The Amazing Amazon Story—Jeff Bezos

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Jeff Bezos, the Internet entrepreneur and investor, is the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, the largest retailer on the World Wide Web.

In 2012, Bezos was named Businessperson of the Year by Fortune magazine. As of August 2013, he is listed as one of the wealthiest people in the world, with an estimated net worth of $28 billion.

“The company that started out as a few guys in a garage has now revolutionized the way we buy everything from books to toys to clothes,” says Sean Blanda, managing editor and producer of 99u (the research and education arm of the Behance Network).
  

“Amazon is now one of the 100 largest companies in America, mostly thanks to bold long term plays like the Amazon Kindle.”

According to Wikipedia, Bezos is known for his attention to business details.

As described by Portfolio.com, he “is at once a happy-go-lucky mogul and a notorious micro-manager; an executive who wants to know about everything from contract minutiae to how he is quoted in all Amazon press releases”.

Bezos founded Amazon.com in 1994 after making a cross-country drive from New York to Seattle, writing up the Amazon business plan on the way. He initially set up the company in his garage. He had left his “well-paying job” at a New York City hedge fund when “he learned about the rapid growth in Internet use”.

He was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 1999. In 2008 he was selected by U.S. News & World Report as one of America’s
best leaders.

Bezos was awarded an honorary doctorate in Science and Technology from Carnegie Mellon University in 2008.

In 2011 The Economist gave Bezos and Gregg Zehr an Innovation Award for the Amazon Kindle.

In 2013 Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post newspaper.