Amazon has completely changed the way we think about shopping, reading, and entertainment, and the man behind this veritable tech empire is none other than Jeff Bezos, with an estimated net worth of $66.7 billion. At the relatively young age of 52, this is particularly impressive – most other billionaires with a fortune as big as Bezos’ are well over 70 years old.
Even more impressive, just this past month Bezos surpassed Warren Buffett on Forbes’ list of the richest people in the world! Mr. Buffett now takes fourth place, and Jeff Bezos is comfortably sitting in third.
Bezos, an Albuquerque native, has been involved in computer science from a young age, and earned degrees in both computer science and electrical engineering from Princeton, with highest honors.
Believe it or not, Amazon.com, which would eventually launch Bezos to billionaire status, was founded in 1994, when a lot of people didn’t even have a PC at home and everyone who had internet access was using dial-up. Like many of today’s tech giants, Bezos started Amazon in his garage – the Supreme Court had just ruled that online shopping sites were not required to charge sales tax if there was no sales tax in the state where they were located. Combined with the rapidly growing interest in all things internet, it was the perfect business opportunity, and Bezos seized it head-on.
One of Bezos’ other projects that isn’t as well-known is Blue Origin, which involves human space flight. He started the company in 2000, but it remained a secret until 2006. The ultimate goal, according to Bezos, is to fundamentally change the cost structure of all things that are space-related, and to have millions of people living and working in outer space.
It all sounds like a bit of a pipe dream now, but then again, if you had told someone in 1990 that in 20 years they would be doing the majority of their shopping, reading, and movie watching on the internet, they probably would have thought you were crazy, too.
