Amazon and CEO Amazon founder and also the world’s richest man in his testimony before the US Congress revealed a lot about his personal life and struggles he faced to start Amazon and take it to where it is now. Bezos was working at an investment firm in New York City with a good pay when the idea of starting Amazon came to him, back in 1994.
Jeff Bezos
“The idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles—something that simply couldn’t exist in the physical world—was exciting to me,” he said in his testimony before, Commercial, and Administrative Law.
the Subcommittee on Antitrust
When Bezos told his boss at the investment firm that he was quitting to start Amazon, his boss thought it was a “better idea” for someone else without a good job to start Amazon.
“When I told my boss I was leaving, he took me on a long walk in Central Park. After a lot of listening, he finally said, ‘You know what, Jeff, I think this is a good idea, but it would be a better idea for somebody who didn’t already have a good job.’ He convinced me to think about it for two days before making a final decision,” said Bezos.
The reason for building Amazon was simple for Bezos. He simply did not want to regret not participating in the ‘internet rush’. “...I decided that if I didn’t at least give it my best shot, I was going to regret not trying to participate in this thing called the internet that I thought was going to be a big deal,” he added.
Bezos started Amazon with the life savings of his parents. “They weren’t making a bet on Amazon or the concept of a bookstore on the internet. They were making a bet on their son. I told them that I thought there was a 70% chance they would lose their investment, and they did it anyway.”
It was quite difficult for him to convince people to invest in Amazon, Bezos recalls that to raise the first $1 million, it took more than 50 meetings. “The most common question was: What’s the internet?,” he mentioned.
“Amazon’s success was anything but preordained. Investing in Amazon early on was a very risky proposition. From our founding through the end of 2001, our business had cumulative losses of nearly $3 billion, and we did not have a profitable quarter until the fourth quarter of that year,” he said.
Bezos also recalled that most experts thought that Amazon would go out of business. “It took a lot of smart people with a willingness to take a risk with me, and a willingness to stick to our convictions, for Amazon to survive and ultimately to succeed,” he said.
As for being under scrutiny and his first appearance in front of Congress, he said, “I believe Amazon should be scrutinised. We should scrutinise all large institutions, whether they’re companies, government agencies, or non-profits. Our responsibility is to make sure we pass such scrutiny with flying colors.”
This article can give us motivation, that sometimes in life we must let go something in order to get much more than that something. We must never stop, keep on going until we find what we find for..The Greener pastures.