How much is a billion dollars? The figure, in addition to exorbitant, is even difficult to capture and forces to count every zero. In September of last year, Amazon, founded and directed by Jeff Bezos, reached precisely that valuation in the stock market.
The concept of e-commerce site is tiny to describe this company, which was initially a simple online bookstore and then was experiencing a metamorphosis through which it has been taking the form of diversity of products and services. Its growth was magnified from the cloud and is now "having fun" by disbursing millions to produce from gadgets to television series.
Like his company, Bezos also transformed. From entrepreneur listed as a "nerd", with an affable face, to billionaire of "tuned" biceps. Those who know him closely point out that in the daily dealings with his employees he is sarcastic until humiliation.
He left Wall Street, opted for books and is now the richest man on the planet with a fortune exceeding $ 120 billion. His childhood was between Albuquerque, New Mexico, place of birth; Houston, Texas, where his father worked for the Exxon oil company; and Miami, Florida, where he spent his adolescence.
Jackie Gise met Miguel Bezos four years after giving birth to Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen, whose biological father is Ted Jorgensen, from whom Jackie divorced at 17 months.
Miguel had arrived in Delaware in 1962 as part of Operation Peter Pan, which embarked 14,000 children from Cuba during the Fidel Castro regime. He adopted Jeff, giving him his last name, while Jorgensen lost total contact with his family.
"Is he still alive?" Jorgensen asked a Bloomberg journalist who found him working in a book store in Glendale, Arizona. Until 2013, he never knew that his son was the entrepreneur who earned billions selling items online.
His greatest virtue, says Jeff, is his inventiveness, which he learned from his grandfather. For 12 years he spent his summers at his ranch in Texas where he did all kinds of activities, from repairing mills to castrating bulls.
This rural community was so far from the city that they had to make their own items to fix equipment or cure cattle. In an interview he recalled that his grandfather came to improvise some needles using a wire, a blowtorch and a sharpener to operate one of his cows.
In addition to ingenuity, Bezos had a good academic average and that allowed him to enter Princeton University, one of the most prestigious in the United States. There he was inclined to study physics; However, it was difficult for him to keep up with his teammates and he ended up opting for a degree in electronic engineering and computing.
As soon as he finished his studies he started working in a telecommunications company. His only previous experience in the labor market had been in McDonald’s kitchen. He later served as product manager at Banker’s Trust, owned by Deutsche Bank since 1998, and became vice president at just 26 years old.
However, his restless spirit led him to seek new challenges. That's why he left his post and joined D.E. Shaw, a hedge fund where MacKenzie Tuttle, who would become his wife, worked as a research associate.
Amazon and the secret of its success
He was 30 years old when he made the decision to undertake. Long ago he had fantasized about founding a company that sent news by fax, something that never came to fruition.
"Are you sure?" Asked his father. The same question was asked by David Shaw, founder of the hedge fund he worked for. It was 1994 and I had heard that something called ‘Internet’ was growing by leaps and bounds: 2,300% per year, to be more exact.
He investigated how to get the juice of that "something" that was presented as a gold mine and found his inspirational muse in the sale of books. However, he did not find much echo in his proposal, since an online bookstore did not sound like a very promising business at that time.
But of course, visionary leaders have a hallmark that characterizes them: if they are convinced of something, they advance against all odds. Bezos is one of them, which is why he chose to take the risk, quit his job and rent a house in Bellevue, Washington, to give life to his venture.
First he thought of putting ‘Cadabra’ on him, although he ruled it out because in English it sounded a lot like ‘corpse’; Then the idea of calling it ‘Relentless’ (implacable, in English) came up and even bought the domain (when entering relentless.com, the search engine redirects to Amazon).
Finally, it was the Amazon River that inspired him to name his company and even appears on the initial Amazon logo. At that time, search engines indexed alphabetically, so he looked for a word that automatically placed him in the top positions.
His garage was his first headquarter, while the Barnes & Noble bookstore became his meeting room. Then, he moved a few miles west, to the city of Seattle.
From there he drove his Chevy to the mail to send all orders. To formally set up the business, he put $ 10,000 in his pocket, captured $ 1 million of seed capital among several investors who, in total, were left with a 20% shareholding, in addition to money saved by their parents.
Not everything was rosy: the offices were in an un glamorous area, sharing the street with pornography venues and a syringe exchange center for heroin addicts, nothing less. But that place served to have more limited expenses
Bezos avoided any kind of waste. He was so thrifty that instead of buying desks for him and his employees, he put legs on doors that were useless to form a table. Those who know him say that this custom was not lost: the current desk of the richest man in the world is built in the same way.
In 1995, Amazon had a daily average of 2,200 visits and 11 employees. The books were sold like hot cakes and the business grew by leaps and bounds. The following year he made his first round of investment in which he got an injection of US $ 8 million from the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.
However, the rise also brought him problems. Barnes & Noble identified it as a threat and, in addition to launching its own website to compete, sued Amazon for ‘misleading advertising’ claiming it was promoted as "the largest bookstore in the world" without having any physical space.
By 1997, the Bezos online store reached 80,000 daily visits and its sales were around US $ 150 million. That year the debut of the company on the stock exchange took place, with little more than three years of life: with a price of US $ 18 per share, it raised US $ 54 million and achieved a valuation of US $ 438 million.
In 1998 he began to diversify his product portfolio and began his very lucrative international expansion. However, the dotcom bubble left the company quite badly injured. He managed to survive, but Bezos had to fire a part of his staff to try to straighten the ship.
He did it based on new businesses, such as Amazon Web Services and Prime, and products such as the Kindle (eReaders) and Echo (smart speakers) lines. Also, buying all kinds of companies around the world, being Whole Foods the jewel in the crown: he paid $ 13 billion for the largest US naturist supermarket chain.
2014 was the last year in which the firm lost silver ($ 241 million). From then on, it went to positive ground. And those $ 147 million in sales were multiplying at an unthinkable pace, up to the almost $ 60 billion that Amazon recorded as revenue in the first quarter of this year.
In one of the conferences he offers in the United States, Bezos revealed his "five commandments" aimed at any professional who wants to prosper in what he does.
This is the "secret of success", in his words:
- Think a lot about customers: "The work of empathy must be full, the entrepreneur must immerse themselves in the minds of their consumers to understand their needs and provide the means"
- Be passionate: "Passion is the greatest ally or worst enemy of the human mind. You can blind it and push it to the precipice, you run the risk of getting frustrated and abandoning too soon. But, well channeled," the passion will make the obstacles disappear and you get everything you want. "
- Assume greater risks: "Thinking big involves risks that, for better or for worse, bring: they will turn those who fail into a more open, more competent and more prepared person. If your idea does not seem risky, it probably already exists."
- The fear is you: "The fear of failure is a huge obstacle that the mind plays bad passes. But you must always keep in mind that you can fail, and if that happens nothing happens"
- Wrong is not bad: "The idea can be wrong and also go wrong. In any case it will be an experiment, an experience. It may go wrong, but mistakes are another part of the journey to success."
Intimate bezos
Bezos temperament is famous among its employees. His collaborators often talk about his temper and how he throws daggers with his sarcastic comments. In the book The Everything Store by journalist Brad Stone, it is mentioned that he had to turn to a coach to help him temper his temper.
However, sometimes you can't with your genius, especially when you read the complaints that Amazon customers send directly to your mail. Although he does not respond, he sends the message to his executives and in the content he writes a unique and intimidating character: a question mark.
Your employees, upon receiving them, know that "the boss" is angry. The email that Bezos has available to all users is jeff@amazon.com and considers it the best way to be close to them.
"I still have an email box so that any client can write to me," he said in an interview. By redirecting the messages, "the question mark is my way of saying‘ why is this happening?", he says.
Receiving one of these emails became commonplace in the company, but nobody takes it lightly. Employees read them with fear and then resend it to the appropriate manager, who has the worst part left.
They usually leave everything they were doing and start researching the issue. In some cases, it means working overtime at night, even on weekends, to get an answer as soon as possible.
"When you send billions of packages a year you need good data. Do we deliver them on time in all cities? Do the packages have too much free space and are wasted?" Bezos analyzed at the time.
"I have noticed that when the anecdotes and the data do not match, it is the anecdotes that are right. At that time, there is something that does not work in the way of making the measurement. We call it obsession with the consumer, to contrary to the obsession with competitors, "he explained.
Obsession with detail and an eye on the future seems to be two mantras on which Amazon's boss moves. It's simple for Jeff: never think about today.
"It's hard for me to be dragged into the now. My friends sometimes congratulate me on the results of the last quarter, but I tell them that quarter was cooked three years ago. I'm thinking of the 2021 quarter," he said.
In the words of Warren Buffett: "What he did and what he is going to do is, perhaps, the most important achievement I have seen."
No one knows what goes through your head. Master and lord of secrecy when preparing projects, it is a great unknown where the company will go. Only something is clear and he exclaimed in an interview with Forbes: "The market has no restrictions."
The limit, for Bezos, is the world. And nothing stops him to conquer everything he imagines. Making mistakes was never and will not be a problem.
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