Jeff Bezos, Founder of AMAZON – From Zero to the Richest Man on Earth

Jeff Bezos and his cosmic ambitions. From zero to the richest man on Earth

Not as charismatic as Steve Jobs, not as eccentric as Elon Musk, and not as brash as Mark Zuckerberg, and yet his name is on everyone's lips around the world. He gets up only when he has slept enough, drives a 20-year-old Honda Accord, and always eats breakfast with his family. He also doesn't have a housekeeper, so he washes his own porridge bowl. Sascha Stockem, founder of the Sopot-based Nethansa, which specializes in comprehensive sales support on Amazon, talks about the private life and career of the world's richest man.

What does Jeff Bezos do in his free time?

What does Jeff Bezos do in his free time?

Looking at his everyday life, nothing out of the ordinary, really – he is the richest man on Earth, an innovator, and the owner of the world's most valuable company. Jeff Bezos is a man so extraordinary in his ordinariness that he is unique. Is his success a good lesson for the millions of workaholics who are convinced that the recipe for success is to work more than others and to compensate for lost hours of sleep with liters of coffee? The owner of the Amazon brand is the antihero of a business fairy tale whose pages are filled with Excel spreadsheets and stock quotes. His attitude contradicts many ideas encoded in global culture about what the strategy of a successful person should look like.

Jeff Bezos is not the businessman we identify with a Hollywood CEO, such as Jordan Belfort, played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the controversial yet true-story-inspired "The Wolf of Wall Street." What's more, there is a good chance that if you passed him in the subway, you wouldn't even notice him in a crowd of similar slender, bald men whom nature robbed of thick manes and did not spare wrinkles and imperfections.

Nevertheless, he achieved gigantic business success that will forever write him into the history not only of the United States but of the entire world. Until recently, we could also speak of prosperity in his family life, but at the beginning of the year, 2 days after Amazon became the world's most valuable company (by stock market capitalization), the Bezoses announced via Twitter that they planned to separate. After the divorce, MacKenzie Bezos received $38 billion, becoming the fifth richest woman in the world. This was made possible by just a portion of her husband's astronomical fortune.

Did these events cast a shadow over the American's business genius and cause any professional burnout? Quite the opposite! Jeff Bezos is like a well-trained hunting dog – he always finds the right scent, regardless of the circumstances. That is why he attacks us almost constantly with new ideas that will change not only the way we shop but also the way we live.

A futurist, or a man who lives for tomorrow?

A futurist, or a man who lives for tomorrow?

You should not judge the Amazon CEO's innovativeness by his appearance, because, together with his lifestyle, it has no influence whatsoever on Bezos's creativity. This man has enormous reserves of faith in his own abilities and a very open mind that allows him to succeed, but also to carry out the boldest projects that at first glance seem impossible to implement.

In September 2018, Amazon was valued at $1 trillion for the first time. As the founder of the world's largest e-commerce platform and Blue Origin, and the owner of The Washington Post, Bezos did not reach this point in his career without certain skills in identifying and developing ideas that are called breakthrough or game-changing.

To find the source of his success, we must look deep into Bezos's personality; then we will better understand who the billionaire is and what makes him so exceptional. In an interview, he once said: "When you achieve success, don't rest on your laurels. Friends congratulate me after quarterly financial results are announced and say: Good job, great quarter." – said the Amazon CEO. "And I reply: Thank you, but I earned this quarter 3 years ago. Now I'm working on the quarter that will happen only in 2021."
This ability allowed him to build an empire thanks to which the boundaries of international trade have been forgotten. This man approaches new ideas with great enthusiasm, ideas that expand his sales platform with entirely new functionalities. What's more, Bezos has taken a liking to a very bold management model, in which he is not afraid to implement ideas that touch many dimensions of the business. From the logistics zone, through user experience, to completely abstract concepts that until now existed only in the minds of dreamy futurists.

Does he recognize trends or set them?

Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bezos, has a lot in common with Elon Musk, the founder of the automotive brand Tesla. Both run businesses that constantly attract media attention, with journalists eagerly awaiting the latest reports from their research and development departments. Something else connects them too – a passion for travel beyond Earth's atmosphere. The two men unwittingly compete over which of them will become the next Steve Jobs, a visionary and symbol of the IoT revolution. This is the first such case in human history when company presidents achieve a status and recognition similar to pop culture stars. Perhaps the fictional character Tony Stark, who in films and comics defends world peace while also being a brilliant scientist and the president of a family corporation, has influenced this. In the case of this hero, his superpowers are money and technology.

These are not the only similarities – both of them carry out many projects focused on the distant future, ahead of the needs of the present. While Musk's ideas cover everything, including computer interfaces for your brain, Bezos's plans seem to focus on developing the world's largest online store.

Crazy does not mean impossible

Lesson no. 1 from Jeff Bezos: nothing is too crazy to abandon its implementation. November 2007, a company specializing in retail book sales, where the CEO position is held by a man who knows nothing about technology, decides to introduce a device that will forever change the way we think about books and will become a turning point in Amazon's history. The PlayStation 2 still reigns on the market, the pocket of a typical Smith is filled with a Nokia N95 with a 3-inch screen, and Apple's iPhone, although sensational, just 3 months after its debut was more of a compromise-ridden and flawed curiosity than a real threat to the ossified GSM market.

At that moment, Amazon officially presents to the world the Kindle – an e-book reader that provides access to 90,000 books in digital form. Sounds like a joke? As history has shown, there was only one person laughing. Bezos, seeing how just a few hours after the premiere the entire stock had sold out, already knew that – at least image-wise – it had been a bullseye. The product instantly won consumers' hearts and became as iconic as Apple's iPod. Today, when thinking about an e-book reader, everyone pictures a device from Amazon; this product has become the Coca-Cola of technology. From the moment it was introduced, no one had an e-book reader, only a Kindle – even if it was produced by another brand.

Nearly 20 years in technology is almost prehistory, but the passing years and technological progress did not discourage the ambitious president from carrying out further daring projects.
A postman on the pavement

In 2016, news spread around the world that Amazon had completed its first drone delivery: the package contained a TV attachment – Amazon Fire TV – and a bag of popcorn. Why did that particular treat reach a British customer? Meanwhile, Bezos's company created its own video streaming service, which was meant to dethrone cable television once and for all and threaten the position of cinemas. According to Reuters, the global video streaming market will reach $84 billion by 2022, with nearly 20% average annual growth between 2015 and 2022.

The drone delivery service was named Prime Air, derived from the Prime service that Amazon customers can purchase if they want special discounts and free delivery within 2 days. The robotic flying postman will deliver lightweight packages even within 30 minutes of placing an order. The drone will land at a designated location and then open a hatch through which it will drop the shipment.

But that's not all! Amazon is also testing how a drone can drop a package from above to the ground using a parachute. At the same time, it will track its flight until it reaches the designated place, thereby protecting the shipment from getting stuck in a tree or on a fence.
As if that weren't enough, Bezos's company is planning an equally crazy project for storing and holding packages before delivery. The warehouse will be right above our heads, where a large airship will float high in the air and serve as a mobile distribution center.

If that were not enough reason to start a war between the postal service and Amazon, the giant is still testing the tolerance and patience of couriers. For most of this year, the Amazon Scout pilot program has been running, which assumes that the e-commerce giant will create its own fleet of small delivery vehicles the size of a portable fridge. A friendly blue robot roamed residential neighborhoods in the suburbs of Seattle to deliver packages. The company claims that the robots are able to move safely along streets and handle urban obstacles well, such as trash cans, skateboards, or lounge chairs. This is another step toward the logistical dominance of Bezos's company, which is concerned about the sleeplessness of logistics firms and does everything to eliminate the critical point of Amazon's offer, namely the supply chain, over which the giant does not have full control.

Hello, Musk? I was first

Hello, Musk? I was first

The figure of the eccentric rich man Elon Musk often appears in the context of passenger space travel. However, it may turn out that the owner of Tesla will not be the first to offer trips beyond Earth's atmosphere.

Jeff Bezos has the same audacious plan; although he is not interested in conquering Mars, he plans to offer suborbital rides using the New Shepard space capsule system. Through his aerospace company Blue Origin, the Amazon CEO hopes to test pilots as early as this year, and the launch of the service is planned for 2020. Such an ambitious plan requires gigantic capital, but determination and faith in success are certainly Bezos's strengths, as he devotes himself so much to his space plans that he declared he intends to sell $1 billion worth of Amazon shares annually in order to cover the costs associated with launching this service at Blue Origin.

As it turned out, that amount was insufficient, and just a month ago the head of the world's largest e-commerce platform decided to double the stake and sold shares with a total valuation of $1.8 billion. In a recent interview for CBS Evening News, when asked why he invests so much in Blue Origin, Bezos said: "I think it's [exploring outer space] important for this planet. I believe it is important for the development of future generations. It's something I care about. And it's something I've dreamed about all my life."

Unlike Elon Musk, Bezos believes that there is no plan B for humanity and that instead of focusing on saving our planet, we must focus on exploring space and searching for an alternative place of residence. The Amazon CEO predicts a future in which Earth's industry could be conducted in space, while Earth would be used by people only for residential purposes. He admits, however, that this change will take "generations."

You say Bezos, you think determination

Jeff Bezos is a visionary the likes of which are rare in modern business history. Every era has its hero; for previous generations it was Rockefeller, Edison, or Ford. Bezos is a patient man who does not shy away from the bitter taste of failure. The best example is his enormous persistence in bringing the Kindle to market, even though Amazon had negligible experience in creating hardware. He justified the decision to produce the device by saying that the company must strengthen itself if it intends to pursue its previously chosen long-term development strategy. And although the Kindle never truly became a commercial hit, and Amazon Fire turned out to be a total failure, the experience gained through these projects ultimately led to the creation of Alexa – artificial intelligence that is probably the most important invention in the field of human-computer interaction since Apple introduced the iPad and iPhone to the market.
So is there one simple recipe for success? It turns out there is, at least according to Bezos. What stands behind his success is the most important lesson he received from life: "Always show the willingness and ability to try new things, draw conclusions, and check what the people around you really want," and he adds: "It really pays off, even in everyday life." So the next time you face a completely new problem – don't give up, be like the founder of Amazon.

About the author

Sascha Stockem is the founder and CEO of Nethansa, which provides services that increase sales on the Amazon platform, through which he introduces Polish and German companies to new, promising markets. Sascha has more than six years of experience in professional selling on Amazon, where together with his team he generated a total of more than PLN 100 million in turnover. He is a speaker at many European conferences, an e-commerce industry expert, and the originator of the Clipperon system. Previously, for nearly eight years, he developed his own retail chain and was involved in wholesale trade with such chains as TK Maxx, Obi, Kik, Tedi, Orlen, Jawoll & Woolworth.

Summary

Jeff Bezos built the Amazon empire, valued at $1 trillion, thanks to patience and a vision of the future that is years ahead of the market – as he himself admits, he was already working on the quarter of 2021 while others were celebrating current results. His determination is visible in projects such as the Kindle reader, which revolutionized the e-book market, and the experimental Prime Air drone deliveries.

Bezos also does not shy away from cosmic ambitions – through Blue Origin he plans suborbital tourist flights, selling $1.8 billion worth of Amazon shares to finance them. Unlike Elon Musk, he does not believe in a "plan B" for humanity, focusing instead on space exploration as a complement to life on Earth.