A wealth tracker for billionaires (which actually exists, if only to mock the rest of us) has just crowned a new Richest Person of All Time.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is now the wealthiest person in history, CNN lamely reported Tuesday. The billionaire tracker operated by Bloomberg places Bezos' current amount of amassed cash at $105.1 billion. That haul bests the record held by Microsoft boss Bill Gates and mostly comes from the nearly 80 million shares of Amazon stock Bezos has in his possession. Bezos also has holdings in the Washington Post and the space tourism business Blue Origin.
As far as wealth-related brags are concerned, Bezos has endured a rocky few months. He was briefly crowned the richest person on the planet after surpassing Gates back in July, only to be re-surpassed almost immediately. The ultimately arbitrary title was reclaimed by Bezos in October.
In an interview alongside his brother Mark during the Summit Series in Los Angeles in November, Bezos spoke candidly about how he became a person with a lot of fucking money. "The whole point of moving things forward is that you run into problems and failures," Bezos said, according toBusiness Insider. "Things don't work, you have to back up and try again. Each time you back up and try again, you're using your resourcefulness, you're using self reliance. You're trying to invent your way out of a box."
An important part of that invention process, Bezos added, is setting goals that are both long-term and realistic. "If you give yourself the breathing room to take, say, seven years, all of sudden you have more opportunities," he said.
