Jeff Bezos is the founder of Amazon. No one can ever take that away from him.
Afterward, Jeff Bezos kept shares of Amazon. He still has 11% of Amazon shares.
His 11% shares give him voting rights for decisions about the future of Amazon. However, unlike Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook, Jeff Bezos does not have shares that carry more weight than those of other shareholders.
In fact, at any time, Jeff Bezos could be ejected from his position as CEO of Amazon.
However, let's be realistic. Why would shareholders remove from his position as CEO of Amazon a man who founded a company from scratch before turning it into a $1.6 trillion market cap empire in just 25 years?
Amazon's success comes from Jeff Bezos' long-term vision.
Without Jeff Bezos, Amazon would not be the success it has become, but more importantly, the future would be much more complicated without his long-term vision.
Therefore, shareholders have no reason to dismiss Jeff Bezos. In fact, they should even fear that something could happen to him that would prevent him from remaining CEO in my opinion.
It’s extremely rare for a founder to own their company 100%. Investors needs shares and voting rights. Subsequent funding rounds can dilute earlier investors if tranches are not properly structured. The public buys shares if the company goes public. Founders are usually replaced with someone who knows how to run larger companies. And so it goes.
The real problem is that this stuff is generally not taught in school. School prepares people to be employees and not understand much of what goes on in the real world of finance, business, or the economy. Too many kids these days are learning more about pronouns than about balancing a checkbook or raising capital to build great things that serve people.
We see this in politicians as well. Too few understand the nature of business (aka value creation in exchange for money). It’s sad to watch business framed in ways that make it look greedy or too difficult for regular people like you and I.
Left to greedy people, business gets built into a parasitic thing. Carefully cultivated, businesses can help countless people and communities solve all kinds of problems.
If we focused more on teaching kids to understand the system (really understand it), and talk more about how we can make it work to benefit people instead of making the few who understand it rich - we might be able to build some really cool stuff that lifts people out of poverty, protects our environment, and really helps humanity.
There are entire industries of investing dedicated to building businesses for social good.
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