'Seen in that light, it really was a difficult choice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot. 'That logic made some sense to me, and he convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision,' says Bezos. Bezos boss took a walk through Central Park and told Bezos that, while it sounded like a 'really good idea,' it would be an even better idea for somebody who didn't already have a good career. 'I'd always wanted to be an inventor, and she wanted me to follow my passion.'īut not everyone was on board.

I'd invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires, a solar cooker that didn't work very well out of an umbrella and tinfoil, baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings,' he says. 'As a young boy, I'd been a garage inventor. Two other technology icons, Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison, were adopted, and the experience is thought by some to have given each a powerful motivation to succeed,' Stone writes. 'It is of course unknowable whether the unusual circumstances of his birth helped to create that fecund entrepreneurial mix of intelligence, ambition, and a relentless need to prove himself. In 1968, Gise remarried Miguel Bezos, who arrived in Miami in 1962 from Cuba knowing only one word of English: 'hamburger.' Jorgensen agreed to let Bezos adopt his son and, at 4 years old, Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen became Jeffrey Preston Bezos.īiographer Stone suggests that Bezos' childhood may have contributed to his obsession with success. When Jeff Bezos was 17 months old, his mom divorced Jorgensen. He was also 'had a habit of drinking too much,' according to 'The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon,' by journalist and biographer Brad Stone.

Jorgensen belonged to a unicycle troupe and worked at a retail store making $1.25 an hour, so he didn't have much money. They flew to Mexico with their parents' money to get married. Jorgensen was 18 and Gise was 16 when she became pregnant. His biological dad, Ted Jorgensen, met and started dating his mother, Jacklyn Gise, when they were both in high school. Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964, as Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen.

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