Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon: “Life is too short to surround yourself with people who don’t contribute anything to your life”

Jeffrey Preston Bezos, engineer, billionaire, and entrepreneur, among many other things, was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He has Danish ancestry through his biological father, about whom little is publicly known. His mother gave birth to him when she was just 17 years old, and he later took the last name of his stepfather, the Cuban immigrant Miguel Bezos.

In 1986, he graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, and he began his career at a fiber-optics company. He was always interested in emerging technologies, but his first major breakthrough came when he moved into a Wall Street investment firm.

In 1994, he took the leap into business and launched an online bookstore called Cadabra, investing more than $1 million in the venture. His parents believed in him completely and helped him get the business off the ground.

Focused on technology

Bezos always had his eye on technology and understood early on that the internet would shape the future. With that in mind, he decided to pursue an idea that would change both his life and the lives of millions of others: an online bookstore that aimed to offer every book in print. That idea eventually evolved into Amazon and later helped pave the way for products such as Kindle, the digital reading device that became one of the most widely used e-readers in the world.

Like many great entrepreneurs, Jeff Bezos started in a garage, where he and his then-wife, MacKenzie Scott, set up the company’s first servers. Soon after, Amazon was born, and within just one year it was already attracting thousands of daily users and growing rapidly.

Nearly 30 years after selling its first book in 1995, Bezos’s fortune has continued to rise. He proved that e-commerce was not only viable, but could also be more profitable than the traditional retail model.

One of his most memorable quotes is: “Life is too short to surround yourself with people who add nothing to it.”

In recent years, Jeff Bezos has shown a strong interest in the space race and is one of the leading figures behind the aerospace company Blue Origin. He has even traveled to space aboard one of the company’s rockets, describing the experience as “the best day of my life.”

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