Looking Past The Shareholders
Who is Jeff Bezos? Well, he is one of the top ten CEO according to the Harvard Business Review and as the creator of Amazon, Bezos is considered one of greatest innovators of the current world. How does a person become so successful?! Yes he did go to Princeton University where he got a degree in computer science and electrical engineering, and he became a senior VP of D.E. Shaw, a company that specialized in the use of computer science in financial markets, at a young age. But this fella wasn’t always a billionaire or as successful as he is now.
There are many traits that Bezos has that allow him to be successful as an executive and as a leader, but since the internet boom in the 1990′s, he has primarily shown vision. A willingness to try to change ‘the game’ and create a new future. As the internet began to grow and be used by the public. Bezos lost absolutely no time and began to look for ways to revolutionize the mail-order business using the Internet’s vast amount of virtual space and ability to connect anywhere in the world. His work led him to create Amazon, and from his two bedroom house in Seattle he launched what is now one of the biggest web companies in the world.
Amazon began by selling books. Other mail order companies could not send the catalog for all of their books in the mail due the size and weight, and cost. However, Bezos used the internet to store all the information of the books available for sale through Amazon in the Internet’s vast database, and shared it with everyone who accessed the website. Soon, Amazon began to grow and in no time it became a leader in the market for books. Shareholders began to look for ways to increase the revenue that Amazon was bringing, but Bezos ignored them and began to spread the company further into the market. The shareholders thought that this was dangerous, since the the cost of keeping Amazon running was beginning to be too much. Time passed however, and Amazon did not crumble like many of it’s competitors. Bezos began upgrading the website to include many unheard-of, yet very efficient, features to the website, such as one-click shopping. That was not all, Bezos also began to include customer reviews and making them available to the public, and verified purchases customers made through email verification. The changes to Amazon did not stop there. In 2002, Amazon began to sale clothing articles trough partnerships with clothing retailers such as GAP. It wasn’t too late after that when Amazon began to sale electronics as well.
Today Amazon is a very successful and key player in the market for goods bought online. Yes, I know that there are many things that could’ve made an impact in the growth of the company, but I believe that the vision that Bezos showed from the very start is what brought him to the top; to be known as one of the best and most successful CEO’s in the world, and a true leader.