NETWORKED - JEFF BEZOS

Jeff Bezos, an entrepreneur and e-commerce pioneer was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He had an early love in computers and studied computer science and electrical engineering at Princeton University. He worked on Wall Street after graduation and in became the youngest senior vice president at the investment firm D.E. Shaw in 1990. Four years later, he quit his lucrative job to open Amazon.com, one of the most popular and well-known e-commerce sites in the world. In 2013, he made headlines when he purchased The Washington Post in a $250 million deal.

Jeff Bezos showed his early interest in how things work since he was a child especially in the aspects of computer science. His family decided to move to Miami where he could develop his love for computers. Bezos pursued his interest in computers at Princeton University, where he graduated with a degree in electrical engineering and computer science. He then worked at several firms on Wall Street including Fitel, Bankers Trust, and the investment firm. He started his business networking in the very first job. While his career in finance was lucrative, Bezos chose to make a risky move into the unpredictable world of e-commerce. In 1994, he quit his job and moved to Seattle and targeted the the internet market by opening an online bookstore which is Amazon.com. Jeff Bezos came up with a business plan in 1994 after a bright idea he thought of on a cross-country trip from New York to Seattle.

Bezos expanded his business network by working together with a few employees at the early time and developing the software at the same time. They worked together in order to expand operations into a two-bedroom house, equipped with three Sun Micro stations, and developed a test site in the end. Bezos invited 300 friends to beta test the site and finally Bezos opened Amazon.com. with the helps from his friends on July 16, 1995. This showed that Bezos and his workers’ had been working together in the sense of business networking in achieving their business goals.

The success of his company was meteoric. This is because without press promotion, Amazon.com sold books in 45 foreign countries and across the United States within 30 days. In two months time, the book sales reached $20,000. In 1997, Amazon.com went public and many market analysts questioned that whether the Amazon.com could hold its own when traditional retailers also launched their own e-commerce sites later on. Two years later, the start-up not only kept up, but Amazon.com also outpaced the other competitors and becoming an e-commerce leader in the market of online bookstore.

Today, Amazon expand his business network with the other online retailers by not just selling books but also from books and movies to clothing and groceries. Bezoz was able to diverse Amazon’s offerings due to his cooperation with major retail partners. The Amazon company also getting into the media production game with Amazon Prime and Amazon Studios. But Amazon started out selling one thing only which is books. As book sales were Amazon’s proving ground, Bezos envisioned them as the very first step towards creating the "everything store". The strategy of starting with one specific product and building a strong e-commerce system and networking around it before diversifying had made Bezos slowly turn Amazon into an e-commerce giant in today’s online marketing. Amazon flourished with yearly sales that jumped drastically from $510,000 in 1995 to over $17 billion in 2011.

On August 5, 2013, Bezos made headlines worldwide when he purchased The Washington Post which owns the paper and other entities for $250 million cash. There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy for Bezoz if he did not work well in his business networking. He made his effort in inventing, which means he did experiment on the customers. The touchstone would be the readers, understanding what they care about—government, local leaders, restaurant openings, scout troops, businesses, charities, governors, sports—and working backwards from there.

Now, Amazon is one of the world’s biggest retailers, and it has made online bookstore shopping a normal part of our daily lives. In fact, Bezos told Time that he had a warning from his first investors: "I think there is a 70 percent chance you are going to lose all of your money, so don’t invest unless you can afford to lose it." It was only by taking a huge financial and career risk that Bezos was able to get Amazon off the ground with the helps from his partners. Luckily for Amazon, and for anyone who shops online, while Bezos expected to fail, his mindset led to unprecedented success in his online retail business.