Jeff Bezos

I'm Jeff Bezos.

I'm the founder of Amazon.com.

Well, three years ago I was in New York City working for a quantitative hedge fund when I came across this startling statistic that web usage was growing at 2300% a year.

So I decided I would try and find a business plan that made sense in the context of that growth.

I believe that it's very easy to predict that there are going to be lots of successful companies born of the Internet.

They're going to have very large market caps and so on.

I also believe that today, where we sit, it's very hard to predict who those companies are going to be.

Can I have a prediction from you?

Where do you think we'll be in 10 years?

Well, it's very hard to give concrete predictions.

But what I do know is that we are at the very beginning, not just Amazon.com, but the entire industry of e-commerce and online shopping.

How does it make you feel to think that someday kids in school will read about your name like we read about Alexander Graham Bell?

Well, I like to think that Amazon.com still has the opportunity to be a footnote in the history of e-commerce.

My dad was just 16 when he came to America and not with his family.

He was all by himself.

I have a hard time even imagining that, but his parents sent him here because under Fidel Castro, they felt like they had to, to protect him.

Well, we picked books as the first best product to sell online because we thought in that category, especially four years ago, we could create the most value for customers.

Because one of the things customers value is selection.

And books is an unusual category because there's more selection in that category than there are in any others.

Well, in that first few months, we got one order.