The 2,300% figure changed everything. While working at hedge fund D.E. Shaw in 1994, he noticed web usage growing at that rate month over month and did what almost no Wall Street analyst would: he quit. The plan got written on a cross-country drive from New York to Seattle. The company was almost called Cadabra, which sounded too much like 'cadaver,' so it became Amazon instead. He sold books from a Bellevue garage, cleared $20,000 a week within two months, and within 30 days was shipping to 45 countries. The timing was everything, but the willingness to bet a career on a spreadsheet was the actual move.
Stepping down as Amazon CEO in 2021 didn't slow the controversy. In 2024, he blocked the Washington Post editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris, triggering staff resignations including opinion editor-at-large Robert Kagan. The paper he bought for $250 million in 2013 has lost readers and credibility on his watch. Blue Origin has absorbed over $7.5 billion of his own money and still trails SpaceX by a wide margin. In 2025, he sent Lauren Sanchez to the edge of space alongside Katy Perry and Gayle King on a Blue Origin rocket, which played exactly as you'd expect.
Born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen, he took the name of his Cuban immigrant stepfather Miguel Bezos, who fled to the U.S. at 15. His first job was flipping burgers at McDonald's for $2.69 an hour. At Princeton, he started as a physics major until a classmate's math skills convinced him to switch to electrical engineering and computer science, which in retrospect was the most consequential course correction in retail history. He also funded the recovery of Apollo 11's F-1 rocket engines from the Atlantic Ocean floor in 2013, which is either an extraordinarily expensive hobby or a flex so pure it loops back around to admirable.