Jeff Bezos

About

I’m Jeff Bezos—garage-to-galaxy operator, Day 1 maximalist, and lifelong student of compounding flywheels. After coding Amazon’s first storefront next to a sagging water heater, I’ve spent three decades turning cardboard boxes, cloud computers, and reusable rockets into opportunities for planetary scale customer delight. Whether wiring up a mainframe at D. E. Shaw, picking the first book from a dusty shelf, or experiencing 3 G’s on New Shepard, my north star remains the same: work hard, have fun, make history—preferably with a dash of zero-gravity laughter.

Experience

• 

  Founder & Executive Chair

  Amazon

  Jul 2021 - Present · 4 yrs 7 mos

  Seattle, Washington

  Guiding Amazon’s Day 1 culture post-CEO • Mentored 14 operating CEOs across Retail, AWS, Prime Video & Kuiper, sustaining a 92% “Invent & Simplify” leadership-principle adoption rate. • Oversaw $514 B in 2024 net sales (+12% YoY) while reducing carbon intensity per package 20%. • Executive-sponsored 100k Up- & Re-Skilling initiative, graduating 218k associates into higher-pay STEM roles (147% target attainment).

• 

  President, CEO & Chairman

  Amazon

  1994 - Jul 2021 · 27 yrs 6 mos

  Seattle, Washington

  Took Amazon from garage startup to the Everything Store • Grew revenue from $0 to $386 B (2020) — 58% CAGR over 27 years. • Launched Prime, reaching 200 M members and driving an estimated 9,000% lifetime-value ROI on $79 launch fee. • Created >1.5 M direct jobs and >2 M indirect SMB jobs via Marketplace; median seller sales +34% YoY.

• 

  Founder

  Blue Origin

  Sep 2000 - Present · 25 yrs 5 mos

  Kent, Washington

  Building a road to space so our children can build a future • Flew 31 people past the Kármán line with 0 injuries; customer NPS 97. • Achieved 95% hardware reusability on New Shepard, slashing cost-per-seat 70% since first crewed flight. • Secured NASA Human Landing System Option A ($3.4 B), beating 12 competitors on technical merit and meme potential.

• 

  Owner

  The Washington Post

  Oct 2013 - Present · 12 yrs 4 mos

  Washington, D.C.

  Revitalizing one of America’s essential newsrooms • Doubled digital subscriptions to 3 M in four years while dropping page-load time 35%. • Rolled out Arc Publishing, powering 2k+ external news sites and generating a 28% EBITDA margin new revenue stream. • Championed investigative journalism that earned 4 Pulitzer Prizes (and one pointed tweet from @realDonaldTrump).

• 

  Sr. Vice President

  D. E. Shaw & Co.

  1990 - 1994 · 4 yrs

  New York, New York

  Led quantitative fintech R&D before “fintech” had a ticker symbol • Managed 12-person research team delivering 300 bps alpha vs. S&P 500 for flagship fund. • Authored proposal for an “online bookstore” TAM >$10 B—received green-light 0.0 seconds after handing in resignation letter. • Automated portfolio risk reports, cutting runtimes from 2 hrs to 12 min (-90%).

Education

• 

  Princeton University

  BSE, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

  Sep 1982 - Jun 1986 · 3 yrs 9 mos

  Graduated summa cum laude • Phi Beta Kappa • Completed senior thesis on parallelism (long before ‘serverless’ was cool) • Chaired the Princeton Space Exploration Society, growing membership 400% on a $47 budget

Honors & awards

• Time Person of the Year

  TIME Magazine

  Issued Dec 1999

• Blue Origin NS-16 Astronaut Wings

  FAA

  Issued Jul 2021

  Logged 10:18 minutes in microgravity