The year was 94′ and Bezos was working diligently on Wall Street. At 30 years old, he began to see the internet revolution take place, and made the decision to quit his job and start an internet company.

“The wake up call was finding this startling statistic that web usage in the spring of 1994 was growing at 2,300 percent a year. You know, things just don’t grow that fast. It’s highly unusual, and that started me about thinking, “What kind of business plan might make sense in the context of that growth?”

After making a list of the ‘top 20’ products that he could potentially sell on the internet, he decided on books because of their low cost and universal demand. It turns out, it was just the beginning!!

As a child, he spent summers at his grandfather’s ranch in southern Texas, “laying pipe, vaccinating cattle and fixing windmills”. The 18-year-old Bezos “said he wanted to build space hotels, amusement parks and colonies for 2 million or 3 million people who would be in orbit. ‘The whole idea is to preserve the earth’ he told the newspaper …. The goal was to be able to evacuate humans. The planet would become a park”.

1994: Jeff Bezos quits his job and launches Amazon out of his garage.
Within 30 Days, it is doing $20,000 per week in sales.

1995: Bezos raises an $8 Million round of funding from Kleiner Perkins.

1997: Amazon goes public at $18 per share.

1999: Bezos... (More)