Entrepreneurship Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Entrepreneurship - Essay Example John Bezos, who is the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, dreamt of books. In 1994, he founded Amazon.com, arguably the earth’s largest bookstore. Since then, the company has registered tremendous growth and has become a force to reckon with in its industry. The following is a report which traces the history of Bezos, events leading to the founding of the company, business strategies employed by the company, and finally it winds up with highlighting the company’s success factors. History of Jeff Bezos CEO and Founder Amazon.com Jeffrey P. Bezos was born in a place called Albuquerque, in New Mexico. At an early age, Bezos displayed an outstanding mechanical aptitude. He also developed passion for various technical fields. When he became a teenager, his family moved to Miami, Florida. In high school, Bezos became more interested in computers. He later joined Princeton University with plans to study physics. However, he abandoned this dream in pursuit of computer study. He lat er graduated from the university with an electrical engineering and computer science degree. Afterwards, he was employed by a firm on Wall Street, where computers were becoming increasingly in demand for use in studying emerging patterns in various industries (Brandt 2011, pp. 228). Thereafter, he was employed at Fitel, a new company that was designing a network to be used in the management of international trade. He then was hired by D.E. Shaw, a firm that specialized in computer science applications in the stock market. Here, he was hired mostly because of his general and conspicuous talent. It was also while working in this firm that he became a senior vice president, and was looking forward to a brighter future, when he made a finding that transformed his life as well as the course of the world history of business (Brandt 2011, pp. 228). His biggest test came in 1995 when he sought to raise a seed capital of $1 million in order to launch his firm. Over a period of six months in early 1995, he met with some 60 private investors. During this time, he was hiring programmers to design the firm’s website to market itself to the public. Bezos discovered that the use of Internet was increasing by 2300 percent each year. He quickly saw a chance for a new realm of business, and immediately started considering the potential (Hazleton 1998, pp. 56). Bezos later flew to Los Angeles to attend a convention of American Booksellers. While in attendance, he learnt all that he could with regard to the book business. He realized that the main book wholesalers had already composed electronic lists regarding their inventory. All that was required was to establish a single location for this important information on the Internet, from where the book-buying community could search the existing stock and then place orders directly. The employers of Bezos were not ready to proceed with such an undertaking. Bezos then realized that the only remaining way to seize the chance wa s to go into business as an individual. Nevertheless, this meant sacrificing a more secure job in New York. Despite the risk, Bezos together with his wife Mackenzie chose to take up the challenge (Hazleton 1998, pp. 58). In the year 1999, Bezos was declared Time magazine’s Person of the Year. Come 2008, he was selected by the U.S. News & World Report as one of the best leaders in America. In the same year, he also received an honorary doctorate degree in Science and Technology from the University of Carnegie Mellon. Furthermore,