In many people's pen, Bezos is the founder of Amazon, the richest man in the world and the godfather of global e-commerce ... Every name is loud, and paranoia, eccentricity, madness and so on are also labels attached to him.
Perhaps it is paranoia and wild personality that makes Bezos's business miracle. In just 27 years, Amazon, an e-commerce and technology empire with a market value of10.7 trillion US dollars, has been built.
Now, when Amazon is in the limelight, Bezos' aura of the world's richest man is rapidly receding. However, from front to back, Bezos did not leave.
After stepping down as CEO, Bezos will become the executive chairman of Amazon's board of directors. Not only that, the 57-year-old "retired" world's richest man will not want to live an ordinary life.
In the early 1990s, the proportion of American households owning computers increased year by year, and the network usage was increasing by 2300% every year, and the proportion of computer usage rose from 15% to 35%. With the rapid development of the Internet, many people who are in the torrent of the times are eager to move, and Bezos is one of them.
1994, then 30-year-old Bezos resigned as the vice president of a hedge fund company and plunged into the internet with all his savings. In a garage in Seattle, Bezos founded Amazon, which sells books with low unit price and large demand as the main products on the Internet. Surprisingly, Amazon sold books to more than 50 countries around the world in just two months, with a weekly turnover of $20,000.
Three years later, in May, 1997, Amazon was listed on Nasdaq with a market value of 438 million US dollars. But in Bezos' logic, the early Amazon only wanted to increase the number of users by all means, regardless of the actual profit, so that for a long time, Amazon's revenue was very Weibo and its profit was almost zero.
1998, Amazon expanded its business beyond selling books and allowed third parties to sell goods on the platform. Moreover, the addition of music services, videos and gifts also increased Amazon's sales from $6.5438+48 million a year ago to $6.65438+03 million, an increase of 365.438+03%.
Bezos is not satisfied with this. After a small trial, he hopes that Amazon can become an e-commerce platform that buys everything, and every user can find anything he wants on Amazon. Building logistics infrastructure and acquiring small e-commerce websites, Amazon gradually changed from an online book platform to a retailer. Although Amazon did not establish a physical store at that time, it was not restricted by the inventory in the store, but the Internet bubble crisis around 2000 also caused Amazon's share price to plummet all the way, with a drop of nearly 80%.
However, Bezos believed that with the passage of time, 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 for a long time. In 2002, Amazon launched AWS (Cloud Computing Service); Prime service was launched in 2005, and the product can be delivered within 2 days. In 2007, Amazon released the Kindle e-reader and began to provide FBA services (logistics and distribution) to third-party sellers. The diversified business layout allowed Amazon to escape the financial crisis in 2008 and remain basically unchanged in the turbulent global economy.
Subsequently, Amazon began the process of "buy buy Buy". According to relevant statistics, in less than 20 years, Bezos has acquired 76 companies, from hard technology, cloud computing to large retailers, etc., all of which have been included in the bag.
In 20 12, Amazon bought Kiva Systems for $780 million (now renamed Amazon robotics), which is mainly used to develop and manufacture robot systems for various purposes, such as unmanned distribution and other products of the company; 20 14, Twitch.tv was acquired for $970 million; In 20 18, PillPack was acquired by 10 billion dollars; Others include Goodreads, Alexa Internet and Internet Movie Database (IMDb) and so on.
However, the most noteworthy thing is that in 20 17, Amazon bought Whole Foods Supermarket at a sky-high price of $42 per share and a total price of about $13.7 billion, and paid the full cash. On the same day, Amazon shares rose 2.95% to $992.58. The share price of Whole Foods Supermarket soared 27.53% to $ 42. 16, a two-year high.
Although after the acquisition, Amazon warned investors of the possible risks caused by the failure of the acquisition, and said that there may be significant differences and uncertainties in the actual results. However, in 20 18, Bezos topped the Forbes 400 rich list for the first time with a net asset of16 billion dollars. Twenty years ago, when Bezos first appeared on the cover of Forbes, he had only $1600 million in assets.
In 2020, a sudden epidemic also caused Amazon's share price to rise sharply. According to Amazon's financial report for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2020, Amazon's revenue in the fourth quarter was $65.438+025.56 billion, which exceeded the market expectation of $65.438+065.438+097 billion for the first time in history. The net profit was $7.222 billion, up from $3.268 billion in the same period last year121%; Net sales reached $6543.8+$025.555 billion, up 44% from $87.437 billion in the same period last year.
Bezos' worth is also rising. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, as of June 65438+February 3, 20201,Bezos' personal assets increased by $76.9 billion, ranking the richest in the world with $ 192 billion, while Amazon's valuation increased by about 32% in the same period. It is reported that in 2020, Bezos' basic annual salary will be 8 1.84 USD, and other salaries will be 654,380+0.6 million USD.
In July, 20021,Bezos, 57, officially stepped down as CEO of Amazon. On the eve of his departure, Amazon announced at the end of June that it would acquire MGM, a famous Hollywood film production company, for $8.45 billion, which means that more than 4,000 movies and17,000 hours of TV content will be owned by Amazon in the future. Amazon is here to attack Netflix and Hulu, and high-quality content may become Amazon's next force point.
Up to now, Bezos' net assets are 65.438+0.97 billion US dollars (about 654.38+0.27 trillion RMB), mainly including Amazon stocks and other assets held by him.
2019 65438+1On October 9, Bezos, then 54, announced his divorce from his wife Mackenzie, 48. At the highlight of Amazon's development, the business couple who have cooperated for 25 years turned against each other.
Bezos and his wife are both graduates of Princeton University, and they got married in 1993. In many public reports, they are like-minded partners, with equally outstanding abilities and particularly complementary personalities.
Bezos often mentioned 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 create Amazon, an "internet bookstore", and his wife still supported herself although she didn't know what the Internet was.
Many years ago, when they attended the graduation ceremony of their alma mater, Bezos recalled his wife's support for starting a business: I always wanted to be an inventor, and my wife told me I should give it a try.
The marriage between Bezos and his wife Mackenzie came to an end, and a "most expensive divorce in history" was born.
In the end, Mackenzie acquired about 4% of the company's shares (65,438+0.4 of Amazon's shares held by the two), worth more than 35 billion US dollars (about 250 billion yuan). At that time, the market value of Amazon was $890.5 billion, and now this figure has reached an astonishing10.7 trillion. Bezos, on the other hand, got all the shares of Washington post and space exploration company Blue Origin, and 3/4 shares of Amazon (12. 1%).
It is worth noting that Mackenzie gave Bezos the right to vote on all his shares, in order to continue to support Bezos to contribute to these incredible companies and teams. This means that Bezos will continue to exercise Amazon's only right to vote.
According to the documents submitted by Amazon to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on April 4, 20 19 local time, Bezos told the company that after the court approved the divorce judgment, Mackenzie would own about 4% of Amazon's tradable shares and become the third largest shareholder of Amazon, second only to Bezos (12. 1%) and institutions.
According to Forbes' calculation at that time, after the divorce, Mackenzie would become the third richest woman in the world, after francoise meyers, the chairman of L 'Oré al, and Christy Walton of Wal-Mart, whose worth was $52.9 billion and $45 billion respectively.
The division of property brought about by divorce has not shaken Bezos' position as the richest man in the world. Based on the stock price at that time, the value of Amazon stock held by him alone was $654.38+$00.775 billion. If Washington post and "Blue Origin" are added, Bezos' net worth will exceed $654.38+065.438+000 billion. The second place is Bill Gates, with a personal wealth of about 99.5 billion US dollars.
After the divorce, Mackenzie changed his name from Mackenzie Bezos to Mackenzie Scott, and he was keen on public welfare. Earlier this year, according to Forbes, Mackenzie Scott donated $5.83 billion worth of stocks in the past year, ranking first among charitable donations in the United States last year.
After stepping down as CEO, Bezos remains the executive chairman of Amazon, focusing on new projects and initiatives.
On the 7th of last month, Bezos said on social media that he would take part in the first manned space flight of "New Shepard" of Blue Origin as a passenger on July 20th.
"Blue Origin" is a space exploration technology company owned by Bezos. Last month, the company announced that it would conduct its first "passenger" flight on July 20 this year to provide space tourism services.
It is reported that the new Shepard is composed of two parts: the rocket and the six-seat crew cabin, both of which can be reused. On July 20th, besides Bezos himself, he was accompanied by his brother Mark Bezos, the 82-year-old female pilot Wally Fink, and the "mystery man" who won a $28 million spaceship ticket through bidding.
The new Shepard rocket has successfully carried out more than ten test flights without passengers. In the previous test flight, the altitude of the capsule reached 340,000 feet (about 100 km). The capsule has huge windows, so passengers can see the scenery outside. Passengers will stay in weightlessness for a few minutes before returning to Earth.
Interestingly, just after Bezos announced that he would travel in space, American netizens organized a petition called "Don't let Bezos return to Earth". Up to now, the activity has been supported by more than 6.5438+0.5 million netizens.
Bezos challenged space and met the "Iron Man" Musk who was also obsessed with space on the same track. In the process of pursuing their space dream, the two had a lot of friction.
According to media reports, in the early days, the relationship between them was not as tense as it is now. They also had dinner together in 2004 to exchange views on space exploration.
In 20 13, the two men clashed for the first time because they competed for the right to use a launch platform at Kennedy space center in the United States. Musk's space exploration technology company finally won and won a 20-year lease contract for the platform. In 20 14, the two men went to court for the patent of reusable rocket technology, and the contradiction deepened. From 20 15, the two teams began to blame each other on social platforms, and the competition between the two teams in space exploration became increasingly fierce.
In addition to space projects, charitable funds, Washington Post, etc. It is also Bezos' new career.
It is reported that the Day One Charity Fund was established by Bezos in 20 18 with a scale of 2 billion US dollars, which was used to help homeless people and establish non-profit preschool classes in low-income communities. Bezos Earth Fund was established in February 2020, with a planned investment of $654.38+000 billion. This fund will be used to help scientists, activists, non-profit organizations and other groups to protect the environment and cope with climate change.
Bezos 20 13 bought Washington post for $250 million. He once said that "I know nothing about the newspaper industry", but he hoped that he could use the experience and technology of the Internet to help Washington post carry out digital transformation. Since then, he has provided funds for the Post and software engineers for Amazon.
No one is perfect without gold, and Bezos is sometimes controversial.
Previously, Bezos was accused of not doing charity. Later, the Day One Fund was established and donated 97.5 million dollars to 24 organizations in the United States in 20 18. 20 19 10, 165438+ donated 98.5 million dollars to 32 organizations. However, there are also voices that these donations are only 90 cents relative to Niu Yi's wealth.
Bezos believes that his main contribution to mankind is not reflected in the amount of charitable donations, and investing in space infrastructure will contribute to human civilization and development.
After Bezos acquired Washington post, he continuously increased his investment and provided funds and software engineers for Amazon. However, Trump accused Washington Post of gaining political influence and favorable tax policies for Amazon.
In addition, Amazon's frustration in the China market is also a controversial place for Bezos. On April 20 19, Amazon officially announced that from July 20 19, Amazon China stopped the third-party seller service of Amazon China website. According to market analysis at that time, Amazon quit because its e-commerce business in China was neither profitable nor growing. China's local e-commerce enterprises have great advantages over Amazon.
Liu Zeng said in the program "Ten Years and Twenty People" that he found that the core weakness of Amazon was that American managers lacked trust in China's team. This trust problem pushed Amazon's e-commerce business in China to failure.
When Bezos took the helm, Amazon was already in a proud position, but it also faced 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 resist this tendency, Bezos advocates the working spirit of Day 1 in the company, which will always be the same as the first day of starting a business.
Like other giants, Amazon is also facing antitrust pressure.
2065438+On June 3, 2009, the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives announced that it had launched an antitrust investigation against four giant technology companies, including Amazon.
In addition, Amazon also faces many disputes and accusations about working conditions, including employment environment, workers' safety, wages and other issues.