Jeff Bezos’ Most Outrageous Business Failures

In 1994, Jeff Bezos co-founded the future e-commerce behemoth Amazon in a Seattle garage. Previously employed by a Wall Street hedge fund, he quit his job to try his hand at building an online business before most people even know what the internet was.

In an interview with Time, the Amazon CEO revealed he gave himself a 30 percent chance that Amazon would succeed. “That’s actually a very liberating expectation, expecting to fail,” Bezos said.

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Now the richest person on any continent, Bezos is the first person to obtain a net worth surpassing $150 billion in the 30 years Forbes has been tracking the richest Americans. His fortune is estimated at $157.1 billion as of August 14, 2018. Amazon’s market capitalization is nearing the $1 trillion mark — $933 billion — as of August 14, 2018. So, Bezos is clearly doing something very right, but he’s made plenty of mistakes along the way.

Here are the failures Bezos endured before he convinced millions of people that Amazon Prime is worth the money.