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There is always a race among the billionaires to be the top in the world. Jeff Bezos has been a part of that race since 1999 on and off. He was the first billionaire to cross the $200 billion net worth which made him the top billionaire in the world.
Jeff has been the top billionaire of the world since November 2017, however Elon Musk took that number one spot for a month only but lost it again to Jeff Bezos who tops the charts currently. The main source of his income comes from Amazon which helped him attain the top position.
Who is Jeff Bezos?
Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964, in New Mexico. He is the pioneer and founder of the e-commerce company Amazon, he also owns The Washington Post and he is the founder of the company Blue origin that deals with space travel. All these successful business ventures helped Jeff Bezos to be the top billionaire worldwide.
Bezos was always fond of computers and technology, he wanted to start his own business with the help of technology and Amazon was a result of his vision. He started Amazon as an online book store and then expanded to other fields, today Amazon is the biggest success story in the world.
Jeff has also been very interested in space, he believes that humans should be able to live in space in order to preserve the earth. With Blue origins, he made his dream come true by helping humanity.
What is the net worth of Jeff Bezos?
The net worth of Jeff Bezos is about 176.6 Billion Dollars. The first-ever man in the world to touch the 200 Billion Dollars net worth mark. If you break down his earnings, Jeff Bezos is earning about $321 million per day, $13.4 million an hour, $222,884 a minute, and $3,715 a second in 2020. The biggest increase in a single day in Bezos’s net worth is $13 billion, which he achieved in July 20, 2020.
Education of Jeff Bezos:
Jeff Bezos graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1986 with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. During his entire educational career he had a very clear idea in his mind of doing business.
10 things you should know about Jeff Bezos:
Even though Jeff Bezos is the topmost billionaire in the world right there are still many things about him that many people do not know about. Let’s have a look at some of the facts about Jeff Bezos you should know about because they might motivate you as well:
1. Jeff was born to a teenage mother:
Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen was only 17 years old when she gave birth to Jeff in 1964. She had to face a lot of problems when she became a teenage mother because her high school administration was not allowing her to continue her studies further. She was not ready to let go of her studies at any cost thus she kept trying to convince the school administration.
After setting four strict conditions, the school allowed Jacklyn to return and she graduated from there. Jacklyn got married to Jeff’s biological father but divorced him right after one year.
Jacklyn worked as a secretary to make the ends meet. It was a difficult time for her because she wanted to give the best life to her son and she also wanted to study further. To pursue her dreams, she got enrolled in a college where she was allowed to bring her infant too.
In this college, she met Mike Bezos to whom she got married, and Mike gave Jeff his last name as a stepfather.
2. Who was Jeff’s father?
The biological father of Jeff was Ted Jorgensenwas who was a circus performer. Jeff lived with his father for only a year due to which he does not remember him. Ted was not a good father or husband, back in the days he used to drink a lot and come home very late.
Jeff’s mother went to her parent’s house and got a divorce from Ted because he was not fulfilling his responsibilities.
After the divorce, Ted was never in contact with his ex-wife or son and he did not even know that his son is a Billionaire. He got to know about his son when Jeff’s biography was being written and they contacted him for an interview.
Ted wished to meet his son and he regretted that he could have treated his wife and son much better. Ted got married again but he did not have any other children other than Jeff. Ted died in 2015 at the age of 70.
3. Jeff always wanted to be an engineer:
Jeff was always a curious child, he wanted to know what is inside a machine. He was a toddler when he opened his cot with a screwdriver all by himself. It shows that he always wanted to do things differently and he had the potential to do anything since he was a child.
Jeff was in his high school when he created a laboratory in his garage for his inventions. He was very fond of science and technology so he used to spend his extra time learning more about it.
Jeff was always very interested in space as well which is why he created his own aerospace company. He had a vision that there are chances of life on any planet other than Earth. His aerospace company is striving to make this idea a reality and surely Jeff will be successful someday ,ultimately giving relief to a whole mankind by introducing life on any other planet potentially.
4. Started his first business in high school:
Since his childhood, he has wanted to earn money in some way. He always hated the idea of the 9-5 office work and thought of earning money in a different way. Jeff worked at McDonalds for summer but his vision to become a business man was on target.
He started his first business while being in high school to create a summer camp for children aged 9 to 12 years old. The summer camp was called ‘The dream institute’ and Jeff’s girlfriend at the time was also taking an equal part in it and they both charged $600 per student.
His first business was a success and he earned quite a good amount. It shows that he was always a business-minded person who was eager to start his own business. His passion for being an entrepreneur made him one of the best in the whole world today.
5. Bezos also worked at wall street:
After Jeff graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Computer science and Electrical engineering, he worked at various firms on Wall Street in New York City.
Jeff’s goal was never to do a 9-5 job, he had a clear vision of what he wanted from life and this job was not according to his preference. But still, he was doing these jobs to get some experience.
He was working at D.E Shaw as a vice president but he resigned after four years to start his online business of a bookstore.
6. Amazon was created in a garage:
Initially, Jeff created a sample of Amazon and asked 300 people to do a test and review it. When the prototype turned out to be a hit, Jeff formed a team of a few employees and started developing the software in his garage.
The garage was too small for meetings, so they had to conduct meetings at a local Barnes and noble store. Later the operations expanded and they began to work in a two-bedroom house.
The start of Amazon, the world’s most popular online store, was not so great. Starting from a small garage, no one would have thought it will be used by everyone around the world very soon. It was the vision and smart ideas of Jeff Bezos that lifted his company Amazon to unimaginable heights and succeeded his career. It shows that during the start of any business, the ideas and uniqueness matter but on the other hand the physical appearance of the company doesn’t matter that much first.
7. Helicopter Crash Survivor
Jeff is one of the few luckiest people alive in the world who have survived an aerial crash. In 2003 he was scouting over properties in a helicopter looking for open land to test launch spacecraft. During the flight, the wind went rough and a gust of wind blew the helicopter off-course and crashed.
The helicopter cropped a dune of dirt and toppled. The body of the helicopter rolled and toppled into a Creek, breaking off the helicopter’s tail. As the body landed upside-down in the creek, it started filling with water.
Luckily, Jeff survived the crash with minor injuries and one of the passengers suffered broken vertebrae.
8. Owner of The Washington Post
You must have heard about the famous newspaper The Washington Post but you will be amazed to know the name of its owner. This famous company is owned by none other than Jeff Bezos who bought this company in 2013 for $250 million. It was previously owned by the Graham family for 80 years. Within three years after Jeff Bezos took charge of the company, the web traffic of Washington post doubled and it became profitable after a long time. Bezos is now the largest single shareholder in The Washington Post.
9. Cadabra instead of Amazon
Jeff always wanted to give some unique and more magical name to his company. He decided to name his company “Cadabra” but his lawyer forbade him. He was warned that this sound is very similar to any other company and there were chances of misunderstandings. So, he named it Amazon. It was named after the world’s largest river as he was building the world’s largest book store.
10. Owner of the Rocket Ship Company – Blue Origin
The richest man on the Earth also owns a rocket ship company which was founded in 2000 in Kent, Washington. Blue Origin is an aerospace manufacturer and suborbital space flight service company. The company’s mission statement reads “Blue Origin believes that to preserve Earth, our home, for our grandchildren’s grandchildren, we must go to space to tap its unlimited resources and energy”.
Bezos has always shown his interest in space travel and the possibilities of human life on other planets of the solar system, with Blue Origin he was ready to pursue his dream.
Blue origin did not gain publicity until 2006, there were not a lot of people who knew about the company but when they purchased a huge piece of land in West Texas for launch and tests, it got the public attention.
Jeff has been compared with Branson and Elon Musk because they all are billionaires and they have the same interest in space and technology.
The Jeff Bezos Empire:
Jeff Bezos has worked really hard to achieve the position of being the top ranked billionaire in the world by having to make many bold decisions and taking big risks helping him to succeed. His quality of being fearless and believing in himself has proved him to be one of the best entrepreneurs in the world.
His hard work and passion brought him to a point to be viewed as an unbeatable billionaire in the world so far. He owns many companies, some of which are famous while some are not so famous.
He has been investing his money in various types of businesses. He has made many investments through Amazon. So, let’s have a look at the companies owned by Jeff Bezos:
- Amazon.com:
Amazon is the largest e-commerce store in the world. The company started as a bookselling online store but later expanded to almost all relevant categories regarding life. It generates the highest revenue of any other online store in the world. Amazon owns many subsidiaries such as Whole Foods, Zappos, Pillpack, TwitchTV, Kiva Systems, and Kozmo.com. All the companies are successful businesses which play a role in Jeff’s net worth.
- Capital investments:
Bezos expeditions manages the capital investments done by Jeff Bezos. Over the years Jeff invested money into Twitter, Workday, Business Insider, Robotics, MakerBot, Domo, and General Fusion. Jeff has been lucky in terms of making the right decisions and investments. Every company that he ever invested in gave him a good outcome so far.
- The Washington Post:
Jeff owns the more than 140 years old newspaper The Washington Post, which Nash holdings (a company owned by Jeff) bought in 2013 for $250 million.
- Bezos Family Foundation:
The foundation of Bezos Family is run by the parents of Jeff Bezos and funded by Amazon stocks. This foundation mainly focuses on early education. The motto of the Bezos family foundation is to provide quality education to children from their birth till high school and to create a learning environment for them. They believe that education is the most important aspect of life and every child is born with the same caliber and potential to learn and succeed in life.
- Blue Origin:
Blue Origin is an aerospace manufacturing company which is also a sub-orbital space flight service company, founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos. Bezos has the mission to send humans to space one day. This company is a competitor of Elon Musk’s SpaceX but blue origin is progressing quite slower than SpaceX for now. Jeff’s goal is to make space accessible and as affordable as possible due to which it is taking more time to progress.
Final Words:
Every person in the world has to face a fair share of problems in the world and the ones who endure all the problems with grace, are the ones who succeed in life. All rich and successful people seem to be living a very comfortable life full of luxuries, but behind those smiley and comfortable faces, are long and untiring stories of hard work and failures. No one can be successful in a few nights without hard work. You have to be unique and always think positively to be successful.
As you have read previously that Jeff’s childhood was not great, he saw his mother trying to meet both ends for him. His desire to be different and succeed in life brought him to the top ranked billionaire in the world.
So, Jeff Bezos’ life has many lessons for those who are new in business or want to become rich in business. You have to be consistent and diverse in your hard work to be successful. Becoming the richest man is not as difficult as maintaining this status for a longer period. If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, take inspiration from the life of Jeff Bezos thoroughly.
