Amazon and the public scholarship that changed the fate of Jeff Bezos
Miguel Ángel Bezos nació en Santiago de Cuba, hijo del dueño de un aserradero y una tendera. Siendo un niño llegó Fidel Castro al poder y las relaciones entre su país de origen y los Estados Unidos empezaron a torcerse (así como el entusiasmo de sus padres ante la figura del dictador en cuanto su gobierno les expropió el aserradero). Fruto de aquella confrontación el gobierno norteamericano, la iglesia católica y los cubanos en el exilio diseñaron una operación clandestina para que padres cubanos que prefirieran que sus hijos no fueran educados en la Cuba comunista, pudieran trasladarse a los Estados Unidos.
Bread flights took from Cuba 14.048 children from the end of 1960 to October 1962.As the name of the destination (Miami) was Neverland, the operation ended up calling "Peter Pan" or "Pedro Pan".The original objective was twisted when the conflict of missiles and the invasion of Bay Cochinos emerged, since the subsequent meeting of the parents with their children in the American land, with the commercial flights between the two prohibited countries, was made in many cases impossible impossible.
Miguel Ángel, given his parents' concern for the situation, was one of those children sent to the United States and landed in Miami alone and without knowing English in July 1962.He still retains the jacket he was carrying since his mother made it.Since the missile crisis was in October, it took years to see her again.He temporarily ended in a refugee camp but, luckily, he was granted a scholarship to study high school in Delaware and with another scholarship he followed his studies at the University of Albuquerque (New Mexico), graduating in mathematics although he also studied Engineering.
This made him a great defender of the public school and in fact since 2000 he directs the Bezos Family Foundation to facilitate education to young people.The fact is that at the University he met Jackie who she married, she adopted the son she had with 17 years (she had divorced when her offspring was 17 months old), he changed the name to Jeffrey instead of her original Jorgensen andIn 1968 he began working for Exxon where he was 32 years.
In one of his frequent stays for work abroad, being in South America (his wife also speaks Spanish, he learned him after marrying him), he received in 1994 a call from his eldest son (the couple had two more children): "I amThinking about opening a bookstore on the Internet, and I need some money ".This baffled "Mike" Bezos and his wife because they did not want their son to give up his (good) employment on Wall Street, but they left him.Jeff Bezos, whose biological father apparently had problems with alcohol (a journalist found him in 2013 and said he had left the drink and did not know that the famous billionaire was his son), he never speaks of another father who is not “Mike”, Which never returned to Cuba -although it is said that Jeff traveled to Villafrechós (Valladolid) looking for the origins of his adoptive father's family.
The fact is that on July 16, 1995, with an initial investment of 1.300.000 dollars started Cadabra.com with an online book catalog and an office in a garage (how not!) of Seattle.Soon the name of Amazon changed, which, although logically it seems motivated by the name of the river, also made more sense at a time when web positions were in alphabetical order.His success was great and in 1999 he was appointed person of the year in the magazine 'Time' but ... were the times of the bubble ”.com ”and this one had to explode.
Those who talk about the enormous benefit we would have if we had attended the Amazon OPV in 1997 are not agreed on 1997.When in 2002 the Amazon shares traded 95% below their maximums, very few trusted in the future of an "Internet bookstore".How much we are wrong!Now what its founder said to pretend: "Our goal is to be the most client -centered world company.The place where people can find and discover anything they want to buy online ".
@Mysterysolvent “This is How to Wire Transfer Special Interest Money to an offshore accounts…”
— MizGooglehead Wed Jul 14 01:48:25 +0000 2021
The story of Miguel Ángel Bezos, a refugee whose son became one of the richest men in the world and a revolutionary of the 'retail' sector, deserves a great reflection.Also the attitude of the Cuban grandparents of Jeff Bezos, who wanted their son to have a better future despite all the risks and worries that meant to leave it alone to another country, beyond what Amazon involves as a company.
A couple of own notes: it is always said- and partly rightly- that in Europe it is much more difficult to undertake than in the United States, that there are too many regulations and that this reason is behind the shortage of large companies of the “new"Economy in our continent but ... do not forget that the scholarships were that allowed Jeff's father to have an education that allowed him to access a middle class high enough to pay his son's studies in Princeton (whereBy the way, he studied computing and electrical engineering, nothing to suspect his destiny as "bookseller") and support him at the origin of Amazon.It was accessible public education, which is a European feature.
That is, for me it is not bad for Jeff Bezos to have a lot) Education is so little accessible.
The social elevator exists, if it did not exist we would not be facing a new generation of rich that did not exist a few decades ago;But it is obvious that for equal opportunities to work well (if not the ideal and utopian-because the son of a rich will always have more resources than the son of a poor man-yes at least the one that occurs in current Europe),It must exist from childhood.Characters like Jeff Bezos make the story, but this story would not exist without his father, who had not reached anywhere without scholarships.
On the other hand, it is very easy to criticize him because he has "too much" money (achieved on the other hand thanks to success among consumers, who have made him rich with his democratic choice), when he has great merit not only for his ideaoriginal, not only for its ability to recover from a wands as huge as that of the crisis of the ".Com ”-which left out so many companies-, not only for his ability to expand and convert a catalog of books in what he is today ... it is above all for his ambition, his desire to do his company more and more largeHe never pays dividends to shareholders, it reinvents to grow more and more) and not surrender.
Others instead with a few million in their pocket would have already given up continuing to work but people like him do not conform ... at least until a few months ago that, after divorcing, he left his executive position on Amazon (and, incidentally, to go around space thanks to Blue Origin, another company founded by him two decades ago).However, it is still the biggest shareholder of your company.