "Amazon is celebrating its 25th birthday. [298] Bezos announced in September 2018 that he would commit approximately $2billion to a fund to deal with American homelessness and establish a network of non-profit preschools for low income communities.
