THE DISRUPTORS www.ceotodaymagazine.com 26 Early Life: Bezos Before Amazon Jeff Bezos was born in Mexico to teenage parents Jacklyn and Ted Jorgensen. Not long after his birth, Bezos’ parents separated and his mother marriedMiguel Bezos. As he grew up, Bezos developed a sharp interest in computer science, though spent much of his early years working on his maternal grandparents’ ranch in Texas. In the mid-80s, Bezos graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University, with degrees in computer science and electrical engineering, and went on to join startup Fitel after declining job offers from both Intel and Bell Labs. By the age of 30, Bezos was on a six-figure salary, but his realisation that the world of web was then growing at 2300% pushed him to start his own company —Amazon. How Bezos Founded Amazon Once Bezos had realised the expansive possibilities of the web, he created a list of 20 potential products he believed could sell well online. He realised that even the largest bookstores could stock just a few hundred thousand books at one time —only a fraction of the almost infinite number of titles truly available. Books were Bezos’ winner. In 1994, Bezos took his idea to Seattle, home to a huge pool of high-tech talent and within close proximity to Ingram Book Group’s Oregon warehouse. With $1 million raised from friends and family, Bezos rented a house in the city and established his new online book business from his garage. For almost a year, Bezos and a team of five employees worked from the Seattle garage, learning how to source books and creating a computer system that would make Amazon. com easy to navigate. It called itself “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore” with over 1 million titles for customers to choose from. By September 1996, Amazon.com had over 100 employees and had made over $15.7 million in sales. Following Amazon.com’s launch, Barnes & Nobles was quick to launch its own online presence and a marketing campaign claiming it offered twice as many books as Amazon. However, Bezos had already expandedAmazon’s product line and changed the e-commerce’s tagline to “Books, Music and More”. Thanks to its relentless expansion strategy, in 2019, Amazon was believed to control 37% of all online retail sales. And, as of July 2022, Amazon has a market cap of $1.105 trillion, making it the world’s 5th most valuable company by market cap according to companiesmarketcap.com.
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