Raizcorp Functional Entrepreneurship | Page 23

Example Sole proprietorships are typically smaller, one-man businesses. Once they grow larger, partners come on board or the business is registered as a Pty Ltd. This means that a large portion of global businesses were at one stage sole proprietorships. Amazon – Jeff Bezos In 1994, Bezos resigned from his ​ six-figure corporate job​ to pursue his business idea. He wanted to create an online bookstore called Amazon. It was risky, but he was convinced that the internet was the place to grow a business. He worked out of the garage of his rented house, where he stored, packaged and shipped books to customers. Bezos focused his time upskilling himself on how to source books and developing an online, user-friendly system for his customers. A year later, he launched with more than a million books, calling itself ‘Earth’s Biggest Book Store’. Four years after his first sale, Bezos took the company public and Amazon became a vast online marketplace, making sales of more than USD610 million, with more than 3000 employees and 13 million customers globally.