Orin Smith

Running Head: JEFFREY BEZOS

Jeffrey Bezos

Shawn Botson

Colorado Technical University Online

Principles of Business: MGM110-0701B-43

Instructor: Cheryl Bernier

March 15, 2007

Abstract

Jeffrey Bezos is the Chief Executive Officer of Amazon.com. The CEO of all companies is the top manager that a board of directors votes for to run the corporation. (Business Essentials, 2005, p. 525)

I buy movies and television shows from Amazon.com all the time and download them onto my computer. For example, my favorite television show is Prison Break and sometimes I miss an episode. If this happens than I can just go to Amazon.com and purchase any episode I want as long as it has already aired. This is very convenient since the full season of any television series is not sold in stores until every episode of the entire season has aired on television. Most television series cost only $1.99 per episode which is a very good deal. After they are fully downloaded onto my computer I can burn the episode(s) onto a DVD and watch them anywhere.

Since I buy products from this company so often and I just heard about them not too long ago, I thought that it would be interesting to find out some more information about Amazon.com and how Jeffrey Bezos has been so successful in running the company as the Chief Executive Officer.

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Jeffrey Bezos

Jeffrey Preston Bezos was born on January 12th, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Bezos always loved school especially anything to do with science and computers. When Bezos lived with his parents and went to school he built a laboratory in his parent's garage so he could experiment with various science projects. After high school, Bezos attended Princeton University with a goal to achieve a degree in physics. Later on he decided that he was more interested in computers and he graduated with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. (Wikipedia, 2007, pg 1)

Jeffrey Bezos is the founder, chief executive officer, president, and the chairman of the board of Amazon.com. (Wikipedia, 2007, pg 1) Straight out of college, Bezos went to work on Wall Street. He worked in the computer science field building a network for international trade for a start-up company called Fitel. (Achievement, 2005, pg 1) After two years at Fitel the company failed to succeed so Bezos went on to work for Bankers Trust where he developed software applications for pension-fund clients. He eventually became the Vice President and decided to move on to D.E. Shaw & Company not too long after his promotion. (Answers.com) D.E. Shaw was a firm that specialized in computer science in the stock market. While Bezos was working at Shaw he met his wife who was also a Princeton graduate. It did not take long for Bezos to show off his talent and he quickly became the senior Vice President of the company and had a secure future ahead of him. (Answers.com)

In 1994 Bezos noticed that the internet usage worldwide was increasing by 2300 percent per year. Seeing this in his mind he saw an opportunity for a new era in commerce and he began brainstorming what types of possibilities he had with his

Jeffrey Bezos

computer expertise and experience. So he thought about the fact that there was no mail order catalogue that existed for books. Bezos began to do some research on his spare time and attended the American Booksellers' Convention to learn everything he could about the book business. Once Bezos found out that all he needed was a location on the internet where the book buying public could search the available stock of books and place orders directly online he talked his wife into moving to Seattle Washington where they would have direct access to the book wholesaler Ingram. Bezos gave up everything and used all of his savings he had including his parents and friend's savings too. His parents trusted his decision and invested $300,000 in their son's business venture. (Investing Value)

The newly married couple set up the new business out in the garage of their new two bedroom house. Bezos set up three Sun micro-stations and called his new book selling company Amazon. Bezos talked the highly successful