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Today, Amazon\u2019s market cap is hovering around $2.38 trillion, and founder Jeff Bezos is one of the world\u2019s richest men, worth $236.1 billion. But three decades ago, in 1995, getting the first million dollars in seed capital for Amazon was more grueling than any challenge that would follow. One year ago, at New York\u2019s Dealbook Summit, Bezos told Andrew Ross Sorkin those early fundraising efforts were an absolute slog, with dozens of meetings with angel investors\u2014the vast majority of which were \u201chard-earned no\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to take 60 meetings,\u201d Bezos said, in reference to the effort required to convince angel investors to sink tens of thousands of dollars into his company. \u201cIt was the hardest thing I\u2019ve ever done, basically.\u201d<\/p>\n
The structure was straightforward: Bezos said he offered 20% of Amazon for a $5 million valuation. He eventually got around 20 investors to each invest around $50,000. But out of those 60 meetings he took around that time, 40 investors said no\u2014and those 40 \u201cno\u2019s\u201d were particularly soul-crushing because before getting an answer, each back-and-forth required \u201cmultiple meetings\u201d and substantial effort.<\/p>\n
Bezos said he had a hard time convincing investors selling books over the internet was a good idea. \u201cThe first question was what\u2019s the internet? Everybody wanted to know what the internet was,\u201d Bezos recalled. Few investors had heard of the World Wide Web, let alone grasped its commercial potential.<\/p>\n
That said, Bezos admitted brutal honesty with his potential investors may have played a role in getting so many rejections.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would always tell people I thought there was a 70% chance they would lose their investment,\u201d he said. \u201cIn retrospect, I think that might have been a little naive. But I think it was true. In fact, if anything, I think I was giving myself better odds than the real odds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bezos said getting those investors on board in the mid-90s was absolutely critical. \u201cThe whole enterprise could have been extinguished then,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
You can watch Bezos\u2019 full interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin below. He starts talking about this interview gauntlet for seed capital around the 33-minute mark.<\/p>\n
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