He is the world’s richest man by a long shot, but what was it that made Jeff Bezos so famous in the first place?
Amazon, the eCommerce company, is what Jeff Bezos is most famous for. He founded the company in 1994 and it has grown into one of the most recognizable brands today. Although Amazon was the reason Bezos first came to fame, since then he has earned fame for becoming the wealthiest person in the world.
You can read more about Amazon and the other reasons why Jeff Bezos is famous below.
A Brief History of Amazon
In 1994, Jeff Bezos founded the company Amazon in Seattle, Washington. The idea behind the company was to be the very first online bookstore and then expand from there. In 1998, the company began to offer music products and then movies after that. Bezos actually purchased The Internet Movie Database, also known as IMDb, when he entered into the movie market.
After that, the company offered a holiday gift store with toy and game options for purchase. This soon became a permanent part of the company’s online offering. Then Amazon began eating up more and more markets until it changed the way the world shops online forever.
As Bezos gained more wealth, he also began purchasing more and more companies. He bought other book related companies like Audible in 2008 for $300 million and Goodreads in 2013 for $1 billion. He also purchased the gaming live streaming company Twitch in 2014 for $970 million. Then he decided to get into the health food business, purchasing Whole Foods in 2017 for $13.7 billion. Decisions like these are what led to the other reason why Jeff Bezos is so famous: his wealth.
You can watch the YouTube video from Top Trending on how Bezos built Amazon by following the below link.
Becoming the Wealthiest Man in the World
In 1997, Amazon went public and Jeff Bezos became a multi-millionaire. He managed to gain $54 million in the initial public offering. It didn’t take him much longer to become a billionaire, but it would be a long time before Bezos reached the ranks of the ultra-wealthy. He didn’t enter into the list of top ten wealthiest people until 2016.
Jeff Bezos entered into the list of the top ten wealthiest people in 2016 with a net worth of $45.2 billion. By 2018, his wealth had more than doubled to $112 billion and he passed Bill Gates to become the world’s wealthiest person. Bezos became famous not just for his highly successful company now, but the wealth he gained from it.
Scandal of Bezos’ Affair
Other than being the CEO of Amazon and the wealthiest person in the world, Bezos has garnered a lot of fame recently surrounding activities that have nothing to do with business. In 2019, the tabloid National Enquirer released damning evidence that Jeff Bezos was involved in an affair with Lauren Sánchez, a Hollywood news reporter.
This information brought Bezos into the limelight, something that he seems to have worked very hard to avoid throughout his life. There were serious repercussions to the racy texts that were leaked and the entire incident brought to light how Bezos can be utterly relentless.
Jeff split from his wife of over 25 years, MacKenzie Bezos. She ended up taking about $38 billion of the Bezos estate in the divorce. It also came to light that Bezos’ cell phone had been hacked.
In order to find the hackers, Bezos wrote his head of security a blank cheque to find out who was responsible. The culprits? One of Saudi Arabia’s crowned princes who had been angered at reporting from The Washington Post’s reporting surrounding the death of Jamal Khashoggi. Bezos owns The WaPo.
Bezos’ fame came from Amazon, but it has continued to grow through not only his success but some scandals. From being the world’s wealthiest man to scandalous affairs, Bezos certainly won’t be out of the news any time soon.