The rise of Jeff Bezos, who built Amazon into a $1 trillion company and became the richest person in modern history (AMZN)

In July, Bezos reached a new milestone: his net worth hit $150 billion, making him, as Bloomberg put it , the richest person in modern history.

In September, Amazon hit a new milestone: Amazon briefly became the second US company to achieve a valuation of more than $1 trillion though its market cap has since sunk under that threshhold.

That success hasn't come overnight, however. Bezos began his career in the hedge fund world in the 90s, then left a cushy job to launch his own startup.

Here's how Bezos got his start, and built one of the largest tech companies in the world.

Jeff Bezos mom, Jackie, was a teenager when she had him in January 1964. She had recently married Cuban immigrant Mike Bezos, who adopted Jeff. Jeff didnt learn that Mike wasnt his real father until he was 10, but says he was more fazed about learning he needed to get glasses than he was about the news.

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Screenshot / Bio

Source: Wired

When Bezos was 4, his mother told his biological father, who previously had worked as a circus performer, to stay out of their lives. When Brad Stone interviewed Bezos biological father for Stones book "The Everything Store," Bezos dad had no idea who his son had become.

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Reuters/Eric Gaillard

Source: The Everything Store

Bezos showed signs of brilliance from an early age. When he was a toddler, he took apart his crib with a screwdriver because he wanted to sleep in a real bed.

BusinessInsider USA Images

Daniel Lobo/Flickr

Source: The Everything Store

From ages 4 to 16, Bezos spent summers on his grandparents ranch in Texas, doing things like repairing windmills and castrating bulls.

BusinessInsider USA Images

Flickr / Big Grey Mare

Source: The Everything Store

His grandfather, Preston Gise, was a huge inspiration for Bezos and helped kindle his passion for intellectual pursuits. At a commencement address in 2010, Bezos said Gise taught him "its harder to be kind than clever."

BusinessInsider USA Images

AP Images

Source: Business Insider

Bezos fell in love with reruns of the original "Star Trek" and became a fan of later versions too. Early on, he considered naming Amazon MakeItSo.com, a reference to a line from Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

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Star Trek

Source: The Everything Store

In school, Bezos told teachers "the future of mankind is not on this planet." As a kid, he wanted to be a space entrepreneur. Now he owns a space-exploration company called Blue Origin.

BusinessInsider USA Images

Blue Origin

Source: Wired

After spending a miserable summer working at McDonalds as a teen, Bezos, together with his girlfriend, started the Dream Institute, a 10-day summer camp for kids. They charged $600 a kid and managed to sign up six students. The "Lord of the Rings" series made the required reading list.

BusinessInsider USA Images

Flickr / Jessie Moore

Source: Wired

Bezos eventually went to college at Princeton and majored in computer science. Upon graduation, he turned down job offers from Intel and Bell Labs to join a startup called Fitel.

BusinessInsider USA Images

Screenshot / Bio

Source: The Everything Store

After he quit Fitel, Bezos considered partnering with Halsey Minor who would later found CNET to launch a startup that would deliver news by fax.

BusinessInsider USA Images

Karl Baron/Flickr

Source: Wired

Instead, he got a job at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw. He became a senior vice president after only four years.

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Reuters/Arko Datta

Source: The Everything Store

Meanwhile, Bezos was taking ballroom dancing classes as part of a scheme to increase his "women flow." Just as Wall Streeters have a process for increasing their "deal flow," Bezos thought analytically about meeting women.

BusinessInsider USA Images

Lisi Niesner/Reuters

Source: The Everything Store

He married MacKenzie Tuttle, a D.E. Shaw research associate, in 1993. Shes now a novelist. The couple has four kids together.

BusinessInsider USA Images

AP

Source: The Everything Store

In 1994, Bezos read that the web had grown 2,300% in one year. This number astounded him, and he decided he needed to find some way to take advantage of its rapid growth. He made a list of 20 possible products to sell online and decided books were the best option.

BusinessInsider USA Images

Paul Falardeau

Source: The Everything Store

Bezos decided to leave D.E. Shaw even though he had a great job.

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AP

"When you are in the thick of things, you can get confused by small stuff," he said later . "I knew when I was 80that I would never, for example, think about why I walked away from my 1994 Wall Street bonus right in the middle of the year at the worst possible time. That kind of thing just isn't something you worry about when you're 80years old. At thesame time, I knew that I might sincerely regret not having participated in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a revolutionizing event. When I thought about it that way it was incredibly easy to make the decision."

His boss at the firm, David E. Shaw, tried to persuade Bezos to stay. But Bezos was already determined to start his own company. He felt hed rather try and fail at a startup than never try at all.

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REUTERS/Jason Redmond

Source: Wired

And so Amazon was born. MacKenzie and Jeff flew to Texas to borrow a car from his father, and then they drove to Seattle. Bezos was making revenue projections in the passenger seat the whole way, though the couple did stop to watch the sunrise at the Grand Canyon.

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Shutterstock/Galyna Andrushko

Source: The Everything Store

Bezos started Amazon.com in a garage with a potbelly stove. He held most of his meetings at the neighborhood Barnes & Noble.

BusinessInsider USA Images

Mike Segar/Reuters

Source: Wired

In the early days, a bell would ring in the office every time someone made a purchase, and everyone would gather around to see whether anyone knew the customer. It took only a few weeks before it was ringing so often they had to make it stop.

BusinessInsider USA Images

Flickr / James Duncan Davidson

Learn more about some of Amazon's early employees here .

In the first month of its launch, Amazon sold books to people in all 50 states and in 45 different countries. And it continued to grow. Amazon went public on May 15, 1997.

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Frank Micelotta/Getty Images

Source: Business Insider

When the dot-com crash came, analysts called the company "Amazon.bomb." But it weathered the storm and ended up being one of the few startups that wasnt wiped out by the dot-com bust.

BusinessInsider USA Images

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Amazon shares have continued to go up since the crash (until the recent market correction). It has now gone beyond selling books to offering almost everything you can imagine, including appliances, clothing and even cloud computing services.

BusinessInsider USA Images

Shutterstock

In the early days, Bezos was a demanding boss and could explode at employees. Rumor has it he hired a leadership coach to help him tone it down.

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Reuters

Here are some of the strategies Bezosused in building his Amazon empire.

Bezos is known for banning PowerPoint presentations at Amazon. Instead, he requires his staff to turn in papers of a specific length on their proposals to encourage critical thinking over simplistic bullet points.

BusinessInsider USA Images

Thomson Reuters

Source: The Everything Store

Bezos is also known for creating a frugal company culture that doesnt offer perks like free food or massages.

BusinessInsider USA Images

Business Insider

In 1998, Bezos became an early investor in Google. He invested $250,000, which was worth about 3.3 million shares when the company went public in 2004. Those would be worth billions today (Bezos hasnt said whether he kept any of his stock after the initial public offering).

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Bloomberg Game Changers

Source: All Things D

What does Bezos do with all his money? In 2012, he donated $2.5 million to defend gay marriage in Washington.

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REUTERS/Abhishek N. Chinnappa

Source: The Washington Post

Bezos has also donated $42 million and part of his land in Texas to the construction of The Clock Of The Long Now, an underground timepiece designed to work for 10,000 years.

BusinessInsider USA Images

The Long Now Foundation / Facebook

Source: Business Insider

In August 2013, Bezos bought The Washington Post for $250 million.

BusinessInsider USA Images

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Source: The Washington Post

His space company Blue Origin made history in 2015 when it became one of the first commercial companies to successfully launch a reusable rocket.

BusinessInsider USA Images

Isaiah J. Downing/Reuters

Source: Business Insider

Bezos interest in flying has gotten him into trouble in the past. In 2003, Bezos almost died in a helicopter crash in Texas while scouting a site for a test-launch facility for Blue Origin.

BusinessInsider USA Images

NTSB

Source: CNN

But in early 2016, he flew his personal jet to Germany to pick up and bring home the Washington Post reporter who had been detained by Iran.

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Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Source: Business Insider

Bezos is said to own a 5.35-acre estate on Seattles Lake Washington that includes 200 yards of shoreline.

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Stephen Brashear/Getty

Source: Curbed Seattle

He also bought a seven-bedroom, $24.5 million mansion in Beverly Hills in 2007. Theres a greenhouse, tennis court, pool, and guest house on the property, and it neighbors Tom Cruises estate.

BusinessInsider USA Images

Dream Homes Magazine

Source: Forbes

In January 2017, Bezos bought the Textile Museum, a pair of mansions in Washington, D.C.s Kalorama neighborhood. The property sold for $23 million and is the largest in Washington. Hes currently spending $12 million to renovate the place.

BusinessInsider USA Images

AgnosticPreachersKid/Wikimedia Commons

Source: The Washington Post, Business Insider

Heres another look at the mansions.

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Harrison Jacobs/Business Insider

Bezos also owns three linked apartments totaling 10,000 square feet in New York Citys Century Tower.

BusinessInsider USA Images

iStock

Source: Forbes

Now, more than 20 years after going public, Amazon has a market cap of over $900 billion. Barclays predicted Amazon could be the first trillion-dollar company.

BusinessInsider USA Images

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Source: Markets Insider

In August 2017, Amazon officially acquired Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. Almost a year later, the changes to the popular grocery store are visible: Customers who are Amazon Prime subscribers can get 10% of sale prices, and youll see some Amazon branded items offered, including tech products like the popular Amazon Echo line.

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Kate Taylor/Business Insider

In July 2017, Bezos became the worlds richest person for the first time, surpassing Microsoft founder Bill Gates. At the time, his net worth was more than $90 billion. While Gates reclaimed his top spot shortly after, Bezos became No. 1 again after Amazon released its Q3 2017 earnings in late October. Now, hes holding steady as the richest person in modern history.

BusinessInsider USA Images

Getty Images

Source: Markets Insider , Forbes

Despite his high net worth, Bezos doesnt actually take home a high salary, comparatively speaking. His annual salary comes out to $81,840, according to Bloomberg.

BusinessInsider USA Images

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Much of Bezos' wealth comes not from his salary but from the Amazon shares he owns.Bezos currently holds 78,893,033 shares in Amazon, accounting for a 16.3% ownership stake .

Source: Bloomberg

In August, Amazon became the second US company after Apple to reach a $1 trillion valuation after its stock gained 2% to hit the magic number of $2,050.27 per share. However, it quickly dipped below that magic threshold in intraday trading.

BusinessInsider USA Images

Reuters/Lindsey Wasson

Source: Business Insider

In January 2019, Bezos and his wife of 25 years, novelist MacKenzie Bezos, announced they were divorcing. "As our family and close friends know, after a long period of loving exploration and trial separation, we have decided to divorce and continue our shared lives as friends," the couple wrote in the statement. "If we had known we would separate after 25 years, we would do it all again."

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Dia Dipasupil / Staff

The rise of Jeff Bezos, who built Amazon into a $1 trillion company and became the richest person in modern history (AMZN)

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When Bezos was 4, his mother told his biological father, who previously had worked as a circus performer, to stay out of their lives. When Brad Stone interviewed Bezos biological father for Stones book "The Everything Store," Bezos dad had no idea who his son had become.

Bezos showed signs of brilliance from an early age. When he was a toddler, he took apart his crib with a screwdriver because he wanted to sleep in a real bed.

From ages 4 to 16, Bezos spent summers on his grandparents ranch in Texas, doing things like repairing windmills and castrating bulls.

His grandfather, Preston Gise, was a huge inspiration for Bezos and helped kindle his passion for intellectual pursuits. At a commencement address in 2010, Bezos said Gise taught him "its harder to be kind than clever."

Bezos fell in love with reruns of the original "Star Trek" and became a fan of later versions too. Early on, he considered naming Amazon MakeItSo.com, a reference to a line from Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

In school, Bezos told teachers "the future of mankind is not on this planet." As a kid, he wanted to be a space entrepreneur. Now he owns a space-exploration company called Blue Origin.

After spending a miserable summer working at McDonalds as a teen, Bezos, together with his girlfriend, started the Dream Institute, a 10-day summer camp for kids. They charged $600 a kid and managed to sign up six students. The "Lord of the Rings" series made the required reading list.

Bezos eventually went to college at Princeton and majored in computer science. Upon graduation, he turned down job offers from Intel and Bell Labs to join a startup called Fitel.

After he quit Fitel, Bezos considered partnering with Halsey Minor who would later found CNET to launch a startup that would deliver news by fax.

Instead, he got a job at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw. He became a senior vice president after only four years.

Meanwhile, Bezos was taking ballroom dancing classes as part of a scheme to increase his "women flow." Just as Wall Streeters have a process for increasing their "deal flow," Bezos thought analytically about meeting women.

He married MacKenzie Tuttle, a D.E. Shaw research associate, in 1993. Shes now a novelist. The couple has four kids together.

In 1994, Bezos read that the web had grown 2,300% in one year. This number astounded him, and he decided he needed to find some way to take advantage of its rapid growth. He made a list of 20 possible products to sell online and decided books were the best option.

Bezos decided to leave D.E. Shaw even though he had a great job.

His boss at the firm, David E. Shaw, tried to persuade Bezos to stay. But Bezos was already determined to start his own company. He felt hed rather try and fail at a startup than never try at all.

And so Amazon was born. MacKenzie and Jeff flew to Texas to borrow a car from his father, and then they drove to Seattle. Bezos was making revenue projections in the passenger seat the whole way, though the couple did stop to watch the sunrise at the Grand Canyon.

Bezos started Amazon.com in a garage with a potbelly stove. He held most of his meetings at the neighborhood Barnes & Noble.

In the early days, a bell would ring in the office every time someone made a purchase, and everyone would gather around to see whether anyone knew the customer. It took only a few weeks before it was ringing so often they had to make it stop.

In the first month of its launch, Amazon sold books to people in all 50 states and in 45 different countries. And it continued to grow. Amazon went public on May 15, 1997.

When the dot-com crash came, analysts called the company "Amazon.bomb." But it weathered the storm and ended up being one of the few startups that wasnt wiped out by the dot-com bust.

Amazon shares have continued to go up since the crash (until the recent market correction). It has now gone beyond selling books to offering almost everything you can imagine, including appliances, clothing and even cloud computing services.

In the early days, Bezos was a demanding boss and could explode at employees. Rumor has it he hired a leadership coach to help him tone it down.

Bezos is known for banning PowerPoint presentations at Amazon. Instead, he requires his staff to turn in papers of a specific length on their proposals to encourage critical thinking over simplistic bullet points.

Bezos is also known for creating a frugal company culture that doesnt offer perks like free food or massages.

In 1998, Bezos became an early investor in Google. He invested $250,000, which was worth about 3.3 million shares when the company went public in 2004. Those would be worth billions today (Bezos hasnt said whether he kept any of his stock after the initial public offering).

What does Bezos do with all his money? In 2012, he donated $2.5 million to defend gay marriage in Washington.

Bezos has also donated $42 million and part of his land in Texas to the construction of The Clock Of The Long Now, an underground timepiece designed to work for 10,000 years.

In August 2013, Bezos bought The Washington Post for $250 million.

His space company Blue Origin made history in 2015 when it became one of the first commercial companies to successfully launch a reusable rocket.

Bezos interest in flying has gotten him into trouble in the past. In 2003, Bezos almost died in a helicopter crash in Texas while scouting a site for a test-launch facility for Blue Origin.

But in early 2016, he flew his personal jet to Germany to pick up and bring home the Washington Post reporter who had been detained by Iran.

Bezos is said to own a 5.35-acre estate on Seattles Lake Washington that includes 200 yards of shoreline.

He also bought a seven-bedroom, $24.5 million mansion in Beverly Hills in 2007. Theres a greenhouse, tennis court, pool, and guest house on the property, and it neighbors Tom Cruises estate.

In January 2017, Bezos bought the Textile Museum, a pair of mansions in Washington, D.C.s Kalorama neighborhood. The property sold for $23 million and is the largest in Washington. Hes currently spending $12 million to renovate the place.

Heres another look at the mansions.

Bezos also owns three linked apartments totaling 10,000 square feet in New York Citys Century Tower.

Now, more than 20 years after going public, Amazon has a market cap of over $900 billion. Barclays predicted Amazon could be the first trillion-dollar company.

Despite his high net worth, Bezos doesnt actually take home a high salary, comparatively speaking. His annual salary comes out to $81,840, according to Bloomberg.

In August, Amazon became the second US company after Apple to reach a $1 trillion valuation after its stock gained 2% to hit the magic number of $2,050.27 per share. However, it quickly dipped below that magic threshold in intraday trading.

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