What was Jeff Bezos up to before he surpassed Bill Gates the richest man in the world?

I recently opened up a new amazon account, and a few days after my first purchase, I received a complimentary email digest of all the top Washington Post articles of the week. I thought, “Amazon sure does have its tentacles in everything, including mainstream journalism,” but what is Amazon but an extension of Jeff Bezos.

Many know Jeff Bezos solely for his rose as C.E.O. of Amazon, a company he founded and cultivated. However, like most mega-loaded men and women, Bazos is an entrepreneur with numerous ventures under his belt contributing to his next to $90 billion net worth (3 billion of which comes from his investments in 1988 to a small search engine startup known as Google).

Blue Origin

Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin, a private space company that rivals Musk's SpaceX for both private and government contracts. Founded in 2000, the company has launched test flights in 2013 and has plans for commercial human flight for within the next year. 

The Washington Post

Bezos owns the iconic newspaper under an LLC, and has since October 2013. He apparently purchased the online media empire from Donald E Graham for $250 million in cash.

Other Ventures

It just so happens that Jeff Bezos is personally involved with a heap of major household technology startups. Companies such as Uber, Twitter, Airbnb, Google, Zocdoc, Business Insider, Pro.com and Basecampe all of Bezos to thank for his major contributions to their success.