Life is full of risks for those who make it big, or is it the other way around, that life gets big only when you take those risks? That was certainly true for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, worth $275 billion, and his then-wife, MacKenzie Scott, who in 1994 quit their cushy jobs at D. E. Shaw and moved to Seattle to start the online bookstore that became Amazon. But the conception of Amazon cannot be contained in that one simple line. Bezos was 30 at the time and the firm’s youngest senior vice president, reportedly earning the equivalent of roughly $1.5 million to $2 million a year in today’s money at the elite Wall Street firm. Yet he jumped into action with Scott’s support, who was a research associate at the same company.
MacKenzie reportedly said she heard the passion and excitement in Bezos’s voice when he described the idea and “couldn’t wait to hop in the car.” In hindsight, that car would become the first moving office of what would grow into one of the world’s most powerful companies. Jeff Bezos’s last day at D. E. Shaw was June 30, 1994. By July 5, 1994, he was in Seattle.
Those five days formed the crux of Amazon’s origin story. In an old interview posted on YouTube, Bezos recalled brainstorming on a laptop in the passenger seat while MacKenzie Scott drove him across the country, with the conjuring of a trillion-dollar company of the future beginning in motion, even if neither of them knew it at the time.
The car journey began in Fort Worth, Texas. The then-couple left New York, flew to Fort Worth over the July 4 weekend, picked up a 1988 Chevy Blazer from Bezos’s father, Mike Bezos, and then drove northwest toward Seattle. Blazing with ambition and enthusiasm, Bezos did not waste a second. While MacKenzie drove, the young visionary sat in the passenger seat typing the first draft of Amazon’s business plan, roughly 30 pages long. American journalist Brad Stone, chronicler of Jeff Bezos and the rise of Amazon, shared that Bezos’s revenue projections in an Excel spreadsheet eventually proved radically inaccurate. The couple journeyed from Fort Worth to Seattle, driving roughly 2,020 to 2,086 miles by road. Interestingly, after a day of driving and planning, they stayed overnight and later stopped at the Grand Canyon.
When they were unable to check into a Motel 6 in Shamrock, Texas, they had little choice but to make peace with a road motel called the Rambler. It throws light on the adjustments they were willing to make on the way to greatness, so much so that MacKenzie reportedly refused to take off her shoes in the room. Of course, they also took a well-deserved break to admire the sunrise at the Grand Canyon, which, in a way, was symbolic of the grand future that was not too far away.
As for the immensely inaccurate revenue projection, the original business plan estimated that Amazon would reach $70 million in sales in 2001, a number Bezos himself considered wildly optimistic. Reality had other plans. Amazon generated more than $3 billion in sales in 2001, more than 40 times the projection, making Bezos inaccurate by more than $2.9 billion.
MacKenzie was a pillar of strength throughout. She drove while he worked his mind and magic, and later helped in Amazon’s earliest operations, from bookkeeping and writing checks to helping with accounting and interviews. She even negotiated early freight contracts, including one famously handled at a Barnes & Noble. It is no wonder that decades later, MacKenzie Scott still holds Amazon shares despite their divorce. The former power couple, now in their own ways, continues to make the world a better place thanks to what began during that multi-day car trip. Their marriage may have ended, but the invisible thread of Amazon, the wealth it generated, and the benevolent after-effects of that journey still tie their stories together
