Jeff Bezos

In this success story, we are going to share Jeff Bezos biography, an American entrepreneur
and e-commerce pioneer, the creator of online store Amazon.com. He is also the founder
of Blue Origin, a company that aims to make space travel affordable to ordinary people.
Bezos always has his customer in mind, no matter what he is working on. His number one
priority is making it as available and easily accessible as possible. A hyper-intelligent,
ultra-driven individual, Bezos’s a dual-personality can turn him from a compassionate
person to a rough executive within seconds. An extraordinarily ambitious person, Jeff
Bezos to this day seeks to push the possibilities of modern technology beyond the
imaginable.

Early Life: Jeffrey Preston “Jeff”

Bezos” (pronounced BAY-zoes) was
born on January 12, 1964, in
Albuquerque, New Mexico. His
biological father, Ted Jorgenson, was
one of Albuquerque’s top unicyclists
and part of a local troupe the Unicycle
Wranglers who put on performance at
county fairs and circuses while Jeff was
still a baby. Jeff’s mother, Jacklyn
Bezos, was still in her teens when she
married Ted, and their marriage lasted
for little more than one year. “The
reality, as far as I’m concerned, is that
my Dad is my natural father. The only
time I ever think about it, genuinely, is when a doctor asks me to fill out a form,” Jeff
told Wired in 1999.

Jeff’s stepfather, Mike Bezos, was born in Cuba. He escaped to the United States alone at
the age of 15 and worked at the University of Albuquerque. When he married Jeff’s mother,
the family moved to Houston, Texas where Mike became an engineer for Exxon –
American, an oil and gas company that flourished from the mid-1940s to the 1970s.

Jeff displayed remarkable mechanical talent from an early age, which fits well with his
varied scientific interests. As a toddler, he had managed to dismantle his crib with a
screwdriver and as a teen, he had developed an electric alarm to keep younger siblings out
of his room. Jeff’s parents eventually asked him to move all his stuff to their garage which
he converted into a laboratory for his science projects. Jeff’s ancestors on the mother’s side
were early settlers in Texas and the family owned a large ranch at Cotulla that had been
passed on to them over the generations. Jeff’s grandfather, Lawrence Preston “Pop” Gise,
was a regional director of The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in
Albuquerque and had supervised the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore nuclear labs
before retiring to the family ranch.

Education: Jeff Bezos attended River Oaks Elementary School in Houston from fourth
to sixth grade. He would spend summers at the ranch working on enormously varied tasks
such as laying pipe, fixing windmills, vaccinating cattle, and other farm work. His
grandfather, Lawrence Gise, was a huge role model in his life, with this wide-ranging
knowledge of science and constant presence on the ranch. In a 2010 commencement
speech, Jeff told graduates that his grandfather taught him how “it’s harder to be kind than
clever.”

Bezos started his first business at school. It was called The Dream Institute, and it was an
educational summer camp for fourth, fifth and sixth graders. There were some books that
Bezos required his participants to read. They were: The Lord of the Rings novel by J. R. R.
Tolkien, Dune novel by Frank Herbert, Stranger in a Strange Land novel by Robert A.
Heinlein, The Once and Future King novel by T. H. White, Water ship Down novel by
Richard Adams, Black Beauty novel by Anna Sewell, Gulliver’s Travels book by Jonathan
Swift, David Copperfield novel by Charles Dickens, and Treasure Island novel by Robert
Louis Stevenson, along with the plays Our Town by Thornton Wilder and The
Matchmaker by John B. Keane and Thornton Wilder.
 Jeff Bezos obtained B.S. in Computer Science and B.S. in Electrical Engineering from
Princeton University.

The family eventually moved to Florida and Jeff was transferred to Miami Palmetto Senior
High School where he excelled at his studies and realized his love for computers. He was
even invited to participate in the Student Science Training Program at the University of
Florida, where he won a Silver Knight Award in 1982 and was a National Merit Scholar.
Bezos graduated as the school’s valedictorian, and a National Merit Scholar, securing his
spot at Princeton University. Bezos planned to study physics at Princeton University, but
he soon decided to return to his love of computers. He graduated with two Bachelor of
Science degrees in computer science and electrical engineering from Princeton University.
“Mediocre theoretical physicists make no progress. They spend all their time understanding
other people’s progress,” Bezos told Guardian, commenting on his decision.

Early Career: After graduating, Bezos went to Wall Street where computer science was
increasingly in demand and worked in several firms. The job at Fitel (a startup aiming to
build a network to conduct international trade) had him flying every week between New
York and London.

Bezos stayed in the finance realm with Bankers Trust, where he rose to vice president, and
later the investment firm D.E. Shaw. The company specialized in the application of
computer sciences to the stock market, and Bezos was hired for his overall talent in the
field. At D.E. Shaw, Jeff met his wife MacKenzie, who was also a Princeton graduate. Jeff
married MacKenzie Bezos in 1993. Bezos rose quickly through the ranks, and in 1990
became the youngest senior vice president in the company’s history. It was at D.E. Shaw
where Jeff Bezos first came across a digit that would change his life and the course of
internet history. While surfing the web in search of new ventures for D.E. Shaw, Bezos
found a statistic that the World Wide Web was growing by 2,300 percent a month. Bezos
immediately understood the potential prospects of selling products online. Shaw tried his
best to convince Bezos to stay in his firm on a long walk in Central Park, but Jeff decided
that he would rather try and fail than never try at all.

Amazon.com: Bezos quit D.E. Shaw in 1994 and moved to Seattle to tap into the
potentials of the internet market by opening an online bookstore. He made the decision by
drawing up a list of possible products that he could sell via the Internet, including CDs,
software, and hardware. In the end, books were the obvious choice because of the wide
range of titles in existence. Another advantage of an internet store was a then-recent U.S.
Supreme Court ruling that mail-order catalogs did not have to pay taxes in states where
they did not have a physical presence. In other words – Bezos paid zero tax for the products
he sold via the internet.

Bezos decided that Seattle would be a perfect place for his new business at the time because
of the tremendous pool of hi-tech talent. While his wife MacKenzie drove them from
Texas, he spent the time laying out a business plan on his laptop and calling up possible
investors. Jeff Bezos managed to raise $1 million from his family and friends, enough to
set up his business in the garage of his Seattle home.

Bezos initially incorporated the company as “Cadabra” on July 5, 1994. However, a year
later he considered to change it when his lawyer misheard the word as “cadaver,” but that
was not the worst one. Another alternative was “MakeItSo.com” – a catchphrase from
Captain Picard in Jeff’s beloved Star Trek. It could have also been “aard.com,” which
would help push the company to the front of website listings. Jeff and MacKenzie also
registered the domain names Awake.com, Browse.com, Bookmall.com,
and Relentless.com (the latter one still redirects to Amazon.com). Eventually, Bezos
decided on Amazon.comafter looking through the words that start with A in the dictionary.
Bezos liked the resonance between one of the planet’s longest rivers and largest bookstore.

Jeff Bezos at Amazon Office

Jeff and MacKenzie set everything up in their two-bedroom house, with extension cords
running down to the garage, and three Sun micro stations on tables that Jeff made from $60
doors. Ironically, staff meetings would take place at the local Barnes & Noble bookstore.
When everything was ready, Jeff and MacKenzie hurled up 300 people to try the test site
when it was up and running, and the code worked seamlessly on different computer
platforms. After opening the website on July 16, 1995, they told their 300 beta users to
spread the word around and set up a bell to ring every time Amazon made a sale. The Bell
did not stay there for long as Amazon abruptly exploded selling books in all 50 states and
45 foreign countries within a month. By September 1995, the sales had summed up to
$20,000 a week.

Bezos was determined on taking the company public with an IPO, and began recruiting
large amounts of people. These included a few DESCO employees, executives from
competing company Barnes & Noble, software company Symantec, and two people from
Microsoft – vice president of engineering Joel Spiegel, and David Risher, who would later
become head of retail. With a team of extraordinary people in his senior leadership ranks
(who would formally become known as the J-Team) Bezos was convinced that “If we get
this right, we might be a $1 billion company by 2000.”

Going public would not only solidify customer trust but would also outcompete other
bookstores who would soon begin setting up websites of their own, Bezos thought. Barnes
& Noble were the biggest competition. They possess the legacy of establishing ‘the book
superstore,’ taking little independent bookstores out of business between 1991 and 1997,
and revolutionizing bookselling. In 1996, their sales estimated to $2 billion while Amazon
was lagging behind with $16 million that same year.

Amazon Logo

The Riggio brothers – Leonard Riggio and Steve Riggio – who owned Barnes & Noble,
came to Seattle to have dinner to discuss a business deal with Bezos and Tom Alberg,
founder and managing partner of the venture capital firm Madrona Venture Group, and a
director of Amazon.com. Knowing Leonard Riggio’s character – a tough-as-nails
businessman from the Bronx dressed in an expensive suit with a taste for fine art – the pair
decided on a strategy of caution and flattery. The Riggios came on hard and threatening
and announced that they were planning to open their own website – one that would take
Amazon out of the competition. They offered various collaborations, including setting up
a website together, and licensing Amazon’s technology. Bezos and Alberg said they would
think about it at dinner, but after a phone conversation decided that this collaboration would
not work.

While the Riggios were home setting up their website, Jeff Bezos and Amazon’s first CFO,
Joy Covey (April 25, 1963 – September 18, 2013), traveled around the United States and
Europe to pitch Amazon to potential investors. They had a solid background, with millions
of sales within three years of existing, and an easily accessible single warehouse and
inventory; in contrast with other retailers who had their products spread throughout stores
around the country. They also used a ‘negative operating cycle’ which meant that
customers would pay with their credit cards when the product shipped, but Amazon would
settle its accounts with distributors every few months. Almost every investor asked the two
whether they were going to expand to other categories, and, at the time, Bezos responded
that they settled on books. He wanted to get some investments from an IPO, but he did not
want his rivals to follow in his footsteps, hence withholding lots of valuable data from
investors. Everyone firmly believed that once Barnes & Noble comes in, Amazon is
Amazon.Toast.

On May 12, 1997, three days before the IPO, Barnes & Noble filed the lawsuitagainst
Amazon in federal court for falsely claiming to be “Earth’s Largest Bookstore.” It
happened during the seven-week SEC-mandated “quiet period” meaning that Bezos could
not talk to the press before the IPO. Ironically, the lawsuit only gave Amazon more
attention. The two companies competed fiercely for around a year after Amazon finally
went public. Barnes & Noble boasted a broader catalog while Amazon tried to track down
books from independent dealers and antique shops. Barnes & Noble got a $200 million
investment from German media giant Bertelsmann and also took the company public.
Bezos then swiftly expanded Amazon’s product line, and changed “Earth’s Biggest
Bookstore” to “Books, Music and More” – leaving Barnes & Noble, as one writer put it,
“wrapping its arms around the neck of a phantom.”

The stock traded below its IPO price at first and Bezos worried that the company might
lose a significant portion of its investment. On May 15, 1997, the stock price was set for a
$12-to-$14 range on NASDAQ (AMZN) on the IPO day. Then it increased from $14 to
$16 before the Amazon’s investment bankers settled on the $18 price. Amazon.com raised
$54 million in its IPO and the online bookstore market value reached $438 million.
Amazon put 3 million shares on the block. It was a blockbuster year for Amazon as they
experienced a 900 percent growth in annual revenue. Bezos’s family had each invested $10
thousand dollars from the start as a backup plan – it was a major part of their life savings.
As six percent of owners of Amazon, they officially became multimillionaires by the end
of the decade, and Jeff was named Time’s Person of the Year in 1999.

The Time magazine featured Jeff Bezos as Time’s Person of the Year in 1999.
Jeff Bezos and his engineers created a system 1-Click ordering process to further ease the
use of Amazon.com in the late 90s. The system was determined to preload customers’
credit cards information and shipping address, offering to execute a purchase by simply
pressing one button. On September 28, 1999, a nineteen-page application for Patent No.
5,960,411entitled Method and System for Placing a Purchase Order Via a
Communications Network was approved and the 1-Click system was officially
trademarked to Amazon.com, Inc. Although it received heaps of criticism, some saying
that its approval by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) was just a
sign of lazy bureaucracy, Bezos didn’t mind at all. He was in fact determined to exploit the
status quo for any advantages that would put him on top of his competition. In 1999, after
23 days of obtaining the patent, Amazon.com, Inc. filed a patent infringement lawsuit
against Barnes & Noble and won a preliminary ruling forcing the book giant to add an extra
step to the checkout process on their website. Amazon licensed the patent to Apple Inc. in
2000 for an undisclosed amount, and would use it as a means to try and wipe out their new
competitor – eBay.com – that appeared on the market in mid-1998.

Growth Chart of Amazon

Amazon & eBay: Starting out as a Silicon Valley startup called Auction Web on
September 03, 1995, eBay proved to be a worrisome rival for the reason that it was growing
rapidly, and unlike Amazon, it was profitable. The company made $5.7 million in 1997,
$47.4 million in 1998, rising to a staggering $224.7 million in 1999. The business model
was perfect: eBay took a small commission on each sale, but since the sellers were actual
people auctioning their products to the highest bidder – there was no need for storing
inventories, mailing packages, and warehouses. The website started off with collectibles
and baseball cards, but it was well on its way to becoming the ‘unlimited selection’ store
that Bezos always wanted.

Amazon & ebay logo

Bezos invited eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and CEO Meg Whitman to Seattle in the
summer of 1998, when eBay had just filed to go public (IPO). The two teams of executives,
who would run into each other often in the next ten years, discussed various ways of
working together. Omidyar and Whitman suggested creating links, so that for example if
the product could not be found on eBay.com, the customer would be linked to Amazon.com
and vice-versa. Bezos suggested the possibility of making a significant investment, which
put off the two executives who left thinking that Bezos was offering to buy eBay Inc. for
around $600 million. Although no formal propositions were made, the number was roughly
the market capitalization that eBay was pursuing in its IPO. Omidyar recalls his tour of the
Dawson Street distribution center, being impressed by the automation in the facility, and
startled by workers with tattoos and piercings. Whitman was not impressed, telling
Omidyar “Pierre, get over it. This is horrible. The last thing we’d ever want to do is manage
warehouses like this.” The executives of eBay were extremely ambitious – just like Bezos
at the start – thought they were pioneering a new type of virtual commerce, and it was
pointless to convince them otherwise. They were also put off by Bezos’s famous distinctive
laugh.
After failing to find a middle ground with the executives, Bezos had attempted to secretly
start up his own auction project. The project was stationed on the second floor of Columbia
Center and was called EBS, for “Earth’s Biggest Selection” (or as employees joked, eBay
by spring). Amazon Auctions launched in March 1999 to a slow start. Bezos started putting
lots of energy and money into the project, which included buying a company to broadcast
auctions live on the Web and signing with Sotheby’s Auction House to focus on high-end
products. The whole effort was meaningless. Customers, who were accustomed to
traditional shopping and predictable prices, would find Amazon Auctions through a link
on the Amazon main site – and ended up in a dingy second-hand leftovers market.

Amazon’s Rapid Expansion: The nineties were intense days at the company, but as
Jeff Blackburn, responsible for product development and operations at Amazon, recalls
that they were the most fun and challenging. Bezos’s ‘uplifting’ defeat was linked to the
network effect – where goods or services become increasingly valuable as more people use
them. The Internet was still fresh in the 1990s, and companies were still getting a grasp of
how all these things work. Bezos saw the defeat as a crucial step along the way, and first
in the series of critical experiments that would expand Amazon to third-party sellers. The
shops platform that had evolved from Auctions also failed to gain any momentum, and the
company accepted that the Web’s small traders were inseparable from eBay due to the
network effect. The most prominent user of these auction projects was, in fact, Bezos
himself. This one time, he purchased a complete skeleton of an Ice Age cave bear for
$40,000 and displayed it in the lobby of Amazon’s then-new headquarters at the Pacific
Medical Center building with a sign that reads “PLEASE DON’T FEED THE BEAR.”

Amazon added clothing sales to the product line in October 2002, after partnering up with
hundreds of retailers including Land’s End, Nordstrom, and The Gap. They also organized
a subsidiary entitled Amazon Services which allowed customers to order goods from co-
branded sites such as Borders and Toys ‘R Us. In 2003, Amazon launched A9 – a
commercial search engine focusing on e-commerce sites. Around the same time, they
opened an online sporting goods store, offering around 3,000 different brands. Amazon’s
rapid expansion allowed Bezos to continue experimenting with new product lines and
services. Some of them, like Amazon’s attempt at selling jewelry, didn’t work out. While
others, like Amazon Prime, which offered free two-day shipping within the United States
for an annual fee of $79, proved to be a significant success. In fact, Prime’s success led to
Amazon’s launch in Italy, France, Germany, the UK, Canada, and Japan over the next
decade. In addition to securing the customers’ loyalty, Amazon Prime service further
distanced Amazon from its competitors.

Amazon took another leap towards innovation in technology development by introducing

a series of e-readers The Amazon Kindle in 2007. Flipping back to the first page from
which the company started, Bezos sought to alter the way people acquire books, and the
Kindle series was revolutionary in its purpose. The Kindle is considered primarily
responsible for the establishment of the electronic book market internationally. This
lightweight reading device helped Amazon secure 95 percent of the U.S. market for books
until Apple challenged The Kindle’s supremacy with the introduction of the iPad in 2010.
In response, Bezos cut down the Kindle’s retail price and added new features.

In 2011, Amazon decided to give Apple a run for its money with the introduction of the
Kindle Fire – a tablet computer aimed at directly competing with the iPad. “We haven’t
built the best tablet at a certain price. We have built the best tablet at any price,”
Bezos boasted to ABC News. The Kindle Fire also introduced a ‘Whisper sync’ feature
allowing users with various devices to mark where they stopped in the book, and continue
reading at the same place on another device – further altering the way we read

It is remarkable to consider that Amazon’s sales revenue grew up by 122.56% from $48.08
billion (2011) to $107.01 billion (2015), but the net income growth remains volatile. For
example, Amazon’s net income growth was negative and dropped by $241 million in 2014.
However, in 2015, Amazon’s net income growth was positive and reached $596 million.
But against the backdrop of rapidly growing sales revenue, the net income growth appears
negligible. Bezos plans to initially forego profits for establishing brand-name recognition.
“To be profitable [now] would be a bad decision,” Jeff told PC Week in 1998. “This is a
critical formative time if you believe in investing in the future,” Jeff commented to
 Entrepreneur.com. Bezos has poured
most of Amazon’s revenue into
marketing and promotion and hopes to
be the No. 1 player in the business.

The Amazon’s price per share grew up

from $18.00 (May 15, 1997) to
$549.42 (February 25, 2016).

In 2006, Jeff Bezos launched Amazon

Web Services that includes a broad set
of global compute, storage, database,
analytics, application, and
deployment services. Now they boast
a mass of various subsidiaries,
including a2z, A9.com, Amazon Web
Services, Alexa Internet,

The First Generation Kindle

Audible.com, comiXology, Digital Photography Review, Goodreads, Internet Movie

Database, Junglee.com, Twitch, Zappos (the full list of Amazon’s properties is available
at Quora), which allows business clients to employ Amazon’s online infrastructure
technology. In 2012, the site launched Amazon Studios, a crowdsourcing site like
Kickstarter only focused on the development of feature films and TV
shows. Fortune magazine named Bezos “Businessperson of the Year” in 2012.

Blue Origin: Pioneering e-commerce, reinventing book trade, and becoming one of the
most prominent figures of the internet was only a portion of Bezos’s goals. His long-term
plans have always been grand, and seemingly out of reach – and the success of Amazon
served as a gateway for Jeff to finally realize his wild ambitions. Bezos’s mother keeps a
copy of a speech he made while back in school where he declares his goal of establishing
a fleet of habitable orbiting space stations, turning Earth into one big nature reserve. This
ambition of his was not left abandoned.

In 2004, Bezos founded an aerospace company named Blue Origin, aimed at developing
new technology for spaceflight, with the ultimate goal of establishing “an enduring human
presence in outer space.” The company owns a 26-acre research campus just outside
Seattle, and a private rocket launching facility in West Texas. On November 24, 2015, Blue
Origin made headlines when they successfully managed to send a rocket to suborbital space
and land it safely onto a landing pad after takeoff while they were testing their New Shepard
space vehicle.

New Shepard is a multi-passenger rocket-propelled vehicle designed to establish travel to

suborbital space at competitive prices. The rocket landing has been deemed ‘historic’ as no
other space company has managed to pull off such a feat. The success of this mission means
a significant decrease in the cost of spaceflight and a step closer to establishing an
opportunity for the general public to engage in space travel.

Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard rocket booster successfully lands in West Texas on
November 24, 2015.
Just a bit later, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, had a Twitter smack talk
regarding their rockets. Elon Musk continued the discussion with Jeff Bezos and sent him
a tweet that was meant to describe the difference between orbital and suborbital flights. It
is worth mentioning that both companies, Blue Origin and SpaceX, did an excellent job.
However, orbital and suborbital flights are different types of spaceflights that cannot be
compared, which is better or worse. Soon, one of the Reddit’s users zlsa drew a visual
illustration on SpaceX Falcon 9 vs Blue Origin New Shepard rockets’ trajectory that helped
to clear the difference between those types of spaceflights.

SpaceX Falcon 9 vs Blue Origin New Shepard

The Washington Post: Is a major American daily newspaper published

in Washington, D.C with a emphasis on national politics and the federal government. It has
the largest circulation in the Washington metropolitan area. Its slogan "Democracy Dies in
Darkness" began appearing on its masthead in 2017. Daily broadsheet editions are printed
for the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia.

The newspaper has won 47 Pulitzer Prizes. This includes six separate Pulitzers awarded in
2008, second only to The New York Times' seven awards in 2002 for the highest number
ever awarded to a single newspaper in one year. Post journalists have also received
18 Nieman Fellowships and 368 White House News Photographers Association awards. In
the early 1970s, in the best-known episode in the newspaper's history, reporters Bob
Woodward and Carl Bernstein led the American press' investigation into what became
known as the Watergate scandal. Their reporting in The Washington Post greatly
contributed to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. In years since, the Post's
investigations have led to increased review of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

On August 05, 2013, Bezos was on the news for having entirely purchased The Washington
Post for $250 million in cash. “The Post could have survived under the company’s
ownership,” company’s chairman and chief executive Donald E. Graham says, “but we
wanted to do more than survive. I’m not saying this guarantees success,

but it gives us a much greater chance of success.” Bezos reaffirmed that he did not seek to
alter the values of The Washington Post, but merely to fix its focus on the public. “Our
touchstone will be readers, understanding what they care about – government, local leaders,
restaurant openings, scout troops, businesses, charities, governors, sports – and working
backward from there.” The Graham family – descendants of Eugene Meyer, who acquired
The Post in 1933 – had owned it for four generations. Bezos announced that he was
meaning to maintain the existing management, expressing respect and admiration for the
Graham family.

Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post from the Graham family for $250 million in cash.
Amazon Prime: Amazon Prime is a paid subscription service offered by Amazon that
gives users access to services that would otherwise be unavailable, or cost extra, to the
typical Amazon customer. This includes free two-day delivery, Two-hour delivery for a
fee through Prime Now, streaming music and video, and other benefits. In April 2018,
Amazon reported that Prime had more than 100 million subscribers worldwide. n 2005,
Amazon announced the creation of Amazon Prime, a membership service offering free

Amazon Prime Logo

two-day shipping within the contiguous United States on all eligible purchases for a flat
annual fee of $79 (equivalent to $101 in 2018), and discounted one-day shipping rates.
Amazon launched the program in Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom in 2007; in
France (as "Amazon Premium") in 2008, in Italy in 2011, in Canada in 2013, in India in
July 2016 and in Mexico in March 2017. According to Amazon, there are now Prime
members in 17 countries in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Amazon Prime
membership in Australia, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, India and the United
States also provides Amazon Video, the instant streaming of selected films and TV
programs at no additional cost. In November 2011, it was announced that Prime members
had access to the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, which allows users to borrow up to one
a month of specified popular Kindle e-books. People with an email address at an academic
domain such as. Edu or .ac.uk, typically students, are eligible for Prime Student privileges,
including discounts on Prime membership.

In March 2014, Amazon increased the annual US membership fee for Amazon Prime from
$79 to $99. Shortly after this change, Amazon announced Prime Music, providing
unlimited, ad-free music streaming. In November 2014, Amazon added Prime Photos,
adding unlimited storage of files deemed to be photographs in the users' Amazon Drive.
Amazon began offering free same-day delivery to Prime members in 14 United States
metropolitan areas in May 2015.

In April 2015, Amazon started a trial partnership with Audi and DHL in order to deliver
directly into the trunks of Audi cars, available in the Munich, Germany area to some Audi-
connected car users.

Amazon announced that July 15, 2015, its 20th birthday, would be "Amazon Prime Day",
with deals for prime members similar to those on Black Friday. That month Amazon Prime
announced signed up Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May, formerly of
BBC's Top Gear, to begin working on The Grand Tour, which was released in 2016. On
July 13, 2016, Amazon Prime said customers placed 60 percent more orders worldwide on
"Prime Day"

In December 2015, Amazon stated that "tens of millions" of people were Amazon Prime
members. Amazon Prime added 3 million members during the third week of December
2015. That month Amazon announced the creation of the Streaming Partners Program a
subscription service that provides Amazon Prime subscribers with additional streaming
video services. Among the programming providers involved in the program
are Showtime, Starz. Lifetime Movie Club (containing recent original movie titles
from Lifetime Television and Lifetime Movie Network), Smithsonian Earth, and Qello
Concerts.

Amazon Studios: Is a television and film producer and distributor that is a subsidiary
of Amazon. It specializes in developing television series and distributing and producing
films. It was started in late 2010. Content is distributed through theaters and Prime Video,
Amazon's digital video streaming service, and is a competitor to services
like Netflix and Hulu. Scripts for television and films are submitted online to Amazon and
are read by staff. Amazon aims to review submitted scripts within 90 days (although the
process can last longer). If a project is chosen for development, the writer receives
$10,000. If a developed script is selected for distribution as a full-budget movie, the creator
gets $200,000; if it is selected for distribution as a full-budget series, the creator gets
$55,000 as well as "up to 5 percent of Amazon’s net receipts from toy and t-shirt licensing,
and other royalties and bonuses."

Amazon Studios

In 2008, Amazon expanded into film production, producing the film The Stolen
Child with 20th Century Fox. In July 2015, Amazon announced it had acquired Spike Lee's
new film, Chi-Raq, as its first Amazon Original Movie.

Amazon Studios had received more than 10,000 feature screenplay submissions as of
September 2012 and 2,700 television pilots as of March 2013; 23 films and 26 television
series were in active development as of March 2013. In late 2016, it reorganized its film
division into Prime Movies.

Personality Traits & Leadership Qualities: Bezos is known for his double-
personality that turns him from a kind person into a rough executive inducing fear and
respect in his employees. A hyper-intelligent, ultra-driven individual, he expects everyone
around him to behave likewise. Amazon staff are said to be living in fear of his abrasive
flare-ups, including “Why are you wasting my life?” and “Are you lazy or just
incompetent?” Jeff Bezos seems to have no problem running the company while still
personally reading feedback from customers. “We research each of them because they tell
us something about our processes. It’s an audit that is done for us by our customers. We
treat them as precious sources of information,” senior Amazon vice president Jeff
Wilke explains. When there is a real issue, the consequences can be harsh on the employees
responsible for the issue. There is an official system within Amazon that ranks the
severities of its internal emergencies.

A Sev-5 would be a relatively standard problem that engineers solve all the time while a
Sev-1 is an urgent issue that gets everyone on their toes as it requires an immediate
response. There is another level of severity that has employees sweating just at the sight of
it. Informally dubbed by the employees, the “Sev-B” is anyone’s greatest nightmare at
Amazon. Sev-B means when an employee receives an email directly from Jeff Bezos
containing the notorious question mark. When someone receives it, it basically has an
effect of a ticking time-bomb. They drop everything they’re doing and give full attention
to the issue that the CEO is highlighting. Within a few hours, the employee has to prepare
a formal thorough explanation of how the problem occurred to a team leads who will have
to review the report before sending it to Bezos. It is the company’s way to ensure that the
customer’s voice is always heard inside Amazon.

Bezos always moves faster, makes his employees work harder, and pursues both significant
innovations and small ones. The superb image for Amazon is not just the everything stores,
but ultimately the everything company. The future has many things in store for Amazon.
They still haven’t achieved next-day or even same-day delivery for Prime members and
they are still set to expand their grocery service Amazon Fresh beyond Seattle, Los
Angeles, and San Francisco. Jeff Bezos expects Amazon’s mass expansion to as many
countries as possible. Also, wants their customers to eliminate the need to buy products
from manufacturers, by using 3D printer technologies to manufacture their own and so on.

It is unknown whether Jeff Bezos’s wild ideas and an active imagination are rooted in his
early love for science fiction or it is just his personality trait. Bezos is known for thinking
outside the box, re-shaping the box, or tossing it in the trash altogether. From
revolutionizing the way, we buy and read books, to creating a private spaceflight company
aimed for the people, to launching a plan for the use of drones in package delivery, Bezos
always challenges the norm. He believes that breaking away from the pack and making
these extraordinary decisions is what truly leads to innovation. It is the sole element that
all successful leaders seem to possess. Jeff Bezos will only get bigger, and his innovations
wilder until either he decides to stop, or there is no one left to stop him.

Jeff and his wife Mackenzie Bezos have four children, three sons and one daughter adopted
from China. On January 09, 2019,

Jeff and his wife MacKenzie Bezos at the annual conference at the Sun Valley, Idaho Resort,
July 12, 2013.
Jeff Bezos and his wife Mackenzie announced that after 25 years of marriage they were
getting divorced. Mackenzie gave her ex-husband Jeff her interests in Blue Origin and the
Washington Post, as well as 75 percent of their previously shared Amazon share.Jeff Bezos
life story shows that he achieved all his success thanks to his strong desire to learn new
technologies, hard work and, of course, thanks to his distinctive leadership qualities. We
hope you have enjoyed exploring Jeff Bezos biography and success story of Amazon and
Blue Origin and it has inspired you to new discoveries.