Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos

Jeffrey Preston Bezos was born on January 12, 1964 in Albuquerque, NM. He and his mother relocated to Houston, Texas, when Bezos was five to live with his new stepfather. Jeff Bezos attended River Oaks Elementary School in Houston until the sixth grade after which he attended Miami Palmetto Senior High School when the family moved to Miami, Florida. Bezos spent many summers of his childhood on his grandfather's 25,000 acre ranch in Cotulla, Texas helping perform various duties necessary for upkeep. He showed early mechanical aptitude and eventually turned his parents' garage into his own personal laboratory. He eventually attended Princeton University where he joined the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity and graduated with a major in computer science and electrical engineering. He graduated with a grade point average of 4.2, higher than the "perfect score" of 4.0 due to his overwhelming number of "A-pluses" that earned him 4.3 points each.

With his new degree, Bezos began working with computers on Wall Street. He helped create a computer network for Fitel for use in international trade and later worked for D.E. Shaw & Co. He founded Amazon.com in 1994 and was criticized by many in the industry who projected that his fledgling business would fail. Since Amazon's original goal was to sell anything, starting with books, many believed that the rival website launched by Barnes and Noble in 1997 would quickly put him out of business. Bezos, however, remained eternally optimistic, even after Amazon shares dropped from $100 to $6 as a result of these criticisms.

Amazon.com flourished and quickly led the market for online retailers. Bezos has been known to work by numbers and spreadsheets and is well known for his ability to quantify data and statistics into his marketing and business goals. Amazon.com continued to be profitable and grew to sell a wide range of objects both new and used. Bezos has profited from his venture and made it onto Forbes list of the...