Bike shop owner discovers he’s father of Amazon founder

10 years ago | Posted in: Technology | 639 Views

SAN FRANCISCO — Ted Jorgensen, a 69-year-old bike shop owner in Arizona, is the biological father of Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, but Jorgensen never knew until he was told late last year by the author of a new book about the Internet billionaire.

“I didn’t know where he was, if he had a good job or not, or if he was alive or dead,” Jorgensen told Brad Stone, a Bloomberg Businessweek reporter and author of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, which will be published later this month.

When shown photos of Bezos, Jorgensen’s eyes filled with sorrow and disbelief, according to an excerpt of the book released Thursday.

“I wasn’t a good father or a good husband,” said Jorgensen, who plans to re-establish contact with the Bezos family. USA TODAY could not reach Jorgensen.

This is one of several revelations from a book that delves deeply for the first time into the inner workings of Amazon, the world’s largest Internet retailer, and how Bezos runs the $140 billion company.

The book describes how Amazon tried to weaken the business of start-up Quidsi to put pressure on founders Marc Lore and Vinit Bharara to sell, which they finally did in late 2010.

Bezos sees Amazon employees as an expendable resource, allowing him to make rational business decisions on how to allocate capital, where another executive might let emotion and personal relationships get in the way, Stone reports in the book excerpt. see more

source: usatoday

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