From zero to a trillion: How Jeff Bezos turned Amazon into the everything store

Guest post by Sally Percy, author of ‘21st Century Business Icons: The Leaders Who Are Changing our World’

As the world’s biggest online retailer, Amazon scarcely needs an introduction. Nicknamed the ‘everything store’, Amazon sells a vast range of products from books and toys through to electronics, groceries and power tools.

How Jeff Bezos turned Amazon into the everything store

Jeff Bezos, the visionary behind Amazon, was working for a hedge fund in New York when he read about the internet and discovered that it was experiencing exponential growth. Seeing a huge opportunity, Bezos was determined to seize it before anyone else got there before him. So, in 1994, he quit his job, moved close to the technology hub of Seattle with his then-wife MacKenzie, and launched Amazon, initially as an online bookstore.

While his dream was to create an online store that sold everything, it seemed sensible to start with one product. So, Bezos chose books – partly because he was a voracious reader (he’s a big fan of science fiction) and partly because they were non-perishable commodities that could be bought from large wholesalers. As a web-based retailer, he could also display far more titles than a bricks-and-mortar store.

From zero to a trillion

The Amazon website officially went live on 16 July 1995 and the company took off rapidly. Less than two years after its launch – on 15 May 1997 – Amazon completed a successful IPO, giving the company a market value of $438 million.

Bezos – as CEO – outlined the core principles of Amazon’s decision-making approach in what is now regarded as a legendary letter to shareholders. He emphasized Amazon’s prioritization of long-term growth above short-term profits, the company’s commitment to making ‘bold rather than timid investment decisions’, and its preoccupation with ‘hiring and retaining versatile and talented employees’. The letter also vowed that the company would ‘continue to focus relentlessly on our customers’, saying it would even ‘obsess’ over them.

It is these principles – combined with the energetic leadership of Bezos himself – that have underpinned Amazon’s enduring success in the decades since its IPO. Over the years, Amazon has progressively expanded its product lines to live up to its founder’s vision of being the ‘everything store’.

In July 2021, Bezos stood down as Amazon’s CEO so that he could focus on other interests (which include space travel), but he remains the company’s executive chairman. He is currently the world’s third richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, while the market capitalization of Amazon is now US$1.46 trillion.

Secrets to success

Bezos’s impressive achievements can be attributed to his bold outlook, his immense intellectual curiosity, and his willingness to take risks and learn from mistakes. He also believes avidly in the power of experimentation.

Bezos takes a highly methodical approach to decision making. At the point when he was deciding whether to walk away from his well-paid job at the hedge fund in order to launch Amazon, he used what he called his ‘regret minimization framework’. This meant imagining how he would feel when he reached the age of 80 and thought back on the decision. ‘I knew that when I was 80, I was not going to regret having tried this,” he has said. “I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the internet… but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried.’

This extract from 21^st Century Business Icons by Sally Percy © 2023 is reproduced with permission from Kogan Page Ltd.

More about the author

Sally Percy is an experienced business journalist and editor, specialising in leadership and management. She is author of ‘21st Century Business Icons: The Leaders Who Are Changing our World’ (Kogan Page).

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