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What do we think of
when we hear the word Amazon today?
Along with Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook
Amazon is one of the big five companies
in the U.S tech industry.
It has become one of the most influential companies
in the world, as well as the most valuable brand.
In 2018 it surpassed 100 million subscribers worldwide.
So what did it take to build such a revolutionary business?
Well, it took someone like Jeff Bezos.
The American audacious entrepreneur.
One of the world's richest business leaders,
and founder of the giant tech company,
and the world's largest marketplace.
As of February, 2021 he was reported to be
the second richest person in the world.
With an estimated worth of $185 billion after Elon Musk.
What makes a smart business?
Start with the customer and work backwards?
Are Bezos' words.
Today, the impact on online retail is greater
than it's ever been before.
Take a journey into how Bezos built the giant
that has changed the world.
And shapes our culture and society today.
They are masterminds, ambitious, competitive, and ruthless.
Not afraid of failure.
Dedicated to their mission of bettering the world.
Always reaching for excellence.
They lead by example.
Unlike many industries the tech billionaires
are mostly self-made.
It is through their genius
that they revolutionize the industry.
And together they change the world.
Join us in this series.
As we take a look at some of the wealthiest entrepreneurs
in the modern world.
The tech billionaires, Bill Gates, Elon Musk,
Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos.
Together they're worth a collective
of more than 900 billion U.S dollars.
They will be remembered in history
as the most influential people of the 21st century.
Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen was born on January 12th, 1964
in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
To a teenage mother Jacqueline
and his biological father, Ted Jorgensen.
When he was born his mother was just 17
and still in high school.
His 18 year old father didn't have much money
and had alcohol issues.
The Jorgensens were married less than a year
before Jacqueline left, taking their infant son with her.
When Bezos was four years old
his mother remarried Miguel Bezos.
A Cuban refugee who had fled an oppressive regime
and who didn't speak a word of English
when he first arrived a few months back.
But with a strong work ethic and determination in life.
He worked his way to University of Albuquerque
to obtain a degree in mechanical engineering.
Which led him to get a job later on at Exxon,
as an engineer.
Miguel decided to adopt Jeff after the wedding
and took the responsibility to raise him.
His surname was then changed to Bezos.
The family then moved to Houston, Texas,
where Jeff spent most of his childhood.
Much of Jeff Bezos drive and ambition
likely came from his new father.
He's been a constant inspiration for him.
Jeff was a gifted child.
It had been said that at the age of only three,
tired of sleeping in a crib, he found a screwdriver
and took the crib apart.
He then moved to Miami with his family as a teenager.
Where he attended Palmetto high school.
He was a brilliant student, got straight A's
and was valedictorian of his class.
Bezos showed early signs of technical proficiencies.
He quickly developed a passion for computers
and excelled at creating software programs.
As an avid young innovator,
he turned his parents' garage into a laboratory
and experimented around his house as a child.
Young Jeff was always inventing something.
Once he invented a solar microwave and even a door buzzer
to keep his siblings out of his room.
It was during high school that he started
his first business, The dream Institute.
An educational summer camp that promoted creative thinking
for young students.
After graduating with honors from high school
he briefly turned to physics.
Before committing to his love for computers.
And he graduated from Princeton University in 1986
with a high distinction in electrical and computer science.
Bezos childhood may have contributed
to his obsession with success.
And maybe it helped him create that drive and ambition
and a relentless need to prove himself.
Being adopted is something that Bezos shares
with two other great internet entrepreneurs.
Steve Jobs, and Larry Ellison.
After his graduation at Princeton
he took on various jobs that helped him develop
his entrepreneurial spirit even more.
At 28 Bezos was working for the investment firm
D.E Shaw in Wall Street, Manhattan as a computer specialist.
He soon became the firm's youngest senior vice president.
There he met novelist McKenzie Tuttle
who was a research associate at the firm.
She soon became his wife as the couple married a year later.
They would have four children.
Three sons and a daughter they adopted from China.
During the rise of the internet in the 1990s
Bezos noticed that it was growing at an incredible rate.
More than 2300% a year.
And he saw its enormous potential.
He had never seen anything that grew that fast.
This sparked his imagination
and he embarked on the entrepreneurial path.
His first steps were to research the top 20
mail order companies at the time.
Observing that something was missing,
he saw an opportunity on the horizon.
He decided that an online company could offer
this missing service.
And what was the first best product to sell online?
Books?
Indeed, there were no book mail order companies yet.
In 1994, having had always been an avid reader.
Bezos decided to establish an online bookstore.
Against his parents and even as boss's advice to reconsider,
he left his job at D.E Shaw to start his own company at 30
and decided to leave New York.
At this time, Bill Gates was already dominating the world
of personal computers with Microsoft,
from his hometown of Seattle.
Bezos decided to move there with his wife.
Seems there was plenty of tech talent around.
He saw it as a place of opportunity and new beginnings.
He was aware that most startups don't work,
and wasn't confident and sure of what would happen.
People were saying that the company
would never be profitable.
but Bezos decided to take the leap anyway.
His parents also ended up to support his decision
and invested what they'd saved for retirement
in their sons venture.
It was later amply rewarded.
After writing his business plan on a cross country road trip
from New York City to Seattle,
Bezos and his wife settled into their new home in Bellevue.
And their new home became his office.
He began developing the software for the site
in his garage with a handful of employees.
There was not much investment in the beginning
and Bezos would drive the packages
to the post office himself.
He even had his desk made from doors to save money.
This was one of his main principles, frugality.
We try not to spend money on things
that don't matter to customers.
On July 6th 1995, a few months later after moving
the startup sold its first book
and Bezos new business was launched, Amazon.
Named after the South American biggest river in the world.
And it started in a garage.
With financial and moral support from family and friends.
They started shipping more books.
Sales took off immediately.
By 1996 the company reached $15.7 million in sales.
Within the first few days I knew this was going to be huge.
Bezos told Time Magazine.
It was obvious that we were onto something much bigger
than we'd ever dared to hope.
In 1997, three years after it was founded
Amazon went public with an IPO of $18 per share.
After raising $54 million, Bezos became a millionaire.
At the end of trading day on February, 2020
shares closed at more than $2,000 each.
Making such an investment at his IPO
worth more than 12 million pounds as of May, 2020.
In other words, if you invested in Amazon in its early days
you too would have been a millionaire today.
He had warned many early investors
that there was a 70% chance that Amazon would fail,
or go bankrupt.
But the employees worked hard and Bezos,
even harder to drive them.
The company grew fast into a large worldwide business.
Bezos later claimed Amazon is the earth's biggest bookstore.
Although Amazon was originally an online bookstore
Bezos had always planned to expand to other products.
In 1998, it started selling music and videos.
One day he emailed randomly 1000 selected customers
to see what else they would wanna buy
from the online retailer.
Unsurprisingly, the list came back incredibly long.
The now self-made billionaire recalled one person
writing back windshield wiper blades,
because I really need windshield wiper blades.
He then realized he could sell anything this way.
Thanks to an email to 1000 random people.
Amazon turned into the everything store the following year.
It also began selling a variety of other goods,
including consumer electronics, home improvement items,
software games, and toys.
In other words, anything and everything
that customers might need and want.
He understood consumer behavior and noticed
that people were very convenience motivated.
In 1999 Bezos became a billionaire at 35.
At the height of his career, time magazine named him
it's person of the year for 1999.
Proclaiming him king of cyber commerce.
The success of Amazon encouraged other retailers,
including major book chains to establish online stores.
He set the trend for the future.
Nowadays, if you don't have a business online
you don't have a business.
By the end of 1999, Amazon had become
a multi-billion dollar corporation.
After expanding and setting up operations in Europe.
With less than three weeks until Christmas.
Most of us will be braving the crowds in the coming days
in the search for presents.
But Christmas shopping doesn't have to be so traumatic.
This year more people than ever will buy their gifts
without moving from the seats.
But how easy is internet shopping?
I tested the system by ordering a book
from the online bookseller Amazon.
Within minutes of placing my order at my desk.
It's been printed out at Amazon's warehouse in Berkshire.
A packer then finds the book from the company's stock room.
And just a few hours after the order is placed
the book is dispatched and on its way.
The next day it arrived here at the office.
This is really an educational process.
This is something new it's revolutionary.
It's something that people are not used to.
But the growth in the market that we've identified
shows that they're quickly learning.
And it's becoming increasingly important.
As part of retailing
Growth of sales on the internet are set to explode
in the next five years.
There's already a great deal of price competition,
among conventional retailers.
This year, they'll be looking over their shoulders
at that rivals of the virtual realm.
However, with success came adversity.
The company became involved in several notable lawsuits,
filed by Barnes & Noble and Walmart,
but none of the problems compared
to the biggest challenge of all.
Making the company profitable.
In 2000 Bezos and the company were put to the ultimate test.
The stock fell significantly.
Though spent millions developing its software,
Amazon lost money every year and a total of $2.8 billion,
and was operating on negative cashflow since it was founded.
In January, 2001 to deal with the crisis,
the company was forced to take drastic measures.
It laid off 1300 workers
and had to close distribution centers.
It nearly went bankrupt
But Bezos was unstoppable.
Through his and his team's efforts.
Amazon rebounded from financial instability.
The cutback worked.
Amazon turned his first ever net profit later in 2001.
As sales grew 15%.
However, it was small and barely counted.
It took Amazon more than 18 years to catch Walmart
in market cap, but only two years to double it.
The company continued his expansion efforts in 2002,
and it has been profitable ever since.
It not only survive the 2000 crisis, but it flourished.
Bezos saw the big picture and he defied the skeptics
proving that his unconventional
business model could succeed.
Liquid hydrogen.
Why are we using liquid hydrogen?
This is not how
to ourselves, because we wanna be able
to survive Lunar night.
It's what's used to lower things off of the deck
under the surface of the moon.
This is an incredible vehicle, and it's going to the moon.
Now we have mapped the entire moon in great detail.
We can use that as preexisting maps to tell the system,
it's a machine learning system,
to tell the system what it should be looking for
in terms of craters and other features.
And it navigates relative to that.
It's time to go back to the moon.
This time to stay
Conquering the internet,
reinventing the book trade
and becoming one of the world's richest men
would be enough for most.
But Bezos is now shooting for the stars
with an even bigger plan, colonizing space.
As if building an empire on earth wasn't enough.
In September, 2000, aside from Amazon,
Bezos founded Blue Origin.
The human space flight company
focused on commercial space travel.
As a Star Trek fan he had expressed for a long time
an interest in creating the SciFi future
he'd fallen in love with as a child.
When he was just five he fell in love
with the idea of space exploration.
As he watched Neil Armstrong
take a first step onto the moon.
Jesus claimed that the primary goal of Blue Origin
is to preserve the natural resources of earth
by making the human species multiplanetary.
Excited to announce that we have put together
a national team to go back to the moon.
And this is the kind of thing it's so ambitious.
It needs to be done with partners.
This is the only way to get back to the moon fast.
And this time we're going back to the moon
and we're not going back to the moon to visit.
We're going back to the moon to stay.
And we want to have a civilization of growth and dynamism
which means we need to be able to expand out
into the solar system.
There are so many resources there that we can continue
to do interesting things and continue to use
large amounts of energy and so on.
It's just, we probably can't do that on this planet.
So my long-term prediction,
and this is gonna take hundreds of years.
So don't worry, prematurely earth will end up being zoned
residential and light industry.
And all the heavy industry will be done in space.
In 2011, their first test launch
wasn't a success.
The rocket crashed, but it fueled their need
to make progress.
What we need is to reuse the hardware
over and over and over again.
And it can't be fake usability
where you bring the vehicle back and inspect everything.
X-ray everything, disassemble everything
and then put it all back together.
That's not real reusability.
You have to land refuel and fly again.
Our ability to get into earth's orbit
is kind of right on the edge of what's possible
even when you do it in an expendable fashion.
So when you add the extra mass and systems landing gear
and so on required for reusability
you're making your engineering challenge even harder.
But it's worth it and it's possible.
And that's what we need to achieve.
So that's why I started Blue Origin.
I think it's the most important work I'm doing.
If I look over the really long term.
Fortunately the second test flight was a success.
The New Shepard, a multi passenger rocket
reached space in 2015 and afterwards
successfully landed back on earth.
Bezos is aiming to make space travel safer
and more affordable.
In July, 2018, it was announced
that he had priced commercial space flight tickets
around $300,000 per person.
Since 2016, he has been investing $1 billion
per year from his Amazon winnings into Blue Origin.
In an effort to support his ambitious goals.
He has been compared to Elon Musk.
As the billionaire also prioritize rockets
among his business interests.
Their intergalactic rivalry
is fueling the modern space race.
For Bezos, this is a childhood dream.
If I'm 80 years old, looking back on my life.
And the one thing I've done is to make it
so that there's this gigantic entrepreneurial explosion
in space for the next generation, said, Bezos
I will be a happy, happy man.
But he had more terrestrial innovations on his mind as well.
Doug we're very proud to have you,
and you're a great stars associated
with RKO Video Pictures.
We're very proud to be with RKO.
Would you like to meet your new stars?
I certainly would.
Of course you know this fella here, Mickey Mouse.
Hello Mickey.
Say hello to Mr Mickey.
Hello , hi.
In 2003, Jeff Bezos named Walt Disney
as one of his heroes.
Although he was no Mickey Mouse fan.
Instead he was fascinated with how
the animation industry pioneer came up
with the electronics and animatronics
used in Disney World in Orlando, Florida.
Bezos admired the way Disney had a powerful vision.
And did everything to build his dream.
He said the best thing that always amazed me
was how powerful his vision was.
He knew exactly what he wanted to build
and teamed up with a bunch of really smart people
and built it.
Well, I think what you're starting to see
is some real differentiation between internet companies
that are trying to build lasting companies.
And I've certainly consider amazon.com, one of those.
And companies that were trying to build stocks,
trying to ride the momentum of the internet.
And so one of the things that you see for example
is a lot of internet companies now raising prices.
Realizing that the things they were doing before
just weren't sustainable.
At Amazon we're actually lowering prices.
We just reviewed our top 1000 best-selling electronics,
and actually decided our prices were too high.
We're lowering those.
So we're actually doing the opposite.
And I think you're gonna see
a lot of differentiation there.
Companies like amazon.com working to build
important lasting companies,
not sort of flash in the pan internet stock.
By 2005, Amazon was offering
a vast range of products and a diversified even further
in 2006 by introducing Amazon Web Services.
A cloud computer service.
It eventually became the largest such service in the world.
That same year it revealed a revolutionary new program.
Amazon Prime, which offered customers
to have the product delivered to their door in two days
and later one day for a yearly fee.
It has become the most successful
membership program in history.
More than 150 million users would sign up for free shipping.
In 2007, Amazon launched
a new groundbreaking product the Kindle.
A digital book reader with internet connection
that allowed them to sell books online.
And enabled customers to buy, download, read
and store a vast collection of books on demand.
Accessible, interactive, limitless.
Mr and Mrs Brown first met Pennington
on a railway platform.
It's a daunting new world
for the traditionalist but child's play
for the download generation.
It's easier than going into a library
and searching through.
I often have like six or seven books
to take with me to school.
If I've got them all on here, I just have to carry this.
But there's something more personal about getting a book.
And you know, you can pass them down to generations.
Whereas these you've just got it all stored on there
and there's nothing exciting about it.
No one in the industry is suggesting
that the conventional bookshop is dead.
And digitization would be anathema to some.
Real convenient, real easy to use.
You can change the font size to suit your eye.
You can just flip the pages through.
So folks are finding the product itself really convenient.
And of course it's delivered in a very convenient way.
The electronic market is really booming.
We're seeing 600% growth year on year on eBooks this year.
And that this is a frankly stagnant book selling market.
So I think we're seeing massive growth there.
We're seeing rapid adoption of e-reading
as a way of consuming content.
The technology means authors like Sophie Nichols
can circulate their work without a publisher.
One of her eBooks became a bestseller.
I've been able to put a book together, get it edited.
And proof-read myself put it out there,
literally with the click of a few buttons.
It's so simple to do.
And start connecting with readers.
So I'm connecting with thousands of readers.
It's so exciting from a revenue point of view.
There'll be those who say
we'll never really catch on.
All the evidence points to the fact that it already has.
After revolutionizing, the way we buy books
he transformed the way we read them as well.
The first major challenge to the Kindle supremacy
was when Apple introduced its iPad tablet.
But Bezos responded aggressively
cutting the price and adding new features.
From 2002 to 2007 his net worth quadrupled to $8.7 billion.
After the financial crisis of 2008, his net worth decreased.
But it Rose again in 2010.
In 2010, Amazon announced that sales of Kindle books
had surpassed those of hardcover books.
That same year, Amazon moved into making
its own television shows and movies,
with its Amazon Studios division.
From 1995 to 2018 Amazon net sales increased
from $510,000 to almost $233 billion.
In early 2013 and originally secret deal sent ripples
through the tech industry.
The CIA signed a huge $600 million contract
with Amazon Web Services for cloud computing.
This encouraged trust in Bezos.
If one of the world's largest intelligence services
trusted Amazon then others could trust it too.
In fact, it became one of the most trusted brands
in the world.
It's easy to put up a website, but it's hard
to make it really good.
And it's hard to make sure that the stuff arrives
in good condition on time as ordered.
So it's sort of the reliability of the end to end
customer experience.
Well certainly it'll get less fascinating and new
just you know, space shuttle launches don't get covered
the same way they used to.
And so the eCommerce is new.
It is important.
And that's why people are so interested in it.
But it will become an important part of the economy.
And one of the new things that's happening
is more and more people are figuring out how to sell online.
And it's getting easier and easier
for people to sell online.
Just yesterday, we announced amazon.com auctions,
and basically that makes it possible for millions of people
to sell their own stuff online at amazon.com at comm
where there's lots of traffic.
In October of that year,
it was recognized as the largest online shopping retailer
in the world.
On August 5th of that year, Bezos made headlines
when he announced his purchase of the Washington Post.
For $250 million in cash.
He made the newspaper digital and reinvented it
as a media company, which resulted in the paper
becoming profitable again in 2016,
for the first time in many years.
Bezos wealth shot up in 2014
as he entered the top 10 in Forbes list.
From then on it hasn't stopped to increase.
In 2015 Bezos biological father Jorgensen died age 70.
Without ever meeting his son.
He had never wanted to meet him.
And his relationship with him always remained estranged.
On November 24th, 2017.
He hit milestones when his net worth surpassed $100 billion.
After a hit record on Black Friday.
On March 6th 2018 Bezos officially seized
the number one spot on the list of the world's billionaires.
He unseated Bill Gates worth $90 billion at the time.
And officially became the richest person on the planet.
When net worth rose to $112 billion.
The biggest single year gain ever.
And what could the richest man in the world possibly want?
Apparently not a fancy car.
He still drives his Honda Accord.
Claiming it's a perfectly good car.
But how about a robot dog?
He made headlines that year when he was seen going on a walk
with a dog named Spot Mini.
He's the richest man in the world.
And he was raised here in South Florida.
What more could Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos possibly want?
Well, how about a robotic dog to walk here?
Here he is in a picture that he posted to Twitter
taking part in Boston Dynamics Invite Only
Robotics Conference.
The dog is named Spot Mini.
And if it looks familiar, it should because it went viral.
When it opened a door by itself last month.
Yeah, we reported on him before,
but the real dogs are so much fun.
Yes, Bezos is eccentric
and known for his weird habits.
Once he was spotted eating a cooked cockroach.
The happy billionaire is also known
for his distinctive laugh.
But back to Amazon in 2016, Amazon alone
at sold on average of more than 70 pounds worth
of goods to every man, woman and child in Britain.
More than half of all online retail sales.
The amount of traffic is outstanding.
Well, this is good news for Bezos.
It is less good for some others.
Small and independent bookshops and retailers
have been closing at an alarming rate.
Amazon's cheap prices have increasingly made trading
impossible for such small businesses.
Who can't compete with the giant.
More and more wonder, is Amazon good or bad?
It has been increasingly seen as a destructive force,
and an industry killer.
Crushing, all competition, sometimes unlawfully,
and it continues to reign supreme.
Today, there's a war between online and the high street.
Amazon has disrupted almost every aspect
of our modern lives.
Today, it has got the upper hand
being the largest internet company in revenue.
But founder Bezos claims that his company is not
what has crushed book selling.
He claims the future is happening to book selling.
Nearly 20% of all retail sales are now made online.
And that's growing.
An online only sales tax could be one way to end
the advantage internet shops have over bricks and mortar.
There was a time when sales of books
you could actually get your hands on
we're on a slippery slope.
It was all about the ebook, but this year the number
of physical copies being sold has actually risen.
And food writer and fiction author Prue Leith
isn't at all surprised.
When you talk to people who read books,
what they love is not just the story in the book.
It's the feel of the book isn't it?
It's not of course in a hard copy of a book.
You get the maps, the pictures and everything else
but also even if it's just a textbook
if it's a nicely printed hardback, it's lovely.
And I'm not surprised people have gone back to them.
It's a big day for bookstores
like this one in Chipping Norton.
Super Thursday sees around 400 hard backs
hitting the shelves, ready to be wrapped up for Christmas.
They stopped selling E readers due to a lack of interest
but many of their customers can see the appeal of both.
Personally I can't see an end to a physical book
because I think there are a piece of art as well.
It's great to have in your home in your bookshelf.
Always prefer the physical book.
Like going on holiday when you've got weight restrictions.
ePrinting will obviously increase and it's bound to.
But I don't think books will ever go away.
It may be that those who want an e-reader
already have one and don't feel the need to upgrade.
The question is whether they'll replace them.
When they finally give up the ghost.
Jet big, fast was Bezos mantra
that he developed to push Amazon forward.
And big, fast it got,
In fact critic's say that Amazon
much like Google and Facebook
has grown too large and powerful to be trusted.
Because of its enormous scale it became increasingly
on the radar of politicians and regulators.
From how it operates its power
to even its impact on the environment.
It is under scrutiny.
In March, 2018 Bezos was accused
by former us president Donald Trump of sales tax avoidance.
Misusing postal routes and anti-competitive practices.
Amazon share price fell by 9%,
in response to the president's negative comments.
Bezos has earned a reputation
for his aggressive business strategies
with little concern for public charity and social welfare.
But for him, this is what it takes
to have a successful business.
Bezos mysterious persona have drawn controversy
and public attention.
In May, 2014, the International Trade Union Confederation
named him the world's worst boss.
Super villain in the eyes of many.
He became a symbolically dominant business figure
in modern society.
However, he continues to look beyond it all,
and has grasped the idea
that not all big companies are loved.
In April, 2018 another scandal broke out.
The nonprofit group New Food Economy
revealed that Amazon was underpaying
and exploiting its employees.
They found that one third of Amazon workers in Arizona
and one 10th of Amazon workers in Pennsylvania and Ohio
relied on food stamps.
Criticisms continued in September, 2018.
When Senator Bernie Sanders also went after the retail giant
and attacked Amazon on the way it treated its workers
and is not paying enough taxes.
Referring to Bezos Blue Origin Company,
Bernie said, instead of attempting to explore Mars
or go to the moon, how about Jeff Bezos pays his workers
a living wage.
In response, Amazon pointed to the 130,000 jobs it created
in 2017 and said the calculation of its median salary
included part-time workers.
However, on October 2nd, 2018 Bezos announced
a company-wide wage increase,
which Sanders applauded.
It is clear that Bezos has built an empire,
but at what cost.
Another reason for his negative public image
is that the world's richest man
isn't well-known for his philanthropy.
Despite giving millions to support gay marriage
immigrant rights and fighting homelessness.
He was often characterized as being too cautious
with his wealth.
People noticed his relative lack of philanthropy
compared to other billionaires like Bill Gates.
Though he is the first person in modern history
to accumulate a fortune of over $100 billion.
His charitable history remains a mystery.
And is known donations are controversial as some doubt
his intentions and don't agree with his business tactics.
In 2018 Business Insider reported that Bezos
was the only one of the top five billionaires in the world
who had not signed the giving pledge.
An initiative created my Bill Gates
and Warren buffet that encourages wealthy people
to give away a majority of their wealth.
To this day he still hasn't signed it.
And it isn't completely clear as why.
But after the scandals, his image began to shift.
He began to spend his money more freely.
On June 15th, 2017, he posted a message on Twitter
asking for ideas for philanthropy.
I'm thinking about a philanthropy strategy
that is the opposite of how I mostly spend my time
working on the longterm.
At the time of the post Bezos lifetime spending
on charitable causes was estimated to be $100 million.
Many responded by asking Bezos
to pay higher wages to Amazon workers.
Bezos announced in September, 2018
that he would commit approximately $2 billion to fund
the Day One Fund to support homeless families
and early childhood education for low income communities,
In February, 2020 Bezos pledged $10 billion
to protect the planet and combat climate change
through the Bezos Earth Fund.
He also donated $100 million to food banks
through Feeding America during the COVID 19 pandemic.
In January, 2019.
After 25 years of marriage,
he and his wife McKinsey divorced.
The settlement was the largest ever recorded at $35 billion.
She went on to sign the giving pledge on her own.
So basis journey hasn't been without challenges.
But he's still managed to thrive.
In the first months of 2020, the global pandemic
shook the whole world's economy.
It is rare to see a company doing well
during a pandemic
that has left millions of people unemployed.
Though the tech industry has been doing remarkably well.
Even during a time of economic turmoil
Amazon grew with more customers than ever before.
As people all over the world sheltered at home
during the COVID-19 outbreak,
the online demand exploded
and Amazon doubled its profits since 2019.
The company has expanded rapidly to address the needs.
Pushing its workforce to more than 1 million people.
While physical stores continue to struggle.
On January 7th, 2021
with his wealth growing at an unprecedented rate,
Tesla CEO, Elon Musk overtook Bezos
as the world's richest person.
Seeing that he had done all he could for Amazon
and that he brought it to where it is today.
Bezos announced on February 2nd, 2021,
that he would step down as the CEO of Amazon,
sometime in late 2021
and transition into the role of executive chairman.
He is due to be replaced by Andy Jassy.
The chief of Amazon's cloud computing division.
Bezos has told his employees that this transition
would give him the time and energy
to focus on the Day One Fund,
the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, the Washington Post.
Bezos empire now stretches far and wide.
Amazon bought Whole Foods in 2017,
and also owns companies like Zappos and Twitch.
He has also invested in companies like Google, Twitter,
Uber among many others.
Jeff Bezos is brilliant, but controversial.
However, he not been afraid of failure,
and he encourages people to be bold.
What didn't fail him was his perseverance and patience.
The empire he built wasn't made in one day.
It took Amazon 26 years to get where it is today.
After investing in huge new areas like Amazon Prime,
Amazon Web Services, and most recently the Alexa
it's AI virtual assistant.
It continues to improve and innovate constantly.
Jeff Bezos is an eCommerce pioneer.
Money isn't what drives him, but passion
and a need to make the world better.
His successful business ventures have made him
one of the richest people in the world.
Amazon was developed on the principle of customer obsession,
as opposed to competitor obsession.
And with a focus growth and long-term vision
over net income.
Today with over a million employees all around the world,
Amazon also sells millions of different products.
From toilet paper to groceries, to electronics, fashion
and furniture.
Bezos declared, "I took the less safe path
to follow my passion.
And I am proud of that choice."
By combining optimism, motivation and grand visions.
He's become a legend of the tech industry.
From a little boy experimenting in his parents' garage
and son of a teen mom to risk-taking
and visionary tech Titan.
He is the example of modern society's
self-made billionaires.
He said that one of the great gifts in his life
was his mother and father.
And how they had been incredible role models for him.
He is proud of his mother for all the sacrifices
she made for herself and her family.
He thanked her in a tweet on mother's day, 2017.
I won the lottery with my mom.
Thanks for literally everything mom.
From him we learn that the simplest ideas are worth trying.
As Bezos has shown you can take a simple idea,
and turn it into something bigger.
Amazon has defied the odds.
After an extraordinary growth
in size, influence and ambition.
The multi-billion dollar empire revolutionized the industry.
Jeff Bezos success journey is inspiring.
This is a story of a young ambitious man
who forever changed the way we buy just about everything.
Growing a tiny business from his home garage
into the world's most successful and influential company
in modern history.
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