Jeff Bezos Biography

After obtaining his diploma from Palmetto High School, Miami, Jeff went on to study Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Princeton University, graduating in 1986.

For two years, he worked for FITEL, a high-tech start-up company based in New York, before joining the Bankers Trust Company, New York, as head of computer systems development. In 1990, he became the company’s youngest vice president.

Bezos then went to work for D.E. Shaw & Co., New York, where he worked until 1994, helping to build the most technically sophisticated hedge fund on Wall Street. He became their youngest senior vice president in 1992.

The emergence of the Web in the early 1990s intrigued him and, despite a very successful career in finance, Bezos saw great potential in selling products online. He decided to launch his own company and initially opted to sell books, as he felt that they would be the most popular products with the public.

He started his company in a two-bedroom rented house in Seattle, with an initial investment of three-hundred thousand dollars. The company was named Amazon.com, after the world’s biggest river. Bezos and his team spent one year developing the database programs and creating the website.

In July 1995, the bookstore opened its virtual doors with the tag of "The World’s Biggest Bookstore", and became an instant success with the public.

Today, Jeff Bezos is one of the Net's first billionaires, and is an iconic figure in e-commerce. Amazon remains one of the few "dot coms" to remain consistently successful.