On the night of July 5th, Beijing time, a new day had just begun in the United States across the ocean. Amazon, located in Seattle, ushered in its historic moment on this day - founder Jeff Bezos ( Jeff Bezos officially steps down as CEO of the company, and at the same time, Andy Jassy will take over the baton of this trillion-dollar business empire. This day is also the 27th anniversary of Amazon’s founding.
In the writings of many people, Bezos is the founder of Amazon, the world's richest man, and the godfather of global e-commerce... Every name is resounding. At the same time, he is paranoid, eccentric, madman, etc. This is also the label attached to him.
Perhaps it is his paranoia and wild personality that have achieved Bezos’ business miracle. In just 27 years, Amazon, an e-commerce and technology empire with a market value of US$1.7 trillion, was built.
Today, when Amazon is at its peak, Bezos’ halo as the world’s richest man is retreating rapidly. However, from the front to the backstage, Bezos has not left.
After stepping down as CEO, Bezos will transition to serving as executive chairman of Amazon’s board of directors. Not only that, the world's richest man who "retired" at the age of 57 will not be content with living an ordinary life.
In the early 1990s, the proportion of American households owning computers was increasing year by year, network usage was growing at an annual rate of 2,300%, and the proportion of computer usage increased from 15% to 35%. The rapid development of the Internet has made many people in the rush of the times ready to take action, and Bezos is one of them.
In 1994, at the age of 30, Bezos resigned from his position as vice president of a hedge fund company and took all his savings to dive into the Internet. In a garage in Seattle, Bezos founded It bought Amazon and sold books with low unit prices and high demand as its main products on the Internet. What is surprising is that in just two months after Amazon was launched, it has sold books to more than 50 countries around the world, with a weekly turnover of US$20,000.
Three years later, in May 1997, Amazon was listed on Nasdaq with a market value of US$438 million. But in Bezos' logic, in the early days, Amazon only wanted to increase the number of users through all means, without caring about actual profits. So for a long time, Amazon's revenue was very small, and its profits were almost nonexistent.
In 1998, Amazon expanded its business beyond selling books and allowed third parties to sell goods on the platform. Not only that, adding music services, video tapes, and gifts, etc., also caused Amazon's sales to rise to $610 million from 148 million a year ago, an increase of 313%.
Bezos was not satisfied with this. After a small trial, he hoped that Amazon could become an e-commerce platform for buying everything, and every user could find anything they wanted on Amazon. By building logistics infrastructure and acquiring small e-commerce websites, Amazon gradually transformed from an online book platform into a retailer. Although Amazon did not establish physical stores at the time and was not subject to the inventory in the store, the Internet bubble crisis around 2000 also caused Amazon's stock price to plummet, falling by nearly 80%.
However, at that time, Bezos believed that as time went by, Amazon’s business model would become heavier and heavier, and it could gradually grow into a company that was put on a weighing machine and weighed its value over the long term. . In 2002, Amazon launched AWS (cloud computing service); in 2005, it launched Prime service (membership value-added plan), and products can be delivered within 2 days; in 2007, Amazon released the Kindle e-reader and began to provide FBA services to third-party sellers ( Logistics and distribution), and its diversified business layout allowed Amazon to avoid the financial crisis in 2008 and remained basically unchanged in the turbulent global economy.
Subsequently, Amazon began the "buy, buy, buy" process. According to relevant statistics, in less than 20 years, Bezos has madly acquired 76 companies, ranging from hard technology, cloud computing to large retailers, etc., and has been included in his bag one by one.
In 2012, Amazon acquired Kiva Systems (now renamed Amazon Robotics) for US$780 million. The company is mainly used to develop and manufacture robot systems for various purposes, such as current unmanned delivery and other products. The company; acquired Twitch.tv for US$970 million in 2014; acquired PillPack for US$1 billion in 2018; others include Goodreads, Alexa Internet and Internet Movie Database (IMDb), etc.
But the most worthwhile. It should be noted that in 2017, Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market for a sky-high price of US$42 per share, with a total price of approximately US$13.7 billion, and paid it all in cash. On that day, Amazon's share price rose by 2.95% to US$992.58. 27.53% to $42.16, a new high in 2 years
Although after the acquisition, Amazon warned investors about the possible risks of failed acquisitions and stated that actual results may be materially different and inconsistent. Certainty. But in 2018, Bezos topped the Forbes 400 list for the first time with a net worth of $160 billion, up from $1.6 billion when he first graced the cover 20 years ago.
In 2020, a sudden epidemic also caused Amazon’s stock price to increase significantly. According to Amazon’s fourth quarter financial report of fiscal year 2020, Amazon’s fourth quarter revenue was 1255.6. billion, single-quarter revenue exceeded US$120 billion for the first time in history, exceeding market expectations of US$119.7 billion; net profit was US$7.222 billion, an increase of 121% from US$3.268 billion in the same period last year; net sales were US$125.555 billion, a year-on-year increase of US$125.555 billion. During the same period, Bezos's personal assets increased by 44% to US$87.437 billion. With a net income of US$76.9 billion, he remains the world's richest man with US$192 billion. During the same period, Amazon's valuation increased by approximately 32%. It is reported that Bezos's basic annual salary in 2020 is US$81,840, as well as US$1.6 million in other compensation. p>
In July 2021, the 57-year-old Bezos officially stepped down as CEO of Amazon. On the eve of his resignation, Amazon announced at the end of June that it would acquire MGM, a famous Hollywood film production company, for US$8.45 billion. More than 4,000 movies and 17,000 hours of TV content will be acquired by Amazon. Amazon is launching an attack on Netflix and Hulu. Premium content may become Amazon’s next focus.
As of now, Bei is. Zoss’s net worth is US$197 billion (approximately 1.27 trillion yuan), which mainly includes his Amazon shares and other assets.
On January 9, 2019, Bezos, 54, announced his divorce from his 48-year-old wife MacKenzie. At the peak of Amazon's development, this business couple, who had been working hand in hand for 25 years, walked away from each other.
Bezos and his wife are both Princeton University graduates, and they married in 1993. In many public reports, they are like-minded partners with equally outstanding abilities and particularly complementary personalities.
Bezos also often mentions his wife's support for his career in public, saying that he would give up his job on Wall Street in the second year of his marriage to found the "Internet bookstore" Amazon, but although his wife did not Understand what the internet is and still support yourself.
Many years ago, the two attended the graduation ceremony of their alma mater. In his speech, Bezos recalled his wife's support for his entrepreneurship: I have always wanted to be an inventor, and my wife told me that I should Give it a try.
The marriage between Bezos and his wife MacKenzie came to an end, and one of the “most expensive divorces in history” was born.
In the end, MacKenzie obtained about 4% of the company’s shares (1/4 of the Amazon shares held by the two ***), which was worth more than 35 billion US dollars (approximately RMB 250 billion) at the time. , Amazon’s market value at that time was US$890.5 billion, and now this number has reached an astonishing US$1.7 trillion. Bezos received shares of the Washington Post, the space exploration company Blue Origin, which are jointly owned by the two, and three-quarters of Amazon's shares (12.1%).
It is worth noting that MacKenzie gave Bezos the voting rights of all their shares to continue to support Bezos in his contributions to these incredible companies and teams. This means Bezos will continue to exercise sole voting power over Amazon.
Documents submitted by Amazon to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on April 4, 2019, local time, showed that Bezos informed the company that after the court approved the divorce judgment, MacKenzie would own Amazon Distribution The stock holds about 4%, making it Amazon's third-largest shareholder, behind Bezos (12.1%) and institutional shareholder Vanguard Group (6.24%).
According to Forbes’ calculations at the time, after the divorce, MacKenzie would become the third richest woman in the world, second only to Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, the chairman of L’Oréal. ) and Walmart’s Alice Walton, who are worth $52.9 billion and $45 billion respectively.
The property division brought about by the divorce has not shaken Bezos’ status as the world’s richest man. Based on the stock price at that time, his Amazon stock alone was worth US$107.75 billion. If the Washington Post and Blue Origin were included, Bezos's net worth would exceed US$110 billion. Ranked second is Bill Gates, whose personal wealth is approximately US$99.5 billion.
After her divorce, MacKenzie changed her name from MacKenzie Bezos to MacKenzie Scott and became passionate about charity. Earlier this year, Forbes reported that Mackenzie Scott had donated shares worth US$5.83 billion in the past year, ranking first in U.S. charitable donations last year.
After stepping down as CEO, Bezos remains Amazon's executive chairman, focusing on new projects and initiatives.
On the 7th of last month, Bezos stated on social media that he would participate in the first manned space flight of Blue Origin's "New Shepard" as a passenger on July 20th.
"Blue Origin" is a space exploration technology company owned by Bezos. The company announced last month that it will conduct its first "passenger" flight on July 20 this year to provide space tourism services.
It is reported that New Shepard consists of two parts: a rocket and a 6-seater crew capsule, both of which are reusable. On July 20, in addition to Bezos himself, he was accompanied by his brother Mark Bezos, 82-year-old female pilot Wally Fink, and a man who won the spaceship ticket through bidding for US$28 million. "Mysterious Man".
The New Shepard rocket has successfully conducted more than a dozen test flights without passengers. In previous test flights, the altitude of the capsule reached 340,000 feet (approximately more than 100 kilometers). The capsule has huge windows that allow passengers to see the outside landscape. Passengers will remain in weightlessness for several minutes before returning to Earth.
Interestingly, just after Bezos announced that he would conduct space travel, American netizens launched a petition called "Don't let Bezos return to Earth." So far, the event has received support from more than 150,000 netizens.
Bezos challenged space and met "Iron Man" Musk, who is also obsessed with aerospace, on the same track. The two had conflicts many times while pursuing their respective space dreams.
According to media reports, in the early days, the relationship between the two was not as tense as it is now. In 2004, they had dinner together to exchange views on space exploration.
The two clashed for the first time in 2013 over the right to use a launch platform at the Kennedy Space Center in the United States. Musk's SpaceX eventually won and obtained a 20-year lease contract for the platform. In 2014, the two went to court again over the patent for reusable rocket technology, and the conflict deepened. Starting in 2015, the two began to accuse each other on social platforms, and the competition between the two teams in space exploration became increasingly fierce.
In addition to the space project, charitable foundations, the Washington Post, etc. are also new ventures of Bezos.
It is reported that the Day One Charitable Fund is a US$2 billion charitable fund established by Bezos in 2018 to help homeless people and establish non-profit preschools in low-income communities. . The Bezos Earth Fund was established in February 2020 and plans to invest US$10 billion. The funding will be used to help scientists, activists, nonprofits and other groups protect the environment and combat climate change.
Bezos purchased the Washington Post for $250 million in 2013. He once said that "I actually know nothing about the newspaper industry," but he hopes to use Internet experience and technology to help the Washington Post undergo digital transformation. In the time since, he has provided both funding to The Post and software engineers from Amazon.
No one is perfect, and Bezos has his share of controversy.
Earlier, Bezos was accused of not being charitable. Later, the Day One Fund was established and donated US$97.5 million to 24 organizations across the United States in 2018; in November 2019, it donated US$98.5 million to 32 organizations. However, some people believe that these donations are only a drop in the bucket compared to his wealth.
Bezos believes that his main contribution to mankind is not reflected in the amount of charitable donations. Investing in space infrastructure will contribute to human civilization and development.
After Bezos acquired the "Washington Post", he continued to increase investment, providing both funds and Amazon software engineers. However, Trump accused him of acquiring the Washington Post to gain political influence and obtain favorable tax policies for Amazon.
In addition, Amazon’s setbacks in the Chinese market are also areas where Bezos has been controversial. In April 2019, Amazon officially issued a notice that starting from July 18, 2019, Amazon China will stop third-party seller services on the Amazon China website. At that time, some market analysts said that Amazon's withdrawal was because its Chinese e-commerce business was neither profitable nor growing. China’s local e-commerce companies have huge advantages over Amazon.
Liu Qiangdong once said in Wu Xiaobo's "Ten Years and Twenty" program that he found that Amazon's core weakness is the lack of trust of American managers in the Chinese team. This trust issue pushed Amazon's Chinese e-commerce business to failure.
In the era of Bezos at the helm, Amazon is already in a position of dominance, but it also faces many challenges.
For a giant like Amazon, the lack of innovation and the disease of big companies deserve attention. It is reported that in order to combat this tendency, Bezos promoted the Day1 work spirit within the company and always maintain it like the first day of starting a business.
Like other giants, Amazon also faces antitrust pressure.
On June 3, 2019, the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee announced an antitrust investigation into four giant technology companies, including Amazon.
In addition, Amazon also faces many controversies and accusations about working conditions, including issues such as employment environment, worker protection, wages and benefits.