Story of Amazon.com – Jeff Bezos
We are going to tell you about the success story of the most successful and biggest e-commerce store on internet, Amazon. It would be so rare and strange if you don’t know about Amazon. Many of you also have used it for buying something. As this big online store sell everything from a small mobile cover to a big furniture. The story of Amazon is also a very inspiring story and if you want to step in a startup and wants to start a business then you must go through it. So, first for all, Amazon is started by an American entrepreneur, Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos is the founder and CEO – chief executive officer of Amazon.com, and not surprisingly, he is the one of the richest man in the world. So let’s explore his journey to success.
Early life of Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos was born on 12 January, 1964 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. When Bezos was 4 years old his mother re-married to a Cuban immigrant Mike Bezos. Since childhood, Bezos showed an interest and love for computers. During high school, he started a Dream Institute, an educational summer camp for fourth, fifth and sixth grade students. He moved to Miami with his family as a teenager. Bezos studied computer science and electrical engineering and graduated from Princeton University in 1986. After graduation, he founded work at several firms on Wall Street.
Launching Amazon
His career in finance was going good, but by following his dreams and his deterministic aim to start a startup, Bezos made a risky move into the world of e-commerce. He quit his job in 1994 and went to Seattle to start an online bookstore. He was aware of the untapped potential of internet market. He said this about how the idea came to him –
“The wake up call was finding this startling statistic that web usage in the spring of 1994 was growing at 2,300 percent a year. You know, things just don’t grow that fast. It’s highly unusual, and that started me about thinking, “What kind of business plan might make sense in the context of that growth?”
He made a list of ‘top 20’ products that he could sell on internet that will be profitable most. He decided on books because of their low cost and universal demand. He set up his office in his garage where with a few employees, he began developing his software. They expanded and equipped with three Sun Microstations and developed their site, a online book store. For testing the site with he invited 300 friends. On 16 July, 1995 he opened Amazon.com, named after the popular South American river.
On seeing the picture below can you imagine that this man is going to be the richest man in
The initial success of the company was beyond the expectation of Bezos and his start-up team. With no huge promotion, Amazon sold books across the United States and in 45 foreign countries within 30 days. Only in two months, their sales reached $20,000.
Fundings and making Money for Amazon.com
The first funding as Jeff Bezos told, came from his parents who gave him a large fraction of their life savings and they didn’t even know “what is the internet?”. In 1995 Bezos raises an $8 million round of funding from Kleiner Perkins. In 1997 Amazon went public at $18 per share. Amazon continued focus on long-term growth, with net profit near $0 or below and revenue rising, they continued to plow their revenue back into growth. There was doubt on Amazon’s success because traditional retailers had launched their own e-commerce site. But two years later, this start-up outpaced competitors and became an e-commerce leader.
Jeff Bezos diversified Amazon with the sale of CDs and videos in 1998 and after that clothes, toys and more through retail
In 2006, Amazon.com launched its video on demand service, Amazon Instant Video. In 2007, the company released the Kindle, a handheld digital book reader. In 2013, a new initiative was launched, called “Amazon Prime Air”. In this initiative company used drones for delivery services. It made fascinating headlines in December 2013. In July 2017, Bezos briefly surpassed Microsoft founder Bill Gates and became the rischest person in the world, before dropping back to No. 2. Again he reclaimed the top position in October and in January 2018. Bloomberg stated his net worth of $105.1 billion, making Jeff Bezos the richest person in history.
So this is the story of one of the biggest online store, Amazon, which started his journey as a small start-up in garage and later ruled the world. So stay connected for reading more success stories and for getting motivation and inspiration, you just have to register for that with us. At last, these are the words from Jeff Bezos for the new emerging start-ups –
We
are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details…. We don’t give up on things
easily. Our third-party seller business is an example of that. It took us three
tries to get the third-party seller business to work. We didn’t give up.”
“If you’re not stubborn, you’ll give up on experiments too soon. And if you’re not flexible, you’ll pound your head against the wall and you won’t see a different solution to a problem you’re trying to solve.”
