Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His mother was still in high school when she gave birth to him. Her marriage to Jeff’s father lasted a year and she remarried when Jeff was born. His stepfather adopted him. They later moved to Houston, Texas and over generations, Jeff’s ancestors acquired a 25,000 acre ranch. As of March 2015, he was the largest landholder in Texas. As a child, Bezos spent his summers working on his grandfathers farm. A few years later, his family moved to Florida, where he became valedictorian of Miami Palmetto High School. In 1986, Bezos graduated Princeton with his bachelors in computer science. In 1993, he married MacKenzie Tuttle and the two welcomed four children.
Shortly after he graduated college, Jeff Bezos went right to work. He started on Wall Street in his field of computer science. He later started at a company called Fitel, building a network for international trade. In 1994, after making a cross the country drive from New York to Seattle, Bezos founded amazon.com. The company started in his garage. He took a chance and left his well paying job in New York City after learning about the rapid growth in internet.
A few years later, Bezos founded Blue Origin, a space flight startup company. The company was kept a secret until it purchased a large amount of land in Texas for a launch facility. Bezos says that Blue Origin was founded so that “anybody could go into space.” During a launch, Blue Origin lost a prototype vechicle and because of the crash, it had a setback. In 2013, the company had successfully flew to space and returned. Bezos recently revealed he was selling $1 billion in amazon stock a year to finance his Blue Origin rocket company. Bezos also announced he would be purchasing The Washington Post for $250 million in cash. As of October 2016, according to Forbes, Bezos is listed as the third wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $72 billion.