The Beginning of Internet; the Beginning of Amazon

After Jeff Bezos completed his Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University in 1986, he chose to work in a start-up and then a banking organization where he became one of the four senior vice presidents.

Then late in the year 1993, he chose to quit his job to start Amazon.com as an online book depository to make the most of the internet revolution.

In 1999, he told wired.com in an interview, "When I'm 80, am I going to regret leaving Wall Street? No. Will I regret missing the beginning of the Internet? Yes."

Expanding beyond Books

Amazon in its earlier years faced reluctance from the public for being purely an online bookstore. It sold books to 46 countries including the USA. In June 1996, it raised $8 million in Series A funding from a Venture capital firm. (Source: Investopedia)

After going public in the year 1997, with an initial public offering (IPO) of $18 per share, the stocks did not perform at par with its competitors.

In 1998, Bezos decided to diversify the company with sales of music and video. Later that year, it ventured into consumer goods.

Amazon was one of the few companies that survived the "dot com bubble."

Personal investments

With a good diversification strategy, the company's annual sales skyrocketed to $17 billion in 2001. But, Amazon.com was not Jeff Bezos' only investment.

He was an early investor in Google before it became public. In 2013, he bought "The Washington Post", one of America's popular daily newspapers for $250 million. Its viewership exploded soon after in terms of new readers.

In 2016, he committed $1 billion to his space exploration company called Blue Origin.

Amazon, world's largest online shopping retailer

Amazon diversified further services like Amazon Prime, online video streaming, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Echo and cloud services.

It has separate country-specific retail websites for the US, India, the United Kingdom and Ireland, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, Japan, China, and Mexico.

It was the four most valued public company in the world in 2016 as per a CNBC report.