Jeff Bezos-Success Story

American entrepreneur and e-commerce pioneer Jeff Bezos is the founder and CEO of Amazon.com and owner of  'The Washington Post', 'Blue Origin' and 'Whole Foods'(recently acquired). He was born on 12th January, 1964, in New Mexico.

Bezos had an early love of computers and studied computer science and electrical engineering at Princeton University. After graduation he worked on Wall Street, and in 1990 he became the youngest senior vice president at the investment firm D.E. Shaw.He was already making a six-figured salary and was destined to rise even further in the company ranks. But he had other plans. Four years later, he quit his lucrative job to open Amazon.com, a virtual bookstore that became one of the biggest success stories. In 2013, Bezos purchased The Washington Post in a $250 million deal.  His successful business ventures have made him one of the richest person in the world.

Early Stage of Amazon.com-

Bezos first got the idea to start an Internet enterprise in 1994. While surfing the internet in search of new ventures for D.E. Shaw & Co. to invest in, he came across the stastic that the World Wide Web usage was growing by 2,300 percent a month. Bezos immediately recognized the expensive possibilities of selling online and began exploring the entrepreneurial possibilities of building an Internet Business.

He drew up a list of twenty potential products he thought might sell well via the internet, including software, CD's and books. After reviewing the list, books were the obvious choice, primaril because of the sheer number of titles in the existence. Bezos realized that while even the largest superstores could stock only a few hundred thousand books, a mere fraction of what is available, a virtual bookstore could offer millions of titles. The die was cast. Bezos passed up a fat bonus, packed his wife, Mackenzie, and their dog Kamala and headed for Seattle.

For Bezos Seattle was an ideal city for his new business. Not only was it home to tremendous pool of high-tech talent, it was also in close proximity to Ingram Book Group's Oregon warehouse. While his wife drove, he pecked out a business plan on laptop and calling prospective investors on a cell phone. With $1 million raised from family and friends, Bezos rented a house in seattle and set up his business in the garage.

For nearly a year, Bezos and a crew of five employees worked out of the garage, learning how to source books and setting up a computer system that would make Amazon.com easy to navigate. A true marketing visionary, in addition to creating a user-friendly interface that would streamline the "needle in a haystack" process that bookstore shopping often entails, Bezos wanted to establish a "virtual community" where visitors could hang out. To achieve this goal, he and his team created a number of innovation programs, including one that would let customers add  their own ook reviews to the site and a feature that recommends books based on a customer's previous purchases.

In July 1995, Amazon.com opened its virtual doors, calling itself "Earth's biggest Book Store", with more than one million titles to choose from.  Fueled by word of mouth, or more accurately, word of e-mail, Amazon.com rocketed off the line like a nitro-burning dragster. Enraptured by the enormous selection of books, the superior customer service and the user-friendly design of the site, Internet users ecstatically plugged Amazon.com on Internet newsgroup and mailing lists.

The orders poured in, and by September 1996, Amazon.com had grown into a company of 100 employees and had racked up more than 3,000 employees and more than $610 million in sales.

Amazon.com's success did not go unnoticed by bookstore giant Barnes & Noble, who quickly put up its own website. To combat Amazon.com's claim that it was the "Earth's Biggest Bookstore", Barnes & Noble embarked on an aggressive market campaign proclaiming that they offered twice as many books as Amazon.com. But it was a strategy doomed to failure. The forward thinking Bezos had already expanded Amazon.com's product line to include CD's and replaced "Earth's Biggest Book Store" with the tagline "Books, Music and More", leaving Barnes & Noble, as one writer put it, "wrapping its fingers around the neck of a phantom".

After his successful venture into the music market, Bezos set his sights on expanding Amazon.com into other markets. Shortly before 1998 Christmas season, Bezos added a temporary gift section to Amazon.com, where customers could purchase toys and games. He also started experimenting with "Shop the web", a program giving Amazon.com a commission for directing its customers other non competing online retailers. In late January 1999, he went after the $150 billion U.S. Pharmacy market, buying a share of drugstore.com, a company that sells everything from breath mints to Viagra online.

Bezos in 2017-

Jeff Bezos was the richest person in the World...for half a day. The Amazon founder's net worth soared to $91 billion Thursday morning, but an afternoon pullback in Amazon stock meant he ended the day at $88.5 billion(and back below Bill Gates).

Bezos empire encompasses not just e-commerce, but also new organizations, robotics companies and coupon sites. Oh, and ever heard of Google, Airbnb or Uber? Bezos is an Investor in companies, too.

Jeff Bezos is now the richest person in the world according to Forbes.

To know more about Amazon.com and Jeff Bezos, you can order the book from the link mentioned below.