Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has officially stepped down from his position at the company he founded in 1994, according to an announcement on the company’s website today. While the news may seem sudden to outside observers, Bezos himself has been planning the move for months now, The Wall Street Journal reports. He will continue working at Amazon as its founder and chairman of the board, but he plans to eventually turn over day-to-day management of the company to CEO-in-waiting and fellow Amazon founder, CFO Jeff Wilke.
A brief history of Amazon
After graduating from Princeton University in 1986, he drove across the country to Seattle with his belongings in a Toyota Echo. His first night there, he laid out his sleeping bag on a church floor and spent weeks reading business books and writing up an eight-page business plan for what would become Amazon. In 1994, he took that idea and left Wall Street, where he was working as a rookie analyst, to launch it out of his garage in Seattle. He raised $300,000 from friends and family to get started—and it ultimately became one of history’s greatest success stories.
The only thing you need to know about this change
Bezos is stepping down as CEO to become Amazon's new Founder and Executive Chairman. In other words, he's no longer going to be actively involved in running Amazon (though we'd guess he'll still have a pretty heavy hand in terms of shaping strategy). However, he is apparently going to remain involved with it for years to come: His new position will last for the next ten-plus years, according to an email sent by Bezos. Moreover, another email states that Bezos will not be replaced as Amazon's CEO anytime soon. Instead, his long-term successor has yet to be named.
Why This Will Not Affect Shoppers
Amazon is poised to become a bigger and bigger retail force in the coming years. An overwhelming majority of American consumers—over 93 per cent, according to some polls—shop at Amazon each year. The vast majority of those customers have an Amazon Prime membership, which allows them to make free two-day deliveries and a growing number have access to same-day delivery for an annual fee. Other services that come with Prime include music streaming, photo storage and more. Even if customers don’t get their items from Amazon directly, other retailers still sell on its site.
Why You Should Care
This is huge news. Amazon has had a huge impact on how we shop in 2018, and it'll be fascinating to see what happens to it now that its driving force has stepped down. If nothing else, with Bezos gone there, will likely be a lot of new focus on who will replace him; does he have an heir? Is he just stepping down for now or for good? How long is his brief sabbatical? These are all valid questions and answers to them could shape our future shopping experiences.
What We Can Learn From Steve Jobs, Walt Disney and Jeff Bezos
Who Will Take Their Place?: A look at 3 business magnates who had a vision for what they wanted to achieve and did not let anything get in their way. They each built companies that are now household names, with tens of thousands of employees worldwide. That’s an intimidating prospect even for accomplished professionals, so how can people just starting out in their careers hope to follow in these leaders’ footsteps?
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