Amazon didn't have a profitable quarter until 2001, more than 6 years into its existence

Amazon's success is attributable, in large part, to founder Jeff Bezos’ vision

Bezos parlayed a career on Wall Street into founding an online bookstore that would evolve into the largest online retailer in the world. Bezos’ story is characterized by his relentless focus on innovation and on the customer experience at Amazon.

Bezos has frequently cited a 1999 article titled Amazon.bomb to illustrate how dire the early predictions about Amazon got

Over the years, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos often recalls how wrong the predictions in the 1999 Barron’s cover story were. Among other things, that article declared Amazon’s entire business model to be unsustainable and destined to fail, noting its lack of profit and dependence on a massive amount of capital to fund its growth.

In 1994, Amazon was founded as an online bookseller

Books were just the start, as founder Jeff Bezos' ultimate goal was to create an "everything store," using the internet to transcend the physical limitations of brick-and-mortar retail. The Seattle-based Amazon gradually added CDs and consumer electronics, becoming a dominant e-commerce player in the late 1990s, and one of the few dot-com companies to make it through the bust.

Amazon has experienced relentless, if occasionally bumpy, growth since its founding

From its founding in 1994 to a slew of acquisitions and new products and services launched in the decades since then, Amazon has experienced relentless, if occasionally bumpy, growth. This timeline from The Verge lays out some of the major events in the company’s story, including its IPO, rollout of its lucrative cloud-computing division, and much more.

Amazon sends its first-ever letter to shareholders every year

The first letter to Amazon’s shareholders, written by founder and then-CEO Jeff Bezos in 1997, is a key part of the Amazon story—laying out the company’s long-term approach to the business and several of its core operating values. Bezos emphasizes, for example, Amazon’s plan to start with a bookstore but to evolve into a much larger ecosystem.

Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos' wealth primarily stems from his Amazon ownership stake.

Jeff Bezos came from humble beginnings and spent much of his childhood on a cattle ranch, where his grandfather made his own needles for the cattle by hand.

Bezos owned roughly 8% of Amazon as of 2025

Three decades after founding Amazon, Jeff Bezos has built a sprawling empire of businesses and financial interests. Other large stakeholders in the company include Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy and Bezos’ ex-wife MacKenzie Scott. This article provides more details on who owns how much of Amazon.

Amazon sold its first book on April 3, 1995

Before selling everything on the internet, Amazon started as an online bookstore. The company's first customer was a man named John Wainright, who purchased "Fluid Concepts And Creative Analogies: Computer Models Of The Fundamental Mechanisms Of Thought" by Douglas Hofstadter. There's a building named after Wainwright on Amazon's Seattle campus.

Jeff Bezos started his career working at McDonald’s

He now claims that his high school gig at the fast food restaurant taught him about efficiency, customer service, and other valuable lessons that he took with him when building Amazon.

Amazon's largest profit engine is its cloud-computing platform Amazon Web Services, which generated over 60% of Amazon's total operating income in 2024.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos emphasizes worrying about customers rather than competition

In a 1999 shareholder letter, Bezos wrote, "I constantly remind our employees to be afraid, to wake up every morning terrified. Our customers have made our business what it is, and we consider them to be loyal to us – right up until the second that someone else offers them a better service." Motivated by fear, the entrepreneur advocates consistent innovation, experimentation, and improvement to create a better customer experience.

Jeff Bezos launched his philanthropic ‘Bezos Day One Fund’ in 2018 with his then-wife, Mackenzie Scott

The fund focuses on promoting education and reducing homelessness. This article compares Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ philanthropic initiatives to those of other billionaires, including Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.

Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model

Central to any understanding of the multifaceted nature of Amazon's business today is the concept of the "flywheel" at the heart of the company. Put simply, it's an idea that refers to a self-reinforcing cycle that drives the continuous growth of Amazon's various businesses, including its retail arm, its Prime subscription service, and more.

Amazon expanded its business and diversified its offerings by acquiring companies

Amazon’s retail and cloud businesses have been key drivers of the company’s growth over the years, but they haven’t done all the work by themselves. Companies Amazon has acquired include the video doorbell maker Ring, the grocer Whole Foods, the streaming service Twitch, the shoe retailer Zappos, and the film studio MGM.

Warren Buffett has said not investing in Google or Amazon early enough was a mistake on his part

After avoiding investing in tech stocks during the dot-com boom, Buffett's stance on investing in tech was widely criticized. Buffett later shared his thoughts on why he regrets not investing early enough.

Jeff Bezos purchased The Washington Post in 2013

He purchased the legacy newspaper with the intention of bringing it into the internet age, thereby helping improve its financials. Bezos’ ownership of the newspaper has been widely criticized, particularly by those who do not want the wealthiest in the country to have that much influence on the press. One Bezos critic explains the standpoint further in this article.

One of the most important pieces of Amazon’s corporate empire? Its Prime subscription business

Prime drives customer loyalty and boosts Amazon’s revenue through its monthly and yearly fees. The key components included with a Prime subscription include free two-day shipping on eligible items, as well as access to services like Amazon Music and Prime Video.

Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company, sent its first passengers to space in 2021

Founded in 2000, Bezos spent many years working on the company as a side project before it became more well-known around 2004, when a plot of land in Texas was purchased as a launch site for the company’s rockets. He has said that the goal of Blue Origin is to build “reusable space vehicles.” This resource details what passengers experience from takeoff to landing on a Blue Origin flight.

When he first enrolled at Princeton University, Jeff Bezos wanted to study physics

He later changed his major to electrical engineering and computer science. He graduated Summa Cum Laude and received job offers at Intel, Nokia, and Accenture, but he declined those offers in favor of a job at a fintech startup.

Jeff Bezos’ biological father and mother married as teenagers—and had Jeff a year later

His biological father, Ted Jorgensen, was a circus performer at the time. He later gave up custody of Jeff and became a bicycle repairman in Phoenix, Arizona. Ironically, the last time Jorgensen saw Jeff as a child was in a Walmart where Jorgensen worked. This video dives into the relationship between Jeff Bezos and his estranged biological father, who passed away in 2015.

Amazon accounts for roughly 40% of all US online retail sales—a much larger piece of the pie than its competitor Walmart

Although Walmart is roughly 30 years older than Amazon, the e-commerce giant has a significant lead in online US retail sales: Walmart's share is roughly 7%. Season 33 of the podcast "Business Wars," hosted by David Brown, is all about one of the most intense rivalries in all of retail.

Warren Buffett has been criticized for avoiding investing in tech stocks during the 1990s dot-com boom, as he wasn't confident in the future growth of the tech industry.

Jeff Bezos has an art collection worth hundreds of millions

The collection includes an oil painting by Pablo Picasso that was once part of Picasso's personal collection. Bezos purchased the painting in a 2023 Sotheby's auction.

A 2002 profile of unprofitable Netflix as it bet on a subscription model

The streaming behemoth saw the potential in subscriptions early, and in this 2002 profile CEO Reed Hastings was already talking about plans to offer "downloadable" movies. The profile serves as a historical artifact confirming the startup's risky bets and showcases the contingent factors that led to its success. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

More than 650 companies went public in the US in 1996

As the dot-com bubble reached its peak, most dot-com companies went public with little proof of being profitable and were often overvalued. In 1999, the Nasdaq's price-to-earnings ratio (a tool used to determine a stock's value that divides its price by earnings) hit 90.2, signaling that many companies were operating at a net loss. Startups promised investors that more time and money would help scale their businesses and become profitable.

Multiple business choices may have hindered Sears’ financial success

There’s no shortage of potential culprits for Sears’ death, from hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert, to Amazon, to the 2008 stock market crash.

Steve Jobs saved a nearly bankrupt Apple

Apple nearly went bankrupt in 1997, when the tech company had only three months of operational cash left. Apple's board ousted cofounder Steve Jobs in 1985, but he was brought back as interim CEO to revive the company when Apple purchased Jobs' company, NeXT.

Spotify took 18 years to reach profitability—and 70% of its revenue goes to rights holders.

Jeff Bezos’ adoptive father Mike Bezos immigrated to the US from Cuba at age 16

Mike Bezos’ mother made a coat out of cleaning rags for him before he immigrated, assuming that the United States would be very cold. Mike and Jeff told the story of Mike’s journey to the US and early days in America together in this video.

See America's top companies by revenue in 1994 versus 2023—Sears isn't on the 2023 list, while Amazon isn't in the 1994 edition.

Google's early focus on simplicity and user experience drove its future successes

Google Search revolutionized information retrieval in 1998, but additional web-based products, including Gmail, Maps, Docs, and YouTube reinforced the company's core ad business while allowing it to aggregate the world's information. Forming Alphabet protected this business from riskier moonshot projects.

A private equity firm led the leveraged buyout of Toys 'R' Us before the company's bankruptcy

After being acquired by two private equity firms and a real estate company for more than $6B in 2005, Toys 'R' Us filed for bankruptcy in 2017. Many point to the $400M a year the company had to pay to service its debt, as well as increased competition from online retailers like Amazon, for draining its profits and ultimately dragging it under.

Amazon has historically opposed efforts among its employees to unionize

Amazon has done everything from creating mandatory anti-union meetings to hiring union-busting consultants, and even engaging in employee surveillance. Such efforts have proven to be a lightning rod for pro-labor groups.

Pets.com is one of the most emblematic dot-com companies

Pets.com—an e-commerce pet store webpage—is a prime example of dot-com companies burning through investments. Despite being a popular and well-known brand, the company struggled to generate enough revenue to become profitable. After raising approximately $82.5M in its February 2000 initial public offering, Pets.com filed for bankruptcy in November of that same year.

Mark Zuckerberg credits some of Facebook's success to constant evolution

Before becoming the head of OpenAI, Sam Altman was the president of Y Combinator—a startup accelerator company that supported companies like Airbnb, DoorDash, and Coinbase. In 2016, Altman interviewed Zuckerberg about creating Facebook and its growth over time. Zuckerberg said that, unlike other companies (think: CourseMatch), Facebook kept growing and adding new features, which prevented the app from becoming obsolete.

Former Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett is among the world's most generous philanthropists, having given away more than $68B.

Sears once tried to become a tech company

In 1984, Sears arguably created one of the first online retail services, called “Prodigy,” in 1984 alongside IBM and CBS. But it was more of a WeChat than an Amazon, offering a variety of other services to users a few years before the dot com era.

7 prominent investors rejected Airbnb in its early days

Airbnb is arguably known as one of the most successful startup stories of all time. But back in 2008, many prominent investors rejected their pitch when they went out to raise money—and Airbnb's founder still has the rejection emails to prove it.

Walmart has historically been one of Amazon's largest competitors

While Walmart has been America's largest retailer by revenue for over three decades, Amazon is now fighting for the title, seeking retail supremacy. In this podcast episode from the Wall Street Journal, Sarah Nassauer explores the efforts Walmart has taken to keep its crown.

Venture capitalists were once bullish on DTC brands

While a physical store can only hold so many objects, online retailers without the limits of four walls that could sell their products direct-to-consumer could theoretically be great investments. But they didn’t always provide investors with expected returns.

Elon Musk's $100M investment in SpaceX was lost to three failed rocket launches

The attempts with Falcon 1 endangered the company's future but provided valuable information from which to iterate and follow up with the successful first privately funded orbital launch in history and multiple ISS resupply missions.

7 angel investors funded Google in its early days

Entrepreneur Shaan Puri shares how seven strangers acted as Google’s earliest angel investors. The first gave Google $100K without even putting his equity agreement in writing. The investors on “Shark Tank” use their personal funds to support startups, but they’re often more predatory about terms than typical angels.

Many original dot-com company founders were bought out early on

The people who bought the original domains for dot-com companies and had the ideas to start businesses were often bought out by investors before becoming well-known companies. Both Pets.com and Broadcast.com were acquired early on.

The term 'startup'—which is typically used to describe private companies in their early stages of operation that focus on innovating new products or services to meet a market gap—can be traced back to a 1976 Forbes article.

Facebook was almost sold to Yahoo! for $1B, but its CEO refused

The board tried to fire Mark Zuckerberg for his resistance, which he blames for failing to communicate the long-term vision of the company. He claims the company has succeeded by launching products quickly to learn faster than its competitors.

Elon Musk claims cutting costs fast was the only way to stop X from dying

Laying off 80% of X's workforce, says Musk, was required to avoid a financial collapse within months of him purchasing the platform. In 2023, he claimed X would be cash-flow positive within the year as advertisers returned to the platform.

The Amazon Prime subscription service offers its members a variety of benefits, including free two-day shipping on eligible items

Prime also offers members access to streaming video and music, and exclusive deals. As of this writing, its annual price tag is $139. A CNBC article sets out to address whether the subscription is worth that price, outlining the service’s key perks and who’s likely to benefit from it the most.

Amazon is both a vendor for Netflix, via its cloud-computing arm, and its rival

Amazon's Prime Video is a subscription streaming service that includes a variety of original shows and movies for free with a paid Prime membership. This Rotten Tomatoes ranking details 100 of the best Prime Video shows available to watch, including the dramas “Fleabag” and “The Boys.”

Southwest Airlines was profitable for nearly 5 decades, offering free whisky, cheap late-night tickets, and free-for-all seating allocation—despite how hard it is to make money running an airline.