Jeff Bezos' grandfather made his own needles by hand for the cattle on his ranch.

Jeff Bezos’ biological father and mother married as teenagers—and had Jeff a year later

His biological father, Ted Jorgensen, was a circus performer at the time. He later gave up custody of Jeff and became a bicycle repairman in Phoenix, Arizona. Ironically, the last time Jorgensen saw Jeff as a child was in a Walmart where Jorgensen worked. This video dives into the relationship between Jeff Bezos and his estranged biological father, who passed away in 2015.

Jeff Bezos started his career working at McDonald’s

He now claims that his high school gig at the fast food restaurant taught him about efficiency, customer service, and other valuable lessons that he took with him when building Amazon.

Jeff Bezos’ adoptive father Mike Bezos immigrated to the US from Cuba at age 16

Mike Bezos’ mother made a coat out of cleaning rags for him before he immigrated, assuming that the United States would be very cold. Mike and Jeff told the story of Mike’s journey to the US and early days in America together in this video.

Amazon's success is attributable, in large part, to founder Jeff Bezos’ vision

Bezos parlayed a career on Wall Street into founding an online bookstore that would evolve into the largest online retailer in the world. Bezos’ story is characterized by his relentless focus on innovation and on the customer experience at Amazon.

Bezos' wealth primarily stems from his Amazon ownership stake

Three decades after founding Amazon, Jeff Bezos has built a sprawling empire of business and financial interests. A chart from Visual Capitalist details his many business interests outside of Amazon, including his ownership of the Washington Post; his private aerospace company, Blue Origin; and his personal stake in companies ranging from Airbnb to Uber and Google.

Amazon didn't have a profitable quarter until 2001, more than 6 years into its existence

Jeff Bezos, however, took pride in Amazon's early unprofitability, reinvesting the money Amazon made back into its business, prioritizing investment into long-term growth and customer acquisition over short-term gains.

Jeff Bezos launched his philanthropic ‘Bezos Day One Fund’ in 2018 with his then-wife, Mackenzie Scott

The fund focuses on promoting education and reducing homelessness. This article compares Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ philanthropic initiatives to those of other billionaires, including Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.

When he first enrolled at Princeton University, Jeff Bezos wanted to study physics

He later changed his major to electrical engineering and computer science. He graduated Summa Cum Laude and received job offers at Intel, Nokia, and Accenture, but he declined those offers in favor of a job at a fintech startup.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos emphasizes worrying about customers rather than competition

In a 1999 shareholder letter, Bezos wrote, "I constantly remind our employees to be afraid, to wake up every morning terrified. Our customers have made our business what it is, and we consider them to be loyal to us – right up until the second that someone else offers them a better service." Motivated by fear, the entrepreneur advocates consistent innovation, experimentation, and improvement to create a better customer experience.

Jeff Bezos uses a ‘regret minimization framework’ for making decisions

When Bezos is making a decision, he asks himself a simple question to minimize regret: “When I’m 80, will I regret not doing this?” The decision-making framework has become popular since Bezos began speaking publicly about it.

Jeff Bezos has an art collection worth hundreds of millions

The collection includes an oil painting by Pablo Picasso that was once part of Picasso's personal collection. Bezos purchased the painting in a 2023 Sotheby's auction.

In 1994, Amazon was founded as an online bookseller

Books were just the start, as founder Jeff Bezos' ultimate goal was to create an "everything store," using the internet to transcend the physical limitations of brick-and-mortar retail. The Seattle-based Amazon gradually added CDs and consumer electronics, becoming a dominant e-commerce player in the late 1990s, and one of the few dot-com companies to make it through the bust.

Bezos owned roughly 8% of Amazon as of 2025

Three decades after founding Amazon, Jeff Bezos has built a sprawling empire of businesses and financial interests. Other large stakeholders in the company include Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy and Bezos’ ex-wife MacKenzie Scott. This article provides more details on who owns how much of Amazon.

Mark Zuckerberg owns a cattle ranch in Hawaii

Zuckerberg owns a cattle ranch on Kauai, where he says his goal is to raise the best beef in the world. Zuckerberg has said that he raises Wagyu and Angus and feeds them macadamia meal and beer, both of which are produced on the cattle ranch. In January 2024, Zuckerberg said his daughter thought his full-time job was cattle ranching.

Mark Zuckerberg's dad is a dentist—but he originally wanted to work with computers

Mark Zuckerberg grew up in Dobbs Ferry in Westchester County, about 25 miles north of New York City. His father, Ed Zuckerberg, owned a practice connected to Mark's childhood home, but he was always fascinated by computers. Ed's family was the first in his neighborhood to have a color television, and Ed was an early adopter of computing technology—something that he passed on to Mark. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

Bezos has frequently cited a 1999 article titled Amazon.bomb to illustrate how dire the early predictions about Amazon got

Over the years, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos often recalls how wrong the predictions in the 1999 Barron’s cover story were. Among other things, that article declared Amazon’s entire business model to be unsustainable and destined to fail, noting its lack of profit and dependence on a massive amount of capital to fund its growth.

Amazon sends its first-ever letter to shareholders every year

The first letter to Amazon’s shareholders, written by founder and then-CEO Jeff Bezos in 1997, is a key part of the Amazon story—laying out the company’s long-term approach to the business and several of its core operating values. Bezos emphasizes, for example, Amazon’s plan to start with a bookstore but to evolve into a much larger ecosystem.

Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez reportedly spent between $47M and $56M on their 2025 wedding in Italy

Bezos is no stranger to writing big checks: His Gulfstream G700 jet cost about $80M, while his yacht was reportedly $500M.

Jeff Bezos purchased The Washington Post in 2013

He purchased the legacy newspaper with the intention of bringing it into the internet age, thereby helping improve its financials. Bezos’ ownership of the newspaper has been widely criticized, particularly by those who do not want the wealthiest in the country to have that much influence on the press. One Bezos critic explains the standpoint further in this article.

Amazon sold its first book on April 3, 1995

Before selling everything on the internet, Amazon started as an online bookstore. The company's first customer was a man named John Wainright, who purchased "Fluid Concepts And Creative Analogies: Computer Models Of The Fundamental Mechanisms Of Thought" by Douglas Hofstadter. There's a building named after Wainwright on Amazon's Seattle campus.

Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company, sent its first passengers to space in 2021

Founded in 2000, Bezos spent many years working on the company as a side project before it became more well-known around 2004, when a plot of land in Texas was purchased as a launch site for the company’s rockets. He has said that the goal of Blue Origin is to build “reusable space vehicles.” This resource details what passengers experience from takeoff to landing on a Blue Origin flight.

John D. Rockefeller’s father had a nefarious past

William A. Rockefeller Sr. earned his money via various schemes that included pretending to be a doctor to sell “herbal medicines” and posing as a deaf person to peddle for money.

Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model

Central to any understanding of the multifaceted nature of Amazon's business today is the concept of the "flywheel" at the heart of the company. Put simply, it's an idea that refers to a self-reinforcing cycle that drives the continuous growth of Amazon's various businesses, including its retail arm, its Prime subscription service, and more.

Amazon has experienced relentless, if occasionally bumpy, growth since its founding

From its founding in 1994 to a slew of acquisitions and new products and services launched in the decades since then, Amazon has experienced relentless, if occasionally bumpy, growth. This timeline from The Verge lays out some of the major events in the company’s story, including its IPO, rollout of its lucrative cloud-computing division, and much more.

Before starting Apple, Steve Jobs cold-called HP at 12 years old and got a summer job.

Dave Asprey is considered one of the fathers of modern biohacking

Entrepreneur Dave Asprey wants to live longer than anyone else, a desire that's led him to biohacking. Asprey relies on supplements, stem cell treatments, rigid dieting, exercise, and more. The inventor of Bulletproof Coffee has no medical or nutritional training, though that's not unusual among biohacking's DIY experimenters.

Amazon expanded its business and diversified its offerings by acquiring companies

Amazon’s retail and cloud businesses have been key drivers of the company’s growth over the years, but they haven’t done all the work by themselves. Companies Amazon has acquired include the video doorbell maker Ring, the grocer Whole Foods, the streaming service Twitch, the shoe retailer Zappos, and the film studio MGM.

John D. Rockefeller—the world's first billionaire—was born to a well-known con artist father.

Warren Buffett began investing at 11 years old

He then bought his first property at 14 years old. From studying under the “father of value investing” to revitalizing a textile company into the largest holding company in the world, Buffett’s career is one of great financial success.

Tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson's mission to live forever

Johnson has invested millions of dollars into developing a biohacking program he believes will extend his life beyond typical expectations, relying on medical professionals to reduce his "biological age." Most notably, he drew significant public attention with reports of blood-swapping with his teenage son.

Amazon's largest profit engine is the cloud-computing platform Amazon Web Services.

Warren Buffett has said not investing in Google or Amazon early enough was a mistake on his part

After avoiding investing in tech stocks during the dot-com boom, Buffett's stance on investing in tech was widely criticized. Buffett later shared his thoughts on why he regrets not investing early enough.

Amazon accounts for roughly 40% of all US online retail sales—a much larger piece of the pie than its competitor Walmart

Although Walmart is roughly 30 years older than Amazon, the e-commerce giant has a significant lead in online US retail sales: Walmart's share is roughly 7%. Season 33 of the podcast "Business Wars," hosted by David Brown, is all about one of the most intense rivalries in all of retail.

How John D. Rockefeller became the world's first billionaire

From a young age, John D. Rockefeller knew he was interested in business. He worked as a bookkeeper and sold candy prior to starting the business empire that would help cement the Rockefeller name in history: Standard Oil.

Amazon has historically opposed efforts among its employees to unionize

Amazon has done everything from creating mandatory anti-union meetings to hiring union-busting consultants, and even engaging in employee surveillance. Such efforts have proven to be a lightning rod for pro-labor groups.

Warren Buffett is the world's all-time most generous philanthropist

This list of America's top 25 philanthropists features the "Oracle of Omaha" at the top, as the former Berkshire Hathaway CEO has given away more than $68B—roughly 32% of his total net wealth. Among the country's richest individuals, Mark Zuckerberg is second to Buffett, having donated over $6B of his wealth. Mackenzie Scott, meanwhile, is on a blitz of giving, already departing with almost half of the $30B she received amid her divorce from Jeff Bezos.

At 12 years old, Mark Zuckerberg built a messaging platform for his family called 'ZuckNet'

Mark's family used "ZuckNet" to communicate with each other in different rooms and Mark's dad's dental office, which was connected to their family home. ZuckNet ultimately didn't go anywhere, as AOL's instant messaging platform soon replaced it.