From Entrepreneur for Profit to Entrepreneur for Passion, Jeff Bezos has been as swift and suave as they come.
Jeff Bezos has now officially announced the news of his stepping down as the CEO of Amazon. The richest person in the world, Jeff Bezos was offered jobs at a few prestigious names like Intel and Bell Labs fresh out of Princeton University. However, he began his career with Fitel, a Fintech startup and moved on to D.E. Shaw, and became the fourth senior Vice president when he was 30. After resigning from D.E. Shaw, Jeff Bezos started a bookstore (Amazon) from the garage of his home in 1994. Twenty-seven years later, Amazon became the most valuable company and the largest eCommerce platform.
Amazon posed a challenge to book store chains when it began selling books online in 1994 and went public three years later. From welcoming third-party sellers, normalizing two-day shipping, and pioneering automated checkout, Jeff Bezos appeared on the Forbes four hundred lists in 1998. Jeff became the first to be worth more than two hundred billion dollars. Not just there to earn, Bezos has donated substantially towards causes like the Earth fund to combat climate change (ten billion dollars) and Day one fund towards homelessness and preschool education (two billion dollars). In his farewell letter, Jeff Bezos has mentioned that he would like to pursue his other passions and humanitarian causes after championing as an entrepreneur. Space has been his preoccupation and, it looks like Blue Origin, his private space company, is where we will find him to spend more time.
An Unparalleled Professional Endeavour
Amazon generated an annual sales of $148 million, which was 2.1 times more than Barnes & Noble. Jeff Bezos then moved on to other categories like offering clothing, toys, office products, CDs, and much more that made Amazon the Earth’s biggest bookstore. Jeff Bezos’s investment portfolio includes real estate, media, tech, travel, charitable funds, and other miscellaneous projects. Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post in 2013. The media company is known to have failed financially owing to the digital media revolution.
An admirer of technology Jeff Bezos has significant stakes in several cloud computing holdings, among which Workday Inc is noteworthy. Jeff Bezos has a few varied investment portfolios that include a few spends on humanitarian causes. Among which donations to nonprofit organizations to provide books to people in third world countries, donating to the reporter’s committee for freedom of the Press, contributions to The Dream US, Breakthrough energy venture, and ‘With Honor’ to name a few. The donations for Philanthropy during 2011 topped $25 million with $10 million to the Museum of History and Industry to the Bezos Center for Innovation and $15 million to the Princeton Neuroscience Institute for the Bezos Center for Neural Circuit Dynamics.
| Jeff Bezos | Biography |
|---|---|
| Age | 57 |
| Years Active | 35 |
| Education | Princeton University |
| Residence | Seattle, Washington |
| Entrepreneurial Portfolio | Amazon Blue Origin |
| Net Worth | US$190.8 Billion |
| Hobby | Deep Sea Rocket Hunting |
| Partner | Lauren Sanchez |
What Inspires Jeff Bezos?
Books have been the biggest influencers in Bezos life. Books inspired the entrepreneur in Jeff Bezos to build a business around his passion, which started with books itself. Interestingly, there have been 12 books that Jeff Bezos has read in his life that have shaped his all-conquering leadership style and the unprecedented success. So, here’s a glimpse of the Jeff Bezos Leadership formula reading list:
The key thing about a book is that you lose yourself in the author’s world.
Jeff Bezos on his love and passion for books
In Bezos’ biography ‘The Everything Store’, author Brad Stone notes that the billionaire believes he learns a lot more from fiction than non-fiction. At the top of Bezos’ fiction shelf is British novelist Sir Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘The Remains of the Day’. The top management book that has helped Bezos is ‘Build to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies’ by authors Jim Collins and Jerry Porras. Another Jim Collins’ book that inspires Bezos is ‘Good to Great’.
The next significant book is ‘Creation: Life and How to Make It’ by Steve Grand which was crucial in development of AWS, Bezos’ multi-billion dollar enterprise software company. Next comes ‘The Innovator’s Dilemma’ by Clayton Christensen, a book the love for which Bezos shares with fellow billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Interestingly, Bezos is a literary fan of another billionaire in Walmart’s Sam Walton whose autobiography ‘Made in America’ gave Bezos important corporate values he implemented at Amazon. Here is the complete list of books that inspired Jeff Bezos.
Watch: Jeff Bezos on the future of Amazon and Blue Origin
Jeff Bezos Accolades & Recognitions
- Times Person of the Year 1999
- America’s Best Leader 2008 – US News & World Report
- Honorary Doctorate in Science and Technology 2008, Carnegie Mellon University
- Innovation Award 2011 – The Economist
- Fortune Businessperson of the Year 2012
- Heinlein Prize for Advances in Space Commercialization 2016
- #1 on Fortune’s 50 Great Leaders 2015
- World’s Best Performing CEO 2014 – 2018 – Harvard Business Review
- Axel Springer Award for Business Innovation and Social responsibility (Germany)
- Buzz Aldrin Space Exploration Award 2018
Bezos’ Secret Sauce
When talking about the Jeff Bezos’ lessons in entrepreneurship, customer obsession, eagerness to invent, long-term thinking, and pride in operational excellence are the four secret ingredients of success and culture at Amazon. Jeff Bezos, in his own words describes his idea of entrepreneurship:
There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second. The words showcase his passion for entrepreneurship.
Jeff Bezo’s idea of entrepreneurship
