8 Fascinating Facts About Jeff Bezos, World’s 2nd Richest Person!

On July 5th, 1994, a person named Jeff Bezos quit his high paying job, and launched a portal called Amazon.com to sell books. 23 years later, on July 27th, 2017, he become World’s richest person, beating Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft.

Jeff’s personal assets of $90.4 billion is something which no one had.

The fame lasted only few hours, as the stocks of Amazon fell by 3% overnight (losing $6 billion of market cap), bringing down the value of Amazon and his personal wealth, but still, right now, he is World’s 2nd richest person.

If we leave aside the difference of few billion dollars between Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, we will find a fascinating story of determination, persistence and hardcore business acumen, which led him to amass billions of dollars of fortune, in a span of two decades.

Here are some fascinating facts about Jeff Bezos:

1.)  Jeff Bezos was raised by a man called Miguel “Mike” Bezos, who was not his biological father. After his parents divorced, his mother married Miguell, who legally adopted Jeff when he was 4 years old. Years later, a journalist tracked down his biological father, Ted Jorgenson who is a bicycle shop owner in Arizona. Surprised, Ted asked, is he still alive? (source)

2.) Jeff was a creative, intelligent and hardworking student. He used to invent weird things like a solar cooker, hovercraft, a robot, lasers and an electric alarm (to keep his siblings away from his room). He chose to study Physics at Princeton University, which he later changed to Computer Science and then Electrical Engineering. In 1994, he was working in D.E. Shaw as VP, when he quit his job to launch Amazon.com

3.) Jeff introduced the famous ‘Two Pizza rule’ in corporate hierarchy. As per this rule, if a team cannot be fed with two pizzas, then the team is too large. Now, this rule is used as a case study and example to manage team across the world.

4.) Although Jeff is not known for philanthropy, as unlike 169 billionaires who have pledged their half of their personal assets to charity, Jeff hasn’t announced any such plan. Unlike Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and others, he doesn’t splash his funds on charitable cause. However, as per NYT, once an employee named Jennifer Cast asked $100,000 for a same-sex marriage cause in Washington, Jeff and his wife donated $2.5 million for the same. (Source)

5.) He is a ruthless, harsh businessman. In 2009, he sold diapers at a loss of $100 million, only to intimidate and scare Diapers.com to sell their company to Amazon. And he succeeded, as Diapers.com was sold to Amazon. Interestingly, the founders of Diapers.com, after few years, launched Jet.com to compete against Amazon.com. (Source)

6.) Jeff Bezos, out of no-where, decided to give free bananas to all in Seattle in late 2015. Amazon opened their first Community Banana Stand near their headquarters in Seattle, wherein they give free bananas to all, not just their employees. Till now, Amazon has handed out more than 1.7 million free bananas to all His logic was that, Amazon should give everyone free, eco-friendly snacks. Maybe a community outreach program. This has disrupted the local fruits market, as no one now buys banana. (Source)

7.) Jeff loves Star Trek movies, and he is a big fan of the same. Such is the love, that he has even worked in of the Star Trek movies. In Star Trek Beyond, he acted as an alien, fulfilling his dream. Here is a Vine of the same, shared by Jeff himself.

8.) Jeff is a great space enthusiast, and wants to start commercial space travel, very soon. Unknown to most people, he has been investing $1 billion every year into his space company called Blue Origin rocket company. His plan is to launch commercial space travel, lasting 11 minutes, from next year onwards. (Source)

Do you know any interesting fact about Jeff Bezos? Do share it right here!