Digital Media Concepts/Digital Media Concepts/Jeff Bezos

Introduction

Jeffery Preston Bezos is an American entrepreneur/philanthropist/inventor. Jeff Bezos is best known as the founder/former CEO of Amazon, which is the world's largest online shop. Bezos is also known for being the founder of Blue Origins, a space exploration company. It's safe to say that Jeff Bezos is by far the wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of 194.2 billion dollars

Early Life

Jeff Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1964 on January 12 to his teenage mother Jacklyn Gise and his father Ted Jorgensen. According to Bezos' parents, from an early age Jeff showed many interests in how things worked and he even turned his parents garage into a "laboratory" where he rigged "electrical contraptions" through his house. When Bezos was a teenager him and his family moved to Miami which is where his love for computers began and where he started his first business called The Dream Institute, which was designed to be an educational summer camp for fourth, fifth and sixth graders. Bezos graduated from Miami Palmetto Senior high school a valedictorian and went to college at Princeton University where he then graduated summa cum laude in 1986.

The Start of His Career

Bezos first ever job was at McDonald's flipping burgers but after graduating college Bezos ended up working in multiple firms on Wall Street, such as Fitel Bankers Trust and D.E. Shaw which was where he became the youngest vice president. Bezos worked on Wall Street for a little over eight years, 1986-1994. After those years on Wall Street Bezos moved to Seattle where the idea of Amazon began.

Amazon's Journey

Bezos was still working on Wall Street when the idea of Amazon came to him. He decided to name it after the South American river but the overall idea came to him after reading many articles on how the "World Wide Web" was expanding quickly, so Bezos did an intensive amount of research on mail-order companies and what would sell best and eventually Bezos decided on books. After all of his research Bezos asked three hundred of his friends to test his website and see how accessible it really was. And so to start off Bezos operated this website out of his garage in Seattle with a loan from his parents of $245,000 to help. Amazon was selling books all across the United States and in forty five different countries in less than a month without any kind of publicity. After two months Amazons sales reached over $20,000 per week which was quite unexpected. In 1997 Amazon was fully launched to the public and after a couple of years the website was surpassing other e-commerce companies causing Amazon to be a leader. As the sites popularity began to grow Bezos started adding new items to be sold, in 1998 he added CD's and videos and around the 2000's he included toys, clothes, electronics and so much more. With each passing year Amazon earned more and more money, by 2011 Amazon had made around $17 billion.

Leadership style

Jeff Bezos has a unique leadership style, most people have a more authoritarian, democratic, coaching leadership style. But for Bezos he is more of a transformational leader, meaning someone who works with people beyond their own self interests and focusing on the need for change. so by Jeff Bezos being a more transformational he created a better work environment but having a "customer-driven environment". Bezos also made sure to have his workers be operated into small groups so the work could be done twice as fast and so he could improve communication skills.

Legacy

Jeff Bezos was the CEO of Amazon for 27 years and in 2021 Bezos announced that he would be stepping down, but he isn't leaving the company as Bezos resigns as CEO he will instead become Amazon's executive chairman. Bezos' legacy includes innovation, experimentation, expansion, diversification, technological advancements, corporate culture, job creation, economical impact, philanthropy and personal wealth. But overall Jeff Bezos' legacy comes together by being the most influential and valuable company to ever be created.