Amazon’s CEO

In doing some research for a marketing paper, I ran across some interesting info on Jeffrey P. Bezos, the CEO of Amazon.com:

• His total compensation in 2005 was no more than $82K and he owns 25% of Amazon.com. See here for more info
• He has refused a raise and a bonus. See here for more info
• He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Princeton. see here

My paper wasn’t about Jeff Bezos, so I didn’t really do that much research on him.

But it’s amazing what he was compensated for in 2005. And he has repeatedly refused raises and a bonuses.  One only needs to read an article on outrageous CEO pay or on the excessive pay packages of top big pharma executives and CEOs (see Pharmagossip or Peter Rost) and it’s not hard to see why $82K is such a big surprise. It’s really good to see that there are CEOs and people like Jeff out there.

On one year that he refused a raise and bonus, he exercised some $7.3 Million in options. That is still nothing compared to Big Pharma, where a CEO can be paid hundreds of millions of dollars while thousands of their employees are being laid off in the name of cost-savings. Ridiculous!! And a rant for another day. Or just read my favorite pharma blogs, Pharmagossip and Peter Rost, they never fail to post about stuff like this when it breaks.

Anyway, Jeff also graduated Summa Cum Laude from Princeton. Impressive!!

These few facts make him sound really interesting and I’m sure there’s a book out there on him - - I’d like to read it….

Web store

Last week me and AG came up with an idea to put up a web store.  Several days or weeks before, I told her that when I first started my undergrad that I wanted to put up a brick & mortar store and the web store will be just that: the web store of what I hope can be a brick & mortar store someday.  I don’t remember how the conversation went, but we did decide to put one up.

It takes some work to get a business set up and I’d like to do this right.  The hard parts will be going through the mumbo-jumbo of legalese, tax stuff, organization, contracts, finding suppliers, determining the target market, finding a web host, testing, and others.  The fun parts will be product testing, designing the website, fulfilling orders, etc…  I’m not sure how to market it, but forums, blogs, and search engine optimization will play the biggest parts.

I’m really excited for this and my mind has been all over the place.  I spent some time looking for some suppliers, went looking through web hosts, and even affiliate programs.  I think this whole thing should launch without it’s own web selling site first.  Or start selling stuff through online market places like ebay and amazon, and later develop a website.  I’m not sure.  I dunno.

I really do want to start it out small.  Thing is, I’m so busy with school and BJJ already, it’s going to take me a real long time to set things up and get things going.

I have thought of selling gis online too.