OWNING STOCK Stocks are pieces of ownership in a company When a person buys stock he or she buys a little piece of a company called a share People who own stock are called shareholders If the company does well and the stock price rises they share in the profits Companies usually have thousands and thousands of shares and it takes many many shares to make up a big piece of a company Bezos owns 16 percent of Amazon which means he owns 16 percent of all Amazon stock 3 Other investors own the rest Buying or selling stocks is called trading The most common way to buy and sell stocks in the United States is through the New York Stock Exchange which is located on Wall Street in New York City The Nasdaq Stock Market also based in New York City is the second-largest US stock exchange and is best known as a stock exchange for technology companies Amazon’s stock is traded on Nasdaq under the stock symbol AMZN This was more than the 2016 gross domestic product of the nation of Ecuador FROM BOOKS TO EVERYTHING Amazon the company that propelled its founder to such great riches started out as a small online bookstore run out of Bezos’s garage in Seattle Washington Since then Amazon has grown into a company that has changed how Americans shop and what they expect from an online store As one of the most famous shopping websites in the world Amazon sells everything from cat food to kayaks to hissing cockroaches But Amazon is much more than a shopping website Users can order groceries through Amazon Fresh a grocery pickup and delivery service They can buy and 6
Amazon is best known for its retail and logistics operations but the company has branched out into many other related areas 7
stream movies produced by Amazon or have DVDs delivered with two-day free shipping via Amazon Prime If a customer is not home the delivery person can use Amazon Key to unlock the door and leave packages inside his or her house A person can order household products instantly using an Amazon Dash Button And through Amazon Services a user can hire a person to clean his or her house INNOVATION AND CHANGE As Amazon’s founder and leader Bezos has pushed the company to innovate and change Amazon now builds tech devices like the Kindle e-reader the Fire tablet and the Echo speaker which features the voice-activated personal assistant Alexa Amazon is experimenting with package delivery by drone Bezos has used his Amazon profits to fund experimental space travel He started the aerospace company Blue Origin in hopes of making space flight more affordable and available to the public Amazon has been innovative in other ways as well In addition to selling products itself the company lets other sellers use its website to advertise and sell products One of the biggest moneymakers for Amazon is Amazon Web Services AWS Amazon’s cloud service created in 2002 8
KEY PLAYERS JEFF BEZOS Jeff Bezos the founder of Amazon was born on January 12 1964 in Albuquerque New Mexico Bezos was the son of Jackie Gise and Ted Jorgensen But Bezos’s mother divorced Jorgensen and remarried Her new husband Mike Bezos legally adopted four-year-old Jeff Bezos’s mother was a stay-at-home mom Mike was an engineer for oil company Exxon During his childhood Bezos and his family moved several times living in Houston Texas and Pensacola Florida Bezos often spent summers at his grandparents ranch in Texas where he worked with his grandfather doing chores and helping fix machinery As a kid Bezos was interested in science and inventions He was a tinkerer who built a solar cooker from an umbrella and built a variety of who built a solar cooker from an umbrella and built a variety of alarms and traps to keep his younger siblings out of his room alarms and traps to keep his younger siblings out of his room Intelligent and hardworking Bezos graduated at the top of his class Intelligent and hardworking Bezos graduated at the top of his class from his Florida high school from his Florida high school Bezos studied electrical engineering and Bezos studied electrical engineering and computer science at Princeton University After computer science at Princeton University After Bezos graduated in 1986 he eventually got a Bezos graduated in 1986 he eventually got a job in New York City working for an investment job in New York City working for an investment company called DESCO Bezos excelled and at company called DESCO Bezos excelled and at 26 years old he was the youngest vice president 26 years old he was the youngest vice president DESCO had ever had In early 1994 Bezos’s boss DESCO had ever had In early 1994 Bezos’s boss asked him to research possible internet business asked him to research possible internet business opportunities Bezos discovered that use of the opportunities Bezos discovered that use of the internet was growing quickly He started to think internet was growing quickly He started to think about what kind of business would work well as an about what kind of business would work well as an internet business internet business In July 1994 Bezos and his wife MacKenzie In July 1994 Bezos and his wife MacKenzie left New York City and drove to Seattle where left New York City and drove to Seattle where they started Amazon They had been married they started Amazon They had been married for one year In 2018 Bezos lived near Seattle for one year In 2018 Bezos lived near Seattle with MacKenzie and their four children with MacKenzie and their four children Bezos has been the CEO of Amazon from the very beginning 9
