Jeff Bezos (Founder and CEO of Amazon)

Book excerpt: ABOUT THE BOOK You, or somebody you know, has likely purchased something from Jeff Bezos’ company. He is one of the rare businessmen who has been able to successfully launch and grow a company of such wide use and dominance that it’s hard to imagine American life without its existence. This company is Amazon.com, the world’s largest online retailer. A multinational company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Amazon.com initially started out as an online bookstore but quickly expanded into a general e-commerce site. Under Bezos’ vision and leadership, it now sells everything from music CDs to groceries and children’s toys. It’s not hard to understand why the company has been so successful. Launched in 1994, right around the time when the Internet became widely used by the average American, the site offers busy individuals who don’t have the time to physically shop at stores the ability to get everything they need in one place. MEET THE AUTHOR Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Karen Lac has been writing since 1999. Her articles have appeared in print in “The Occidental Weekly.” Her writing reflects her broad interests. She writes travel, entertainment, political commentary, health, nutrition, food, education, career, and legal articles for numerous websites. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and a Bachelor of Arts in politics, both from Occidental College. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK After college, he worked for Fitel and then for Bankers Trust. He then moved on to D.E. Shaw in New York City, a global investment and technology development firm, where he rose to senior vice president. One spring day in 1994, Bezos noticed that Internet usage was growing by 2,300 percent a year. He quickly determined that there was a market for selling books online. With his wife’s full support, Bezos quit his job and went to Seattle to follow his dream of starting a company that sells books online. His decision to follow his dream at the risk of a stable life was made according to what he calls “regret minimization framework,” in which he thought about the number of regrets he would have at age eighty. “I knew that if I failed I wouldn't regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day, and so, when I thought about it that way it was an incredibly easy decision,” Bezos has said about his decision... Buy a copy to keep reading!