Jeff Bezos’ net worth as of now reached $191 billion – making him the richest man on Earth.
Let’s take a look at some interesting and fun facts about Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos.
Some facts even refer to the notorious fame of Amazon to “Shoot first, aim later”. It refers to Amazon suspension without getting into the straight facts first.
- Jezz Bezos (full name: Jeffrey Preston Bezos) was born on January 12, 1694, to 17-year-old Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen. After less than a year of marriage, she got divorced and during her college classes, his mother met and later married a Cuban immigrant named Mike Bezos who adopted and gave Jeff his surname.
- Jeff shares the same birthday with several well-known people including John Lasseter (the director of “Toy Story”), musician Rob Zombie and actor Nathan Gamble.
- By the age of 3, Jeff Bezos would already pride himself in taking apart his crib with a SCREWDRIVER as apparently, the crib was a bit small for him.
- Jeff has been crazy about science since his childhood. He turned his parents’ garage into a laboratory and even invented an electric alarm. Well, an average security system to keep his half-siblings out of his room.
- During his high school valedictorian speech, the future billionaire spoke of his dream of “saving humanity by creating permanent colonies in orbiting space stations while turning the planet into an enormous nature preserve.
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- Initially, Bezos wanted to incorporate the company under the name of “Cadabra” – bringing the magical experience to his customers, we suppose. His first lawyer misheard it over the phone as “Cadaver” and advised him to go with a livelier name.
- Many modern giant tech companies began their journey in a garage and Amazon was not an exception. It was so small that in the early days, Bezos had to hold meetings at Barnes & Noble – its biggest competitor at that time.
- Moreover, Bezos and his wife couldn’t use a vacuum cleaner or other electronics as the servers required power which could technically blow a fuse in the house.
- In the beginning, a bell would ring every time someone made a purchase. After quite a few weeks,the bell was squeaking so often, that they had to turn it off.
- The first person who rang that bell was John Wainwright. John bought “Fluid Concepts And Creative Analogies: Computer Models Of The Fundamental Mechanisms Of Thought” by Douglas Hofstadter for $27.95 and also got one of Amazon’s HQs named after him. He still has the account AND the book… and the purchase is a part of his Amazon history.
- In his initial plan, Jeff Bezos did not want to have any in-house inventory. So when ordering books from distributors, they had to order 10 at a time. In order not to order 9 books, Amazon ordered the one they needed and 9 copies of a book about lichen, which was always out of stock.
- In the early days of Amazon, Jeff Bezos required his employees to work 60 hours per week. One of the employees – who had to cycle back and forth to the office early in the morning and late in the evening – even received a parking ticket and only then remembered that he had parked his car near some apartment 8 months ago. The sad part in the story is that he read the news that his car was sold at an auction after the final warning from the towing company.
- In 1999, Amazon’s HQ was on the same street as an adult film shop and a pawn store.
- When Amazon crossed the million-customer mark, Jeff threw a party. The next one is scheduled when they have 10 million customers.
- Employees had “primal screams” to release the stress during the holiday season. In the 2000s, another Jeff, Jeff Wilke, allowed anybody from the team who reached an important milestone to yell at him through a phone.
- In the beginning of 2018, Amazon’s shares fell by 6 percent as Trump tweeted that Amazon should pay the US post office the delivery costs and plus for treating the latter as its delivery boy. But maybe the former president of the US was not notified of the mutually beneficial deal between USPS and Amazon.
- Dissatisfied customers can email Jeff Bezos and if there is a particular issue that catches his eye, Bezos will forward it to a dedicated team with a “?”. Well, the team has only a few hours to solve the issue and a handful of written responses on why that occurred in the first place.
- Amazon’s warehouses could hold more water than 10.000 Olympic pools and are larger than 700 Madison Square Gardens.
- Every two years, employees to CEO spend two days as customer support angels to experience the full range of customers and their needs.
- The funny or sad fact of one of the many accounts Amazon suspended: the seller was told the account was reinstated only to wait two weeks and again be told it will not be reinstated.
Jeff Bezos-Specialty
- Jeff Bezos requires that his workers hand in six-page handwritten proposals and thus encourages critical thinking. Not the regular bullet-point-report guy!
- Bezos is not the ordinary entrepreneur we’ve all heard of. Unlike the major perception that CEOs sleep around 4 hours, Bezos finds it very important to sleep 8 hours a day. AND legends say that he even brings in a sleeping bag to the office for extra shut-eye moments.
- An extraordinary, philanthropic, and elite hobby that is! During his free time and sometimes even as a family activity – Bezos cleans the ocean from discarded NASA rocket ships. Jeff Bezos’ way of the rocket scavenger hunt!
- Jeff Bezos is a “Star Trek” geek, begged Paramount to let him be in a ‘Star Trek’ movie as it was on his bucket list! He eventually received a cameo appearance in “Beyond.”
- Jeff Bezos runs a rocket ship company Blue Origin. The company was founded back in 2000. The project is designed to make Bezos’ high school dream come true.
- Remember Jeff Wilke? He will lead the company from September 2021 as Bezos wants to concentrate on more philanthropic projects.
To wrap up…
Wow. This concludes the roundup of the Amazon-related coolest fun facts.
Amazon’s beginning is somehow the same but the path towards its hand-carved success is full of skepticism but game-changing innovations.
After analyzing Amazon’s innovative traction and the ever-changing landscape of eCommerce we can surely say: Amazon is not going anywhere. It’s only here to stay and delight us with its novelties.