Jeff Bezos
Founder, Amazon
Biography
Jeffrey Preston Bezos is an American businessman, and the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce and cloud computing company. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and Forbes, he was the world's wealthiest person from 2017 to 2021, and in 2026 his net worth was approximately US$284 billion.
Career Timeline
Bezos was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Jacklyn (née Gise) (1946–2025) and Ted Jorgensen (1944–2015).
Jacklyn left her husband to live with her parents, filing for divorce in June 1965 when Jeff was 17 months old.
He was high school valedictorian, a National Merit Scholar, and a Silver Knight Award winner in 1982.
He graduated from Princeton University in 1986 with a degree in engineering.
In 1992, while working for D.
In spring 1994, Bezos read that web usage was growing at a rate of 2,300% a year and eventually decided to establish an online bookstore.
Bezos first became a millionaire in 1997 after raising $54 million (equivalent to $110,000,000 in 2025) through Amazon's initial public offering (IPO).
In 1998, Bezos diversified into the online sale of music and video, and by the end of the year he had expanded the company's product offerings to include a variety of other consumer goods.
Notable Quotes
"We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient. If you replace ‘customer’ with ‘reader,’ that approach, that point of view, can be successful at The Post, too.."
"Jeffrey Bezos, Washington Post’s next owner, aims for a new ‘golden era’ at the newspaper. September 2013"
"That kind of divine discontent comes from observing customers and noticing that things can always be better."