Shel Kaphan is Amazon's first ever employee. Idol threat: Jeff Bezos jokes with Leonardo DiCaprio over video of actor meeting billionaires girlfriend, Has Amazon found its fourth pillar? Shel Kaphan (Annie Laurie Malarkey Photo/GeekWire) You know the story of Jeff Bezos, the Wall Street computer science guru with the Texas-sized laugh who founded Amazon.com after a cross-country . From 1998 to 2001, he worked as a software engineer, developing finance and customer service applications at Amazon. He also did "stealth online promotion" and vendor negotiation. What she's doing now: She's a board member of Organically Grown Company, an organic produce wholesaler, and an independent IT consultant. After studying molecular biology and . You have to do it on carbs, he told Brad Stone for Stone's book on Amazon, The Everything Store. Since founding Amazon, Bezos has donated $42 million and part of his land in Texas to the construction of The Clock Of The Long Now, an underground clock designed to work for 10,000 years. Track all of GeekWires in-depth startup coverage: Sign up for the weekly startup email newsletter; check out the GeekWire funding tracker and venture capital directory; and follow our startup news headlines. My friend Herb (Jellinek) and I were kicking around a lot of ideas to do something on this new platform. Success! "because the name started with an A, it was above the fold so lots of people saw it," Kaphan said in. Jewels Maben Age Do you wish to know about Jewels Maben age? He then took the helm at satellite company Starstruck until 1988. He was born on Sep 12, 1952. Most recent Amazon title: Operations/Business development/Software development. After leaving Google for the second time in October 2015, Kordestani is now Twitter's executive chairman. Shel Kaphan was Amazon's first employee besides Bezos and his wife. Find out in the 2015 documentary Outbreak, newly available to stream on FRONTLINEs YouTube channel. But Bezos eventually took away his direct reports when naming him the first chief technology officer and, thus, his influence, according to Brad Stones book, The Everything Store. What he's doing now: Retired. Amazon was founded in 1994 by Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos. Uber employee #4 Austin Geidt started out as an intern, covering everything from flyering on the streets to recruiting new drivers. Shaw research associate, married Jeff Bezos in 1993 and the duo founded Amazon together. One of Google's longest-serving employees, programming legend Jeff Dean was hired in August 1999, a year after the company was founded. [1]. He is currently pursuing personal interests and still living in Seattle. He also performs original songs that are style pastiches of the work of other acts . Working as a developer, he pretty much created the early site's infrastructure. Times Internet Limited. Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic (/ j k v k / YANG-k-vik; born October 23, 1959) is an American singer, musician, songwriter, record producer, actor and author. It might have happened without the personal connection, but who knows, maybe not.". He started out in the company as a teenager in 1977 and was the company's first programmer. Sample Page; ; What he's doing now: Nelson now serves as executive director of CalPoly's Center of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, according to LinkedIn. Have a scoop that you'd like GeekWire to cover? He is now the owner of The Kaphan Foundation. Kaphan played a pivotal role building Amazon's technical infrastructure from the Amazon HQ garage in Bellevue, Washington, near Seattle, which is pictured here. The corgi fast becamesomething of a fixture at the company. Scott has since left the world of business, and is nowa world-renowned gemstones expert. I left that in the Spring of 1994. He and his wife, Molly, now run The Hanlon Foundation. I mean, nobody knew how to write Web sites at that point in time. At the current time Parker, who was fired from his role as Facebook president in 2006 due to a drug-related incident, is the founder and chairman of online campaigning platform Causes and video chat app Airtime, as well as a Spotify board member. Financial contributions from our readers are a critical part of supporting our resource-intensive work and help us keep our journalism free for all. And I do understand why, when youre in a lot of them, it can seem like were everywhere. He completed the preliminary version in only two weeks. At the time, I was more enamored of what we then thought of as bigger machines, the kind of machines that the universities had. And I dont remember the specific numbers, but it was a lot, lot smaller than it turned out to be.. Amazon was founded in 1994 by Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos. Although they took that first long road trip alone, it didn't take Bezos with his grand vision and boisterous laugh long to start pulling in talent. She is a well-known entrepreneur and Tv personality. First Amazon job title: VP of Research and Development. (The first 10 employees are listed in the order they were hired, though the others are not. Eric Varvel is the CEO and President of , According to the web, Lemuel Plummer Net Worth is estimated to be 12 million US dollars. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. What she's doing now: She's worker for the Department of Veterans Affairs and has spent the last few years focused on sustainable agriculture, according to LinkedIn. Kaphans views, combined with recent comments from Amazons second employee, Paul Davis, highlight how some early employees of tech giants are grappling with their roles in birthing companies that have amassed so much power in society today. by John Cook on June 14, 2011 at 10:43 am August 5, 2017 at 10:03 am. Net worth is the amount by which assets exceed liabilities. He has stated that he has not kept in touch with Jeff Bezos, but that he would like to ask Bezos if he still believes in less government regulation. In 1996, Lewis co-founded literary retreat Hugo House in Seattle. Mike Hanlon brought his girlfriend to the warehouse and Bezos made her sign an NDA. And theyll continue to do that unless theyre constrained by other forces in society., Later in the film, the CEO of Amazons consumer business, Jeff Wilke, is asked about the current scrutiny of the company. He boasts a stone collection that was dubbed as one of the worlds greatest by the Royal Ontario Museum, and Scott has even written a book about his hoard of gems (pictured). "On the one hand . 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The corgi fast became something of a fixture at the company. And theyre doing it aggressively and skillfully and with great intelligence. Benson was part of Amazon's editorial staff (employees wrote all the first reviews) and she would eventually win the title of editor in chief. Arguably the most well-known of Facebook's early employees, Sean Parker was already a tech industry bigwig when he joined the social network as its president in June 2004, having co-created free file-sharing service Napster, as well as co-founding online address book Plaxo. But in every one of them, we have intense competition. In 1977, two years after launching Microsoft, Bill Gates hired his former Harvard classmate Bob Greenberg to work as a BASIC programmer. Shel Kaphan has had 1 past job as the VP R&D & CTO at Amazon. Although he only stayed with Amazon for less than two years, he was absolutely critical to the development of the site, helping to create the entire backend. There wasnt any big deal about it. Heather Cairns was Google's first ever HR manager. She and the rest of the editorial team were responsible for crafting witty messages for site visitors, recommending new products that they might be interested in, a job that became nearly obsolete when Amazon built an algorithm called Amabot that automatically generated recommendations in a standard format. Jillian D'Onfro contributed to an earlier version of this story. Accessed March 13, 2021. His zodiac sign is Sagittarius. "because the name started with an A, it was above the fold so lots of people saw it," Kaphan said in an interview with the Y Combinator blog. All that existed of Amazon was on paper at that point. Most recent Amazon title: Editor, Books division. Over the years he has held a variety of positions in developer support, AppleScript engineering, and more. AP. Now, in an exclusive interview with FRONTLINE, Kaphan said he is concerned about the huge and unstoppable force he says the company has become. Shel Kaphan was hesitant to join Jeff Bezos as Amazon's first employee in 1994. Accessed March 13, 2021. When asked about the mentality that Bezos brought to Amazon from Wall Street, Kaphan said: Its basically cold-blooded. I got there in October of 1994, and a month later we hired the second technical guy from the UW, Paul Davis was his name. Copyright 2023. Do you wish to know about Shel Kaphan net worth? He is an Employee at Amazon from 1944-1999. He took up various media roles in the following years, including senior director at cable TV channel ESPN, and a director position at global media company Cond Nast. Shel Kaphan Foundation: He made his own foundation in 2005, The Kaphan Foundation. She's said that Bezos could be a "royal a------" with "irrational stubbornness," but that it all came from his unrelenting desire to delight customers. He left the foundation when Bezos appointed two CTO, essentially lifting him off the forefront and both are not in contact. That was, in my opinion, a super important connection for us. Kaphan was Jeff Bezoss first hire at Amazon and the architect of the shopping site when it first launched. Looks like that email address is already registered. Jonathan Kochmer now works for a nonprofit and plays in a band called Two Loons For Tea. One of the most prominent women in tech and one of Googles earliest employees is leaving the company. Oct 1994. Now, in an exclusive interview with FRONTLINE, Kaphan said he is. , As of the year 2022, Eric Varvel Net Worth is $14 million. Geidt even got to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange at Ubers IPO last year. In the interview, highlights of which are excerpted below, he expresses his concerns about the impact of Amazon on competition and innovation and says it could potentially make sense to break up parts of the company. The company has been the subject of increasing attention in recent days with Democratic senators criticizing Amazon for how it treats workers, and Amazon publicly touting its commitment to its employees and its role in helping the American economy. Ludwig Kaphan and Gertrude Kaphan welcomed their first child, a beautiful famous ex-wife, into the world on February 12, 1921 in New York. Wigginton went on to create numerous Mac applications including Full Impact and MacWrite. According to Amazon's first employee, Shel Kaphan, Benson was the one who got Amazon on Netscape's "Whats New' and "Whats Cool" pages when she worked there. He also worked as operations manager and eventually helped launch Amazon's German site. She was Amazon's receptionist. But if you take it too far, you reach like a breaking point where were going to see things potentially get uglier. Correction 2/13/20: This post has been updated to remove an erroneous description of ARPANET; and to clarify that Kaphans view that Bezos likes to win at any cost isnt linked to what Kaphan describes as Bezos essentially libertarian worldview. Now read about companies that started small. Additional funding is provided by the Abrams Foundation; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; Park Foundation; the Heising-Simons Foundation; and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen. Bezos is now one of the most powerful figures in tech, with a net worth of roughly $82 billion. What she's doing now: Allen retired after Amazon, and she's now a writer living on the East Coast. Eiden was a software developer until2000 andnow designs custom furniture, a craft he took up after he left Amazon. Date worked for Amazon: 1996 at least 2001. When Jeff Bezos realized that Molly was helping us in the warehouse, he came down and had her sign a non-disclosure agreement. Shel Kaphan was Amazon's first employee besides Bezos and his wife. Fresh from a stellar four-year stint at web company Netscape, Omid Kordestani was snapped up by Google in May 1999 to work in sales and business development. After working at Apple in a variety of positions from 1977 to 1993, the IT professional held senior interface architect positions at database company Ingres, Documentum and Omnibiotics, and is now user experience architect at the eponymous design firm he founded in 1998. He also did "stealth online promotion" and vendor negotiation. After quitting the company in 1981, Greenberg helped Coleco, the company owned by his family, develop the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, which went on to become a massive1980s craze. Parker has a net worth of $2.7 billion (2.1bn). Most recent Amazon title: Technical program manager. Beitzel worked at the professional networking site for almost two years and then left while it was still in its early days. Tom Schonhoff was Amazon's fifth employee and built the customer service department from scratch. Everyone was working long hours, and my girlfriend (now wife) Molly would come hang out in the warehouse in the evenings to help us pack up shipments. Davis told Recode in December that Amazons role as both a retailer and the operator of a retail marketplace on which other merchants sell goods and Amazons access to their data that can be used to compete against them is unfair. Alfred Nickson is a famous , Dolf De Roos Wikipedia and Net Worth: As of the year 2022, Dolf De Roos Net Worth is $5 million. Founder Jeff Bezos' now ex-wife MacKenzie was Amazon's first accountant and also helped out with hiring staff in the company's early days. MacKenzie Tuttle, a D.E. Amazon.com today is approaching 40,000 employees. She upheaves organic grass-fed beef there. He also worked as operations manager and eventually helped launch Amazon's German site. Date worked for Amazon: Fall 1994 1999 First Amazon job title: VP of Research and Development Most recent Amazon title: CTO. Meet Amazon.com's first employee: Shel Kaphan. Amazon's first employee, Shel Kaphan, sheds new light on the mid-1990s origins of the giant online retailer. The first few Web sites started coming around. Nicholas Lovejoy joined Amazon as its sixth employee. Emjay Johnson Net Worth 2022| Age, Height, Nude, and Girlfriend, Elizabeth Poett Net Worth 2022| Age, Hat, Parents, and The Ranch Table, Anthony Mangun Net Worth 2022: Age, Church, Wife, and Sermons, Shel Kaphan Net Worth 2022|Age, Height, Amazon, and Foundation, Lily Aerin Savage Biography 2022| Age, Parents, and Siblings. Now, Amazon's very first employee, Shel Kaphan, says a breakup of Amazon "could potentially make sense.". The founding of Facebook has produced a fair few billionaires over the years, and the social networks earliest employees have gone on to have enviable careers even after leaving the company. It is a 48,222-acre, Mexican Land Grant. Nobody. You've been added to our mailing list. Read more. One of the many things Benson worked on was the site's Similarities system, which recommended books based on what users had already read. Most recent Amazon title: Catalog specialist, Strauss had a variety of jobs at Amazon, including answering customer service calls, writing code, packing books, giving presentations, and "anything else you can imagine.". He is currently an angel investor in Silicon Valley. MacKenzie Tuttle, a D.E. Seven yearslater Graves resigned,two months after Kalanick was ousted. We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and There wasnt really much else going on at that time, but there was quite a bit of buzz about the Web, so my friend and I were thinking that we should do something about this, it is a big opportunity. Browse Individual Contributions: Sheldon Kaphan. FEC.gov. But Congress, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Department of Justice are all engaged in simultaneous investigations of the Big Four tech companies, which includes Amazon, to evaluate whether any of their business practices are anticompetitive or otherwise unlawful. Jeff Bezos has been the CEO of Amazon since the very beginning. Shel Kaphan came from Santa Cruz in a U-Haul before the company was called Amazon. Karim Gharbi is currently a successful founder. Shel Kaphan is known for Frontline (1983) and Panorama (1953). 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