Jeff Bezos - Challenges and Successes

After graduation Jeff Bezos did not want jobs from Intel and Bell. Instead he joined a company called Fitel. He then got a job at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw. Bezos had read many books and decided to quit his job. He made his decision to work in Technology.

He decided that books are the best products to sell online. Bezos then quit D.E. Shaw to work on Amazon. Bezos wanted to call his company Cadabra but, his friends convinced him to call it Amazon. Amazon was started in a garage but, it was so popular that he added 2 warehouses to help store all the books people wanted. A bell would ring if someone bought a book online but, it rang so often that they destroyed the bell. At first Amazon was selling books to all the states and it went public on May 15, 1997, but it is now available in 45 different counries.

Jeff Bezos found a challenge when Bookseller companies had to buy 10 books at once. During that time Amazon did not have enough sales yet, so Jeff Bezos and employees ordered the 1 book they needed and 9 copies of a book about Lichens. As the Lichens book was always unavailable they were able to successfully order the book that their customer wanted.

Dot.com companies had became very popular during 1995-2000. A lot of investors wanted to invest money in these companies. This caused the stock of the company to rise up. When the dot.com bubble bursted the stocks of these companys were worth a small fraction of their value and many companies went out of business. Amazon.com survived the dot.com crash but, lost some big sales.

Amazon.com has grown a lot and now sells everything except pets, guns, alcohol, homes, and cars. Amazon.com has also purchased other companies and has grown because of them. Bezos was a great believer in Google and he invested $250,000, in shares. These shares are now worth a billion dollars. His friends offered him great jobs and opportunitys but, Bezos declined them all.