Jeff Bezos started out by opening an online bookstore in his Seattle garage in '94.
And that tiny business became Amazon, an e-commerce juggernaut that made Bezos the wealthiest
man in modern history.
But who exactly is the genius behind the billionaire?
Alexa: Tell us the untold truth of Jeff Bezos.
His biological father
Jeff's biological father, Ted Jorgensen, had no idea he had a billionaire son until reporter
Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, tracked
down Jorgensen working in a bicycle repair shop in Arizona, in 2012.
Stone writes,
"Jorgensen said he didn't know who Jeff Bezos was and was baffled by my suggestion that
he was the father of this famous CEO."
According to Page Six, Bezos' parents were teens when they got pregnant and were married
for two years before his mother, Jackie, left the relationship, taking Jeff with her.
Jorgensen claimed he had wanted to reach out, but Jackie allegedly told him not to.
Jorgensen died in 2015, without ever meeting Jeff.
Bezos gets a McJob
Before he ever launched Amazon, a high school-aged Bezos was serving Big Macs at McDonald's.
Although he wasn't allegedly allowed to work the counter due to his acne, Bezos walked
away from his time at the golden arches with at least one valuable skill.
He told Fast Company,
"One of the great gifts I got from that job is that I can crack eggs with one hand.
My favorite shift was Saturday morning.
The first thing I would do is get a big bowl and crack 300 eggs into it."
If Bezos is ever elected president, we assume he won't serve Quarter Pounders at the White
House.
Egg McMuffins?
Possibly!
His Star Trek cameo
Bezos is a billionaire and a Star Trek fan, so… you know how this storyline is going
to go.
Speaking at the Pathfinder Awards banquet in 2016, Bezos revealed,
"For years, I have been begging Paramount… to let me be in a Star Trek movie."
His persistence eventually paid off when he nabbed a cameo in 2016's Star Trek Beyond.
"But I said, 'Look, you know, I'll put any amount of makeup on.
I'll be invisible; nobody will know it's me."
But Bezos wanted a speaking part, central to the story, so it wouldn't be edited out.
"They honored those requirements, and I have a speaking part.
It is two lines, two words long, I say, 'speak normally'."
"Speak normally."
Star Trek Beyond Director Justin Lin even tweeted a photo of Bezos in full makeup before
the film's release, calling Bezos "passionate" in his fandom.
Bezos remembered,
"It was super-fun for me.
It was a bucket list item."
Banking $191,000 per minute
According to Money, all publicly traded companies are required by the SEC "to disclose CEO salaries
and median employee salaries."
And in 2018, the world learned that the median salary for Amazon's workforce was just over
$28,000.
"I'm very proud of the culture that we have at Amazon."
Bezos' annual salary, however, was just under $82,000, but his total compensation totaled
over $1.6 million, accounting for "security and benefits."
Yet, even that sum didn't include the 80 million shares of Amazon stock he owns.
Money reported,
"Bezos' net worth on Jan. 1 [2018] was $99 billion.
On May 1 [2018] it was $132 billion…
Divide that by 24 hours in a day to get about $11.5 million per hour, the equivalent of
roughly $191,000 per minute."
And there's more.
Forbes reported that Bezos' net worth increase of $39.2 billion from 2017 to 2018 was,
"… the biggest single-year increase on the Billionaires List this century."
"The great thing about humans in general is we're always improving things."
Trouble in paradise
On January 9th, 2019, the same day the National Enquirer dished the dirt on Jeff Bezos' affair
with TV personality and pilot Lauren Sanchez, Jeff and his wife, MacKenzie Bezos, dropped
a joint statement on Twitter announcing their divorce after 25 years of marriage, vowing
to "remain cherished friends."
But now that racy text messages between the business tycoon and Sanchez have come to light,
that whole "cherished friends" thing might stretch a little thin.
By the way, the Bezos' didn't have a prenup, so there's reportedly about $137 billion on
the line.
According to TMZ, Jeff and MacKenzie will likely split everything down the middle.
If that's true, theirs could be the world's most expensive divorce settlement.
Just to be clear on how much money we're talking: According to CNBC, if Bezos had to give up
even "just 5 percent of his total net worth," MacKenzie would "thank u, next" to the bank
with about $6.8 billion.
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