NEWS FLASH – Wikipedia skips a really important piece of information!
Under Amazon’s history it reads:
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in July 1994. He chose Seattle for its technical talent as Microsoft is located there. Almost three years later, Amazon went public in the spring of 1997.
Pretty straight forward you’d think, but something really important happened in 1996, Jeff met John.
John fuels rockets!
‘John’ was John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins, the storied venture capital firm out of Silicon Valley. John and Jeff had a meeting of minds in ‘96. After their discussion, Kleiner Perkins invested $8 million in Amazon for 15% of the company. If you’re wondering how well Kleiner Perkins made out, don’t worry I’ve done the math. That 15% of Amazon is worth around $270 billion today. Not bad even when you consider dilution….
3 things to consider:
- 6 hours ago, Blue Origin’s New Shepard took off and reached orbit. Jeff Bezos is onboard the rocket as a part of the company’s first human flight. He’s the richest man in the world. Amazon is the most valuable company in the world. He paid for the rocket!
- In 1996, $9 billion was deployed in venture capital across the entire year. In 2021, the amount of venture capital deployed is heading for somewhere in the region of $250B. 25 years later and there’s 25 times as much venture capital available!
- It is now proven! When you start your own company, when you work hard on a big idea, you can find yourself (kinda) going to the moon and back!
I’m guessing that when they met; John and Jeff talked figuratively about rocket ships, trajectory, and fuel. I’m sure they imagined great things in the future, but probably not this.
Where is your rocket going to take you in the next 25 years? Here’s a tip – Aim for the stars, it’s possible!