Written with research from Wikipedia

When Most people think of people that made money in business; we usually think of how they made money through real estate, computers, software, Oil, sports, even farming. But to imagine that the richest man in modern history started his business selling USED BOOKS is mind boggling.

Jeff Bezos whose Amazon is set to overtake the mighty Walmart as the biggest retailer in the world began by selling USED BOOKS! To me that means any business offering any service or product is capable of great things. Whether its pure water or cars, nylon bags or houses, software apps or akara and bread. As long as there is a vision.

It doesn’t matter what your business sells or offers; there is no limit to what it can become.

So why did Mr.Bezos choose to sell books? Is there something he knew we didn’t? According to Wikipedia, the company itself was his effort at making up for not getting in on the massive Internet biz of the early 90s where everyone was cashing in. Why books? Well he choose it from a list of products he felt would sell well online. Remember this was 1994.


He wasnt exactly poor; as he was a Vice President of a company on Wall Street; but nothing extra ordinary and wasnt flush in cash. But he was just a salary earner albeit, high income. At one point during Amazon’s early beginnings, he begged a list of 60 people to raise $1 Million for the business, only 22 of them helped- and of course THEY all eventually made massive profits.

READ HERE: How Jeff Bezos Begged 60 People To Raise $1 Million; Only 22 Helped! https://www.nairaland.com/6527947/how-jeff-bezos-begged-60

After reading a report about the future of the Internet that projected annual web commerce growth at 2,300%, Bezos created a list of 20 products that could be marketed online. He narrowed the list to what he felt were the five most promising products, which included: compact discs, computer hardware, computer software, videos, and books. Bezos finally decided that his new business would sell books online, because of the large worldwide demand for literature, the low unit price for books, and the huge number of titles available in print.[9] Amazon was founded in the garage of Bezos' rented home in Bellevue, Washington. Bezos' parents invested almost $250,000 in the start-up.[12]

The company was created as a result of what Jeff Bezos called his "regret minimization framework", which described his efforts to fend off any regrets for not participating sooner in the Internet business boom during that time.[1] In 1994, Bezos left his employment as vice-president of D. E. Shaw & Co., a Wall Street firm, and moved to Seattle, Washington, where he began to work on a business plan[2] for what would become Amazon.com.

On July 5, 1994, Bezos initially incorporated the company in Washington state with the name Cadabra, Inc.[3] After a few months he changed the name to Amazon.com, Inc because a lawyer misheard its original name as "cadaver".[4] In its early days, the company was operated out of the garage of Bezos's house on Northeast 28th Street in Bellevue, Washington.[5] In September 1994, Bezos purchased the domain name relentless.com and briefly considered naming his online store Relentless, but friends told him the name sounded a bit sinister. The domain is still owned by Bezos and still redirects to the retailer.[6]

Choosing a name
Bezos selected the name by looking through a dictionary; he settled on "Amazon" because it was a place that was "exotic and different", just as he had envisioned for his Internet enterprise. The Amazon River, he noted, was the biggest river in the world, and he planned to make his store the biggest bookstore in the world.[7] Additionally, a name that began with "A" was preferred because it would probably be at the top of an alphabetized list.[7] Bezos placed a premium on his head start in building a brand and told a reporter, "There's nothing about our model that can't be copied over time. But you know, McDonald's got copied. And it's still built a huge, multibillion-dollar company. A lot of it comes down to the brand name. Brand names are more important online than they are in the physical world."[8]

Online bookstore and IPO
In July 1995, the company began service as an online bookstore.[13] The first book sold on Amazon.com was Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought.[14] In the first two months of business, Amazon sold to all 50 states and over 45 countries. Within two months, Amazon's sales were up to $20,000/week.[15] In October 1995, the company announced itself to the public.[16] In 1996, it was reincorporated in Delaware. Amazon issued its initial public offering of stock on May 15, 1997, at $18 per share, trading under the NASDAQ stock exchange symbol AMZN.[17]

Barnes & Noble sued Amazon on May 12, 1997, alleging that Amazon's claim to be "the world's largest bookstore" was false because it "...wasn't a bookstore at all. It's a book broker." The suit was later settled out of court and Amazon continued to make the same claim.[18] Walmart sued Amazon on October 16, 1998, alleging that Amazon had stolen Walmart's trade secrets by hiring former Walmart executives. Although this suit was also settled out of court, it caused Amazon to implement internal restrictions and the reassignment of the former Walmart executives.[18]

In 1999, Amazon first attempted to enter the publishing business by buying a defunct imprint, "Weathervane", and publishing some books "selected with no apparent thought", according to The New Yorker. The imprint quickly vanished again, and as of 2014 Amazon representatives said that they had never heard of it.[19] Also in 1999, Time magazine named Bezos the Person of the Year when it recognized the company's success in popularizing online shopping.[20]
--Wikipedia

Source: https://v7place.com/index.php?topic=3710.0

Jeff's First Office.

Amazon's first job posting.

Garage where he started Amazon in 1994.

Amazon went public in 1997. The initial stock price was $18( about N1440 (Dollar was N80 then). Today one stock is $3417 ( About 1.5 Million naira) An increase of 197,000%