Jeff Bezos spent much of 1994 soliciting anyone who would listen to invest in his fledgling e-commerce web business, “Amazon.com.” His goal was to raise $1 million from family, friends, and pretty much anyone willing to cut a check. He even asked his parents to invest. They agreed. Over two transactions in 1995 and 1996, they gave their son $245,573. Amazon went public in May 1997 and today Jeff’s parents are almost certainly secret billionaires.
Let’s back up a minute.
Jacklyn Gise and Ted Jorgensen met as teenagers in high school in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Jacklyn, who went by “Jackie, discovered she was pregnant when she was a 16-year-old junior. 18-year-old Ted was more passionate about unicycles than being a father. He spent summers working for the Ringling Bros. circus and apparently founded the world’s first unicycle hockey club.
As if having a unicycle-obsessed baby-daddy wasn’t bad enough, Jackie was shunned by her high school for getting pregnant. The school briefly attempted to block her from attending classes and graduating. The school only relented after she agreed to some draconian terms. Here are the terms Jackie agreed to, as she recalled in a 2019 commencement:
“Condition one: I had to arrive and depart school within five minutes of the starting and finishing bells. Condition two: I could not talk to other students. Condition three: I couldn’t eat lunch in the cafeteria. Condition four: I was told I would not be allowed to walk across the stage with my classmates to get my diploma.“
Before the baby came, Jackie and Ted eloped to Mexico. On January 12, 1964, they welcomed a baby boy into the world. They named him Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen. Jackie turned 17 just 14 days prior to his birth.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Jackie and Ted did not last as a couple. She filed for divorce in June 1965 and began supporting herself with a secretarial job that paid $190 a month.
Incredibly, even with all of her challenges, Jackie still wanted to be a college graduate and enrolled in night classes at the University of New Mexico. She specifically selected courses that were taught by professors who didn’t mind that she brought a baby to class.
As fate would have it, one of her classmates was a Cuban immigrant named Miguel. Miguel also experienced significant challenges up to this point in his life. For decades back in Cuba, Miguel’s parents owned a thriving lumber business. In the late 1950s, their business was seized by Fidel Castro’s troops. In 1962, Miguel’s family used all of their remaining money to secure a visa JUST FOR HIM to seek refuge in America. He was 16. Immediately upon arriving in the US, Miguel lived in a refugee camp for unoccupied minors before being taken in by a Catholic school in Delaware. Miguel found himself at the University of New Mexico after earning a scholarship. He originally intended to study physics and math but switched to computer science. Miguel’s last name is…
Bezos
Miguel Bezos and Jackie Gise began dating. After Miguel graduated, he landed a job working for Exxon in Houston, Texas. Once again, Jackie had to put her dream of graduating college on hold. In 1968, Miguel and Jackie married. Four months later, Miguel asked Ted for his permission to adopt 4-year-old Jeff. Ted didn’t resist. Ted also agreed to discontinue all contact. Ted would not learn of his child’s identity until 2012 when a biographer tracked him down. Ted admitted he lost track of Jackie and Jeff and forgot Miguel’s last name, so he didn’t know how to reach out even if he had wanted to. Ted died in 2015. He never reconnected with Jeff, but he did publicly apologize for being a bad father in a 2014 television interview.
Miguel went on to work for Exxon for 32 years. At some point, he was transferred to Miami, where the now-teenage “Jeff Bezos” attended Palmetto High School. Miguel and Jackie also had two more kids, Mark and Christina.
Jumping ahead to 1994…
After leaving his job at a hedge fund in New York City, Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com, originally as “Cadabra,” on July 5, 1994. When he wasn’t running the business, Jeff was raising money. He spent that first year trying to raise $1 million. He did convince around 20 investors to cut checks of varying sizes, but his biggest check came from his parents.
Before they agreed to invest, Jeff warned his parents:
“I want you to know how risky this is because I want to come home for Thanksgiving, and I don’t want you to be mad at me.“
Spoiler: Jeff never experienced a bad Thanksgiving.
Jackie, Jeff and Miguel Bezos (Photo by MOLLY RILEY/AFP via Getty Images)
According to Amazon’s pre-IPO prospectus, Miguel bought 582,528 shares in February 1995. In July 1996, Jackie bought 874,716 shares. In total, they spent $245,573 to acquire a combined 6% stake in Amazon.
If they never sold a single share, today, a 6% stake in Amazon would be worth $110 billion.
By the end of 1999, Jackie and Miguel no longer directly owned more than 5% of Amazon, the magic percentage that would have required an annual SEC disclosure. Perhaps not coincidentally, right around this time, Jackie and Miguel co-founded the Bezos Family Foundation. The exact size of their foundation today is not known. Here’s what is known: Between 2001 and 2016, Miguel and Jackie transferred 600,000 shares to their foundation. After Amazon’s 20:1 stock split in June 2022, those shares became 12 million shares. Today, 12 million shares of Amazon are worth $2.1 billion. It’s also known that in 2022 alone, the foundation gave $710 million to a Seattle-based cancer research institute and $100 million to Dolly Parton’s foundation.
Miguel and Jackie are almost certainly billionaires today. Even if their personal stake, after donations and sales, had dropped from 6% all the way down to 0.054%, they would still be worth $1 billion.
Jackie and Miguel’s real estate purchases give a bit of insight into their current wealth. Over two transactions in a single week in July 2022, they paid $80 million to purchase two side-by-side waterfront estates in Coral Gables, Florida 🙂
Oh, and btw. Jackie did eventually realize her dream of graduating from college. After watching her kids go off to college, in 1984 Jackie went back to school again. In 1986, she graduated. She was 40.