As of
yesterday, Jeff Bezos is no longer the CEO of Amazon, the company he
founded as an online book retailer in Seattle in 1994.
Bezos left
the CEO position as the richest person in the world, having amassed a
$199 billion fortune. And though he just bought a $500+ million
superyacht, all signs point to him not spending much time on it.
Let’s look at some of Bezos’s side hustles that could become main hustles.
Space
Bezos’s interest in space dates back
to his teenage days, when the high school valedictorian told the Miami
Herald he wanted to “build space hotels, amusement parks, and colonies
for 2 million or 3 million people who would be in orbit.”
Fast forward
to 2000, when Bezos founded his rocket company Blue Origin two years
before Elon Musk would start SpaceX. The amusement park idea may still
be decades out, but the company has shorter-term ambitions in space
tourism, satellite launches, and lunar landers.
In 2016, Bezos was spending one day a week working at Blue Origin—expect that to jump.
Philanthropy
Bezos has
pledged $10 billion to climate-focused initiatives through the Bezos
Earth Fund and gave $2 billion to increase access to education and
address homelessness through the Bezos Day One Fund. But his
philanthropic endeavors have been overshadowed by generous donations
made by his ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, and Bezos hasn’t signed the Giving Pledge, a commitment by the ultra-wealthy to give away at least half of their fortune.
The other stuff
When Mark
Cuban sold his audio streaming company to Yahoo for $5.6 billion in
1999, he bought the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks the next year. Will Bezos
also buy a sports team? Perhaps—he reportedly has expressed interest in owning an NFL franchise.
When he’s not busy with all of the above, Bezos owns the Washington Post, is building a 10,000-year clock in remote West Texas, and will certainly keep a close eye on Amazon as executive chairman.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment