Jeff Bezos exhibited a very creative mind even as a child. He liked to tinker with things and figure out how they worked. When he was a toddler he dismantled his crib with a screwdriver. As a kid, Jeff turned his parents garage into his own private laboratory, rigging electrical contraptions that were far more advanced than his age. When Bezos was a teenager his family moved to Miami where he soon discovered and fell in love with computers. He started his first business in high school, the Dream Institute, a summer camp for fourth, fifth and sixth graders that focused on education. He was valedictorian of his high school class and he headed off to Princeton, graduating four years later summa cum laude in 1986. After graduation, Bezos worked on Wall Street, which is where he met his wife Mackenzie, who had also attended Princeton. He became the youngest vice president at D.E. Shaw in 1990 and was building a lucrative career in finance. But increasingly, Bezos felt distracted by the overwhelming explosion of growth that was being seen with this new fangled world wide web “Internet” phenomenon. In the early 90s, Bezos observed that Internet usage was increasing by roughly 2300% per year and he saw a massive opportunity in those stats. In a methodical and thorough fashion, he examined the top 20 mail order businesses, asking himself how those business could be run more efficiently on the Internet. Books became the logical answer. A catalog that covered books did not exist as it would be way too big to mail. But online books could exist as a huge and evolving database serving a limitless number of people. Bezos flew to Los Angeles the next day for the American Booksellers’ Convention in order to learn everything he could about the book business. What he found out was very intriguing: Most major book wholesalers already had electronic lists of their titles. All Bezos would need to do is set up a site on the Internet where people could search their stock and place orders with a click of the mouse. Bezos made more headlines worldwide on August 5, 2013, when he purchased The Washington Post for $250 million cash. The deal marks the end of the four-generation ownership of the paper by the Graham family. Bezos’ impact on the venerable newspaper and its other properties is as yet unknown, but given who he is and how he has conducted his life, it’s sure to be innovative, exciting, and deliver news in ways we haven’t even thought of yet. Bezos and his wife are very active philanthropically. In 2012, Bezos and his wife pledged $2.5 million to defend Washington’s gay marriage law. The contribution was one of the largest political contributions to the gay marriage campaign in the U.S.
