One of the reasons this became somewhat an impossible task is because inspiration comes in many forms and has many faces.
Some leaders became great because of how they persevered with a dream in spite of their circumstances, only to go on and achieve such extraordinary things that they continue to be revered long after their deaths.
Have you ever think that you might also be in the list of one of the world leaders, maybe one of the most famous influencers, who wouldn’t like that, right? Every one of us have a dream like that, so what do think how did they manage to achieve that kind of dream.
These leaders are truly inspirational and well-respected because of their natural flair to innovate, empower and influence others to act in meaningful ways and ultimately change the world.
So the list below isn’t exhaustive by any means. But it certainly contains some of the most influential leaders who have shaped the world for the better and inspired positive changes among millions, if not billions.
10. Walt Disney
“A man should never neglect his family for business.”
Full Name: Walter Elias Disney
Net Worth: 1 Billion $
Born: December 5, 1901, Hermosa, Chicago, Illinois, United States
Died: December 15, 1966, Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center, Burbank, California, United States
Age: 65 years old
Children: Diane Disney Miller, Sharon Mae Disney
Walt Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist. He is best known for being the man behind Walt Disney Productions, one of the most famous motion picture producers in the world. He owned the largest individual stake in Walt Disney Inc., which was created in 1953 to control Disney's intellectual property, design, and other assets.
Childhood:
Walter Elias Disney was born in Chicago's Hermosa neighbourhood on December 5, 1901, the fourth son of Elias and Flora Disney. He had four siblings, brother Herbert, Raymond and Roy, and a sister, Ruth. The family moved to Marceline, Missouri when Disney was four years old, and it was there that he developed an interest in drawing. One of his earliest drawing projects was when he was paid to draw the horse of a retired neighbourhood doctor.
Career:
The iconic character Mickey Mouse was developed by Disney and first appeared in May 1928. Disney pioneered the method of creating post-produced sound cartoons, and signed a contract with Cine phone as the distributor of this popular sound cartoons, later signing a distribution contract with Columbia Pictures for the Mickey Mouse cartoons.
He formed WED Enterprises (now Walt Disney Imagineering) and used his personal money to fund a team of engineers and animators to work on the plans for the park, set to be built on a plot of land in Anaheim, California, that had been purchased. Disneyland was officially opened in July 1955 to great success. After only a month in operation, the park was receiving over 20,000 visitors a day and had welcomed 3.6 million guests by the end of its first year.
9. Steve Jobs
“That’s been one of my mantras—focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex; you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.”
Full Name: Steve Paul Jobs
Net Worth: 10 Billion $
Born: February 24, 1955, San Francisco, California, United States
Died: October 5, 2011, Palo Alto, California, United States
Age: 56 years old
Spouse: Laurene Powell Jobs (m. 1991-2011)
Children: Lisa Brennan-Jobs, Eve Jobs, Reed Jobs, Erin Sienna Jobs
Steve Jobs was an American inventor and business magnate who had a net worth of $10.2 billion at the time of his death. Steve Jobs was known for being the co-founder and chief executive officer of the technology giant, Apple Inc. Jobs also served as the chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios, which he helped sell to Disney.
Childhood:
Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California. His biological parents were Abdulfattah Jandali and Joanne Schieble. He was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs. His adoptive father, Paul Reinhold Jobs, was a Coast Guard Mechanic who married Clara Hagopian in 1946 after he left the Coast Guard. Clara grew up in San Francisco as the daughter of Armenian immigrants. After the Coast Guard, Paul was a "repo man," who repaired cars. Clara had an ectopic pregnancy, which led the couple to consider adoption. Paul and Clara adopted Steve's sister Patricia in 1957. In 1959, the family moved to Mountain View, California. Paul built a workbench in the garage to pass his love of mechanics along to his son. By the time he was 10, Jobs was very into engineering and befriended many of the engineers who lived in his neighbourhood.
Career:
Jobs was worth over $1 million in 1978 when he was just 23 years old, two years before the company went public. After Apple went public in December 1980, he was worth $250 million. He didn’t necessarily invent the wheel, but he sure did reinvent it—the computer, that is—to become more accessible and exciting to the entire world. Steve Jobs, the iconic face of Apple Inc., is a name known by millions whose technology affects millions more.
8. Warren Buffet
“We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy, and to be greedy only when others are fearful.”
Full Name: Warren Edward Buffet
Net Worth: 100.6 Billion $
Born: August 30, 1930, Omaha, Nebraska, United States
Age: 90 years old
Spouse: Astrid Menks (m. 2006), (m. 1952-2004)
Warren Buffett is one of the richest people in the world and arguably the best investor of all time. Warren Buffett's net worth is $105 billion. He is considered by many to be the most famous and successful investor in history. If you had invested $10,000 with Warren Buffett in 1966, today you would have over $160 million! That same $10,000 invested in the S&P would be $140,000. Warren Buffett has pledged to give away 99% of his net worth to charity before he dies. 83% of the money will go to The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That equates to roughly $41 billion, which makes it the largest charitable gift in human history. Buffett's philanthropy has inspired other billionaires to pledge at least 50% of their net worth to charity in their lifetimes as well, a truly remarkable accomplishment.
Childhood:
Warren Buffett was born on August 30, 1930, in Omaha, Nebraska. He is the second of three children and the only son of Leila and Congressman Howard Buffett. Buffett began his education at Rose Hill Elementary School. Buffett developed his interest in business and investing at a young age. When he was 7, he was inspired by a book he borrowed from the library called "One Thousand Ways to Make $1000." Buffett started making his mark and his fortune when he was a pre-teen. When he was 10 years old, he had lunch with someone from the New York Stock Exchange and began setting his goals for his entire life. After that lunch, young Buffett knew that he wanted his life to revolve around money. A year later, when he was 11 years old, he bought his first stock. He had a paper route and used the money from that to buy some Oklahoma farmland. By the time he was a sophomore in high school, he was running a successful pinball machine business and had a net worth of roughly $6,000 – that's equivalent to $60,000 today.
Career:
Buffett's fortune is mostly due to his 18 percent interest in Berkshire Hathaway. That share earned him 20.8 percent each year from 1965 to 2016. Buffett owns nearly 300,000 Class A shares and almost 150,000 Class B shares of the company. He also owns more than two million shares of both Wells Fargo and Seritage Growth Properties, nearly 900,000 shares of U.S. Bancorp, and 9,000 more shares of IBM. Even with all of those holdings, his Berkshire Hathaway shares ha
ve been calculated to represent over 98 percent of his net worth. He also donates around five percent of that stock to charity each summer.
At age 21, Buffett had $20,000 ($199,175.93 today). He made his first million ($8.1 million today) when he was 30 years old. Five years later, at 35, Buffett had a net worth of $7 million ($53.3 million today). At 39, he had $25 million. At 47, he was worth $67 million, and at 56, Buffett was a billionaire, worth $1.4 billion. And then his wealth really began to accumulate. By the time he was 66, Buffett was worth $17 billion. At 72, that had jumped to more than $36 billion. In 2016, Buffett added $12 billion to his already substantial fortune.
99% of Buffett's net worth was made after he turned 50 years old.
7. J.P. Morgan
“The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are.”
Full Name: John Pierpont Morgan
Net Worth: 25 Billion $
Born: April 17, 1837, Hartford, Connecticut, United States
Died: March 31, 1913, The St. Regis Rome, Rome, Italy
Age: 75 years old
Children: J.P. Morgan Jr., Anne Morgan, Louisa Pierpont Morgan, Juliet Pierpont Morgan
One of the most powerful bankers of his era, financed railroads and helped organize U.S. Steel, General Electric and other major corporations. A highly successful American businessman and financier. At the time of his death, J.P. Morgan had an inflation-adjusted net worth of somewhere between $25 billion and $45 billion. The variation depends largely on the value of his real estate portfolio and art collection. He is best known for being the head of the banking firm J.P. Morgan and Co., and for his long and successful career on Wall Street. At the time of his death, his estate was worth $68.3 million. Half of that value was attributable to his share in New York and Philadelphia banks. His estate was worth the same as roughly $1.39 billion in modern dollars if calculated based on CPI. It's the same as $25 billion if calculated based on the share of Gross Domestic Product.
Childhood:
John Pierpont Morgan, best known by his initials as J. P. Morgan, was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on April 17, 1837. His father, Junius Spencer Morgan, was from the influential Morgan family. He received his education from the English High School of Boston, a renowned commerce school. After graduating, he then studied French at a school in the Swiss village of La Tour-de-Peilz, and then attended the University of Göttingen to work on his German language skills.
In 1871, Morgan partnered up with the Drexel family of Philadelphia to form the firm Drexel, Morgan & Company. After Anthony Drexel passed away, the firm was renamed J. P. Morgan & Company in 1895. His firm enjoyed close ties with his father's company, J. S. Morgan & Company, as well as other leading firms like Drexel & Company of Philadelphia, and Morgan, Harjes & Company of Paris. He focused on reorganizations and consolidations, and by 1900 his firm was one of the most powerful banking firms in the world.
Career:
His main business model centred around taking over troubled businesses, and reorganizing their structures and managements so that they became profitable again. This process was sometimes referred to as "Morganization". Then, using his reputation as a banker and financier, he would draw investors to these revamped businesses. The industry that he focused much of his attention on was the American railroad industry.
From 1890 to 1913, a total of 42 different major corporations were either organized by, or had their securities underwritten by, J. P. Morgan & Company. These corporations include American Telephone & Telegraph, International Mercantile Marine Company (the owners of the White Star Line, which owned and operated the ill-fated RMS Titanic), General Electric, Federal Steel Company, and the United States Steel Corporation.
6. Mark Zuckerberg
“I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.”
Full Name: Mark Elliot Zuckerberg
Net Worth: 127 Billion $
Born: May 14, 1984, White Plains, New York, United States
Age: 37 years old
Spouse: Priscilla Chan (m.2012)
Children: Maxima Chan Zuckerberg, August Chan Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg is the CEO, chair, and co-founder of Facebook, the world’s largest social networking service, as well as co-CEO and co-founder of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. His estimated net worth is $97 billion.
Childhood:
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born in White Plains, New York on May 14, 1984. His father Edward is a dentist and his mother Karen is a psychiatrist. He has three sisters, Randi, Donna, and Arielle. Mark and his sisters grew up in Dobbs Ferry, New York, in Westchester County. When he made his Bar Mitzvah at 12, it was "Star Wars" themed.
Career:
Mark Zuckerberg's salary is $1 per year. That is not a typo. Many executives like Zuckerberg choose to pay themselves low salaries in order to increase the company's profits as much as possible. When the company maximizes profits, it increases the overall value of their stock holdings, which is where the executive's true wealth comes from. Executives like Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin each earn only $1 per year in salary!
Facebook IPO'd on May 18, 2012, at roughly 38 dollars a share. Mark owns 400 million shares of Facebook. That means, at the IPO, he ended the day with a paper net worth of around $15 billion.
Mark has pledged to give away 99 percent of his wealth during his lifetime. In September 2017 he announced a plan to regularly sell off chunks of his shares to fund his foundation, the CZI (Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative). His 2018 share sales generated $5.3 billion worth of proceeds. In 2019, he sold $1.86 billion worth of Facebook shares.
Mark Zuckerberg first developed Facebook alongside fellow students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes while attending Harvard University in 2004. As Facebook began to be used at other universities, Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard to focus entirely on his growing business. Today, Zuckerberg is the CEO and chair of Facebook, which had more than 2.8 billion monthly active users as of Q3 2020.
Facebook is the world’s largest social networking service, enabling its users to create a personal profile, connect with friends and family, join or create groups, and much more. As the website is free to use, most of the company’s revenue is generated through advertising. Facebook (the company) is also host to several other brands, including photo-sharing app Instagram, which it acquired in 2012; cross-platform mobile messaging service WhatsApp and virtual-reality–headset producer Oculus, both acquired in 2014; Workplace, its enterprise-connectivity platform; Portal, its line of video-calling devices; and Novi, its digital wallet for the Diem payment system.
Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, founded the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2015, with each of them serving as co-CEO. Their charity seeks to leverage technology to fix societal ills, such as improving the access and quality of education, reforming both the criminal justice system and the U.S. immigration system, improving housing affordability, and eventually eradicating all diseases.
5. Bill Gates
"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning."
Full Name: William Henery Gates III
Net Worth: 146 Billion $
Born: October 28, 1955, Seatle, Washington, United States
Age: 65 years old
Children: Jennifer Katharine Gates, Phoebe Adele Gates, Rory John Gates
Bill Gates is an American business magnate, founder and former chairman and CEO of Microsoft, philanthropist, and author. Over much of the last 20 years, Bill Gates has been the richest person in the world. He has been the second-richest person in the world since July 2017 when he was overtaken by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.As of this writing, Bill Gates' net worth is $146 billion.
Childhood:
William Henry Gates III was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington. Gates was bullied as a child. He preferred to stay in his room, where he would shout "I'm thinking" when his mother asked what he was doing. When he was 13, he enrolled in the private Lakeside prep school, and he wrote his first software program. He was in eighth grade during his first year at Lakeside, and the school's Mother's Club used proceeds from a fundraiser to buy a Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and time on a GE computer for the school's students. Gates became interested in programming the GE computer in BASIC. He wrote his first program — a tic-tac-toe game, on this computer. Players played the game against the computer. Eventually, Gates and his friends Paul Allen, RIC Wieland, and Kent Evans were banned from using the school's computer after they were caught exploiting bugs in the operating system to get free time on the machine. The four students formed the Lakeside Programmers Club to make money.
Career:
At one very brief point in 1999, his net worth topped $100 billion. After adjusting for inflation, that was the same as being worth $153 billion today.
In addition to being the largest software company in the world, Microsoft also produces its own line of personal computers, publishes books through Microsoft Press, provides email services through its Exchange server, and sells video game systems and associated peripheral devices. Originally Microsoft’s chief software architect, Gates later transitioned to the role of chair in 2008. He had joined Berkshire Hathaway’s board in 2004. He stepped down from both boards on March 13, 2020.
As you probably know, Bill Gates co-founded the software company Microsoft with Paul Allen and is known as one of the pioneering entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Today, he owns less than 1.3% of Microsoft. He has sold tens of billions of dollars worth of Microsoft shares over the years. The proceeds of his sales have funded Cascade Investment LLC, the vehicle Gates uses to invest in hundreds of other companies.
Bill Gates has a net worth of $146 billion. As of this writing, that makes him the second-richest person in the world, behind Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Since Microsoft's 1986 IPO, Bill has seen his net worth grow from $250 million to well over $100 billion. In 1999, at the peak of the dot-com boom, Gates' fortune briefly topped $99 billion. After adjusting for inflation, that's the same as around $153 billion in today's dollars.
4. Elon Musk
"When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor."
Full Name: Elon Reeve Musk
Net Worth: 163.4 Billion $
Born: June 28, 1971, Pretoria, South Africa
Age: 50 years old
Spouse: Talulah Riley (m. 2010-2016), Justine Musk (m. 2000-2008)
Children: Nevada Alexander Musk, Xavier Musk, Griffin Musk, Damian Musk, Saxon Musk, Kai Musk
Elon Musk has had his hands in several companies over the years. Originally enrolled at Stanford University, Musk deferred his attendance to launch Zip2, one of the earliest online navigation services.A portion of the proceeds from this endeavour was then reinvested to create X.com, an online payment system that later became PayPal. While both of these systems were eventually sold to other companies, Musk has maintained his status as CEO and lead designer of his third project, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), which aims to make space exploration more affordable.
Childhood:
Elon Musk is a South African-born Canadian-American businessman, inventor and investor who has a net worth of $172 billion. Though he wears many hats and is constantly topping his latest project, he is currently best-known for being as the CEO and CTO of SpaceX, CEO and chief product architect of Tesla Motors and chairman of SolarCity. He is also one of the wealthiest people on the planet.
As of this writing, Elon Musk owns roughly 20% of Tesla's outstanding shares and 48% of the privately-held SpaceX. He also controls roughly $50 billion worth of unrealized gains on vested options earned from an extremely ambitious and generous pay package negotiated in 2018.
Career:
Elon Musk's net worth is $172 billion. As of this writing, that makes him one of the richest people on the planet. Musk's fortune comes in his 20% stake in Tesla and his 48% stake in the privately-held SpaceX. Musk is relatively cash-poor, and he has an estimated $500 million worth of debt owed to Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Half of his Tesla equity is pledged as collateral to those bank debts.
In 2004, Musk became a major funder of Tesla Motors (now Tesla), which led to him being retroactively declared a cofounder and his current position as CEO of the electric vehicle company. In addition to its line of electric automobiles—which include sedans, sport utility vehicles (SUVs), and the “Cybertruck” announced in 2019—Tesla also produces energy storage devices, automobile accessories, merchandise, and, through its acquisition of SolarCity in 2016, solar power systems. In 2020, Tesla’s stock price experienced an astronomical surge, having risen 705% from the start of the year to mid-December. It joined the S&P 500 that same month, the largest company added thus far.
3. Bernard Arnault
“All that interests me is promoting my brands, never myself.”
Full Name: Bernard Jean Étienne Arnault
Net Worth: 179 Billion $
Born: March 5, 1949, Roubaix, France
Age: 72 years old
Spouse:Hélène Mercier (m.1991), Anne Dewavrin (m. 1973-1990)
Bernard Arnault is a French billionaire who has a net worth of $179 billion dollars. His net worth makes him one of the richest people in the world, behind people like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. He is the chairman and chief executive of the world's largest luxury goods company, LVMH.
Childhood:
Bernard Jean Étienne Arnault was born on March 5, 1949, in Roubaix, France. His father, Jean Léon Arnault, was a manufacturer and a graduate of École Centrale Paris. His mother, Marie-Josèphe Savinel, was the daughter of Étienne Savinel, who owned the civil engineering company Ferret-Savinel. In 1950, Savinel passed on the management of Ferret-Savinel to his son-in-law Jean Léon Arnault (Bernard's father), and later gave him ownership of the company as well. Bernard graduated from France's top engineering school, the École Polytechnique, in 1971.
Following his graduation in 1971, Arnault began working at his father's company, Ferret-Savinel (which was previously owned by his maternal grandfather). He became the company's president in 1978, and continued in that position until 1984. While with Ferret-Savinel, he helped steer the company away from construction and increasingly focused on real estate, which would turn out to be a successful business move. Then, in 1984, he acquired the luxury goods company Financiere Agache, with the help of Antoine Bernheim. He became CEO of Financiere Agache, and then also took over the textile company Boussac Saint-Freres. Boussac owned many brands and stores, including the luxury brand Christian Dior and the department store Le Bon Marche, and Arnault sold all the Boussac asset's except those two.
Career:
Arnault made most of his fortune from Christian Dior, which his family holds a 73 percent stake in. Christian Dior is a 41 percent owner in the world's largest luxury goods company, LVMH, which the Arnault family owns a 5.7 percent direct stake in. He also owns 8.4 percent of Hermes and shares in Carrefour. In 2009, he sold his stake in the winery Cheval Blanc to LVMH for 238 million euros. LVMH had revenue of $41.6 billion in 2016. In June 2019 Bernard Arnault's net worth topped $100 billion for the first time. At that point, he was the third-richest person on the planet. In July 2019, his net worth topped $108 billion, which placed him as the second-richest person on the planet, roughly $400 million ahead of Bill Gates. From January to December 2019, Bernard Arnault's net worth increased by $36 billion.
2. Henry Ford
Full Name: Henry Ford
Net Worth: 200 Billion $
Born: July 30, 1863, Springwells Township, Michigan
Died: April 7, 1947, Fair Lane, home of Clara and Henry Ford, Dearborn, Michigan, United States
Age: 83 years old
Spouse: Clara Bryant Ford (m. 1888-1947)
Children: Edsel Ford
Henry Ford was an American entrepreneur who founded the Ford Motor Company. At the time of his death, Henry Ford had a net worth equal to $200 billion dollars adjusted for inflation.
The pioneer of the Model T launched more than just engines, but, through his Model T assembly line, a more efficient means of working. This approach to production lowered the cost of materials and the final product, which changed American vehicle accessibility and the world around him; changing the course of history really does pay.
Childhood:
He was born July 30, 1863, on a farm in Greenfield Township, Michigan. Not particularly interested in running the family farm, in 1879, Ford left home to work as an apprentice machinist. In 1882, he returned to Dearborn to work on the family farm to help his parents, and became quite proficient at operating the Westinghouse portable steam engine. He was later hired by Westinghouse to service their steam engines. During this period Ford also studied bookkeeping at Goldsmith, Bryant & Stratton Business College in Detroit.
By 1918, half of all cars in America were Model T's. All new Model T's were black; as Ford wrote in his autobiography, "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants, so long as it is black". This helped him create an efficient assembly line that paved the way for an affordable automobile. By the 1920s, a majority of American drivers had learned to drive on the Model T.
Career:
Henry Ford was an American manufacturer, industrialist, and a sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique that allowed for mass production. Contrary to popular belief, Ford did not invent the automobile nor did he invent the assembly line, but he was the first to develop and manufacture an affordable automobile for middle class Americans. By achieving this, Ford converted the automobile from a relatively unknown invention into an innovation that profoundly impacted the landscape of the twentieth century.
His introduction of the Model T revolutionized transportation and the landscape of American industry. Throughout his career, Ford voiced his opposition to Labour Unions, authored some anti-Semitic books, and bought out his investors, so his family could maintain sole ownership of the company. Ford married Clara Ala Bryant in 1888, and they had one child: Edsel Ford (1893–1943).
1. Jeff Bezos
"We expect all our businesses to have a positive impact on our top and bottom lines. Profitability is very important to us, or we wouldn't be in this business."
Full Name: Jeffrey Preston Bezos
Net Worth: 210.2 Billion $
Born: March 5, 1949, Roubaix, France
Age: 72 years old
Spouse: MacKenzie Scott (m.1993-2019)
Jeff Bezos is the founder of both Amazon, the world’s largest retailer, and Blue Origin. With an estimated net worth of $177 billion, he is one of the richest man in the world.
Childhood:
Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His mother was a 17-year-old high school student when she gave birth to Jeff. His father owned a bike shop, and eventually divorced Jeff's birth father. When he was 4 she married a Cuban immigrant named Miguel Bezos. Soon after the wedding, Miguel adopted Jeff and Jeff's last name was legally changed from Jorgenson to Bezos. The family moved to Houston, where Mike got a job as an engineer for Exxon. They were also closer to his mother's parents, who had a cattle ranch south of San Antonio. His maternal grandmother Mattie Louise Guise was first cousins to country singer George Strait.
He attended Princeton University with a plan to study physics, but his love of computers shifted his studies. He eventually graduated summa cum laude with a 4.2 GPA, Phi Beta Kappa. Furthermore, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science and electrical engineering.
Upon graduating from college, Jeff went to work for a financial technology firm called Fitel. He then transitioned to the banking industry when he landed a product management job at Bankers Trust. In 1990, he was hired as a financial analyst for D. E. Shaw & Co., a hedge fund that had recently been launched with the idea that mathematical modelling could predict big market gains.
Career:
In 1994, Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com in a garage in Seattle, shortly after he resigned from the hedge fund giant D.E. Shaw. In fact, he had originally pitched the idea of an online bookshop to his former boss David E. Shaw, who wasn’t interested.
Though Amazon.com originally started out selling books, it has since morphed into a one-stop shop for everything under the sun, and is arguably the world’s largest retailer. At any rate, it is hard to dispute its self-description as the “Earth’s most customer-centric company”. Its pattern of constant diversification is evident in some of its unexpected expansions, which include acquiring Whole Foods in 2017 and launching its own branded over-the-counter drugs in February. 2018. In 2020, Amazon’s share price skyrocketed on the heightened demand for online shopping as lockdowns forced consumers to stay home. On July 5, 2021, Bezos stepped down as CEO of the e-commerce giant and transitioned to his new role as its executive chair.
Jeff worked at D.E. Shaw until 1994, by which point he had risen to the company's fourth senior vice president. He was 30 years old.
Amazon
A year earlier, Jeff became fascinated with the nascent World Wide Web. He wanted to sell something online, and he landed on selling books. Bezos created Amazon's business plan during a cross-country drive from New York to Seattle. He officially founded the company in 1994, setting up the original business in his garage.
According to the company's most recent SEC filing, Jeff owns 55 million shares of Amazon, roughly 12% of the total shares outstanding. At his peak, he owned 80 million shares of Amazon. As part of his April 2019 divorce settlement with MacKenzie Bezos, Jeff transferred 19.7 million shares to his ex-wife. The value of the shares at the time of the transfer was $36 billion. The settlement temporarily reduced Jeff's net worth from $150 billion to $114 billion. Jeff was also an early pre-IPO investor in Google.com and owns at least $1 billion shares in what is now known as Alphabet Inc.
For much of the 2000s, Jeff was not even in the top 10 or top 20 of the wealthiest people on the planet. Amazon stock began to skyrocket in late 2014. In July 2015, Jeff's net worth was $50 billion. In under two years, his net worth (and the stock) had doubled. On July 27, 2017, Bezos took over Bill Gates as the richest person on the planet. In September 2018, Amazon's market cap topped $1 trillion. This was prior to his divorce, so he still owned 80 million shares. At that valuation, Jeff's net worth topped, and then-all-time high of $170 billion.
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