How did new Amazon CEO Andy Jassy get his start? (2024)

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How did new Amazon CEO Andy Jassy get his start? ›

Jassy joined Amazon as a marketing manager in 1997, straight out of Harvard Business School. After five years at the company, he became a “shadow” advisor to Jeff Bezos and sat in on the CEO's meetings, including one-on-ones.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has been a paralegal, a sportscaster and a band manager, but it was a desire to find a role he loved that led him to Amazon. After joining the nascent online bookseller in 1997, Jassy fell in love with the smart, motivated people around him and succeeded founder Jeff Bezos as CEO in 2021.

In Amazon's CEO Andy Jassy's experience, those who seek to improve themselves continuously are the ones who see their careers fly. How you react to being told you need to upskill—despite doing your job for years—will probably determine your career trajectory. At least, that's according to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.

By 1994, Bezos's eye was on the internet, after reading about the web's immense growth in one year. Bezos 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, according to "The Everything Store" book.

Jassy assumed the role of Amazon's CEO in July 2021, taking over for founder Jeff Bezos, who is now executive chairman.

Online bookstore and IPO

Amazon was founded in the garage of Bezos' rented home in Bellevue. Bezos' parents invested almost $246,000 in the start-up. On July 16, 1995, Amazon opened as an online bookseller, selling the world's largest collection of books to anyone with World Wide Web access.

How did Jeff Bezos start Amazon? Jeff Bezos quit his job at an investment bank in 1994 and moved to Seattle, Washington, to open a virtual bookstore. Working out of his garage with a handful of employees, Bezos began developing the software for the site, which he called Amazon.com. It sold its first book in 1995.

He selected the name Amazon because it was exotic and different and as a reference to his plan for the company's size to reflect that of the Amazon River, one of the largest rivers in the world.

Jassy's 2023 pay package was in line with last year, with the executive earning $1.36 million, including a $365,000 salary and $992,764 in other compensation, mostly security services. That was up slightly from 2022, when Jassy earned $1.30 million.

Understanding Amazon's success can't be done by pinpointing just one aspect of their business model; the platform's success comes from a blend of strategic foresight, relentless customer focus, technological innovation, and the ability to adapt and evolve.

How did Amazon really start? ›

Amazon began as an online bookseller, but the company went on to become a major disruptor across sectors and industries.

Jeff Bezos and news anchor Lauren Sánchez went public with their relationship in 2019 after Bezos announced his divorce from his wife of 25 years, MacKenzie. The pair eventually got engaged in May 2023.

1999. By 1999, Amazon had already expanded into selling video games, home-improvement items, consumer electronics software, games, and much more. Bezos wanted to catch up with his motto of “get big fast”. By the end of the year, Amazon had shipped to around 150 countries around the globe.

Career. Jassy worked for five years after graduation before entering his MBA program as a project manager for a collectibles company, MBI, and then he and an MBI colleague started a company and closed it down. Jassy joined Amazon as a marketing manager in 1997 with several other Harvard MBA colleagues.

Andy Jassy, who took over from founder Jeff Bezos in 2020, said the move was designed to foster greater collaboration. Amazon is requiring its workers to return to the office full time.

Amazon's largest individual investors

However, of the people in those groups, Amazon CEO (and longtime company executive) Andy Jassy is the largest reported individual shareholder after Jeff Bezos. At the end of 2023, Jassy owned 2,119,566 shares of Amazon, a stake worth about $390 million.

He and his then-wife, MacKenzie Scott, left their jobs at D. E. Shaw and founded Amazon in a rented garage in Bellevue, Washington on July 5, 1994, after writing its business plan on a cross-country drive from New York City to Seattle.

Noah Kagan on LinkedIn: Jeff Bezos started Amazon at 30. Sam Walton started Walmart at… 44 comments.