Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is on the verge of creating the world's first trillion-dollar company, a feat that seemed improbable when he started selling second-hand books from his garage in 1994. Today, Amazon is a global behemoth, dominating e-commerce, cloud computing, and even venturing into space travel and journalism.
Bezos's journey began with a vision of a future where a single click could deliver anything from pet food to caviar, rendering traditional malls obsolete. His gamble, funded with over $100,000 of personal and family money, paid off within a month of Amazon's 1995 launch, with orders shipping to all 50 US states and 45 countries.
In its first five years, Amazon's customer accounts soared from 180,000 to 17 million, and sales skyrocketed from $511,000 to over $1.6 billion. The company went public in 1997, raising $54 million and making Bezos one of the world's richest men before the age of 35. Time Magazine named him 'Person of the Year' in 1999, dubbing him the 'king of cybercommerce'.
Bezos's ambitions extend beyond retail. He owns the Washington Post, and his aerospace firm Blue Origin plans to sell tickets for space travel next year. He has also hinted at philanthropic plans to be announced this summer. His high-school girlfriend once said his drive was never about money itself, but about changing the future.
Despite his success, Bezos is known as an exacting boss, guiding Amazon with a long-term strategy focused on the customer. The company has been willing to forego annual profit for 10 out of 23 years, cutting prices and offering free shipping. It has also saved costs by making employees pay for parking and battling suppliers. Amazon now employs over 575,000 people and is expected to account for nearly half of all US online shopping sales this year.
