Amazon insider sales in November 1999 alone totaled $97 million:
http://boards.fool.com/Message.asp?id=1060123006372004
http://boards.fool.com/Message.asp?id=1060123006594000
So naturally, this qualifies Jeff Bezos as Time's Man of the Year.
Look, Rohit, he didn't even START Amazon until he was 31...
> NEW YORK (Reuters) - Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, the young American
> entrepreneur whose vision of a giant Internet bookstore helped pioneer
> the global on-line shopping revolution, was named on Sunday as Time
> magazine's Man of the Year.
> ``Bezos is a person who not only changed the way we do things but helped
> pave the way for the future,'' said Time managing editor Walter
> Isaacson, explaining the magazine's choice.
> ``E-commerce has been around for four or five years ... but 1999 was a
> time in which e-commerce and dotcom mania reached a peak and really
> affected all of us,'' he said.
> The magazine will announce a separate Person of the Century next week.
> ``This is an incredible and humbling honor,'' said 35-year-old Bezos.
> ``The Internet holds the promise to improve lives and empower people. I
> feel very lucky to be involved in this time of rapid and amazing change.''
> Bezos began Amazon.com in July 1995 out of a two-bedroom rented home in
> the Seattle suburb of Bellevue with an initial investment of $300,000, a
> garage converted into a warehouse/workspace, three Sun workstations and
> 300 ''customers'' beta-testing the Web site.
> Four years later, the company has a total of 13.1 million customers and
> is at the forefront of on-line retailing, which is expected to attract
> $8 billion worth of sales this year up from $3 billion in 1998.
> Despite the explosive growth, Bezos has had to contend with frequent
> Wall Street criticism of his ambitious expansion plans for Amazon.com
> and doubts about when, or whether, it will ever turn a profit.
> ``The fact that Amazon.com hasn't turned a profit and may be a bubble is
> part of the news and part of the story,'' Isaacson told Reuters. ``He's
> a symbol of dotcom companies that don't turn a profit but have high
> market valuations.''
> Amazon.com went public in 1997 at $18 a share (that's $1.50 split
> adjusted). As of the close of trading on Friday, the stock, which has
> split three times, was worth $94 a share.
> Bezos is the fourth youngest person to be named Time's ``Man of the
> Year'' since the magazine began the tradition in 1927 with aviator
> Charles Lindbergh. Lindbergh was 25 at the time, while Queen Elizabeth
> II made the list in 1952 at age 26 and Martin Luther King in 1963 at age 34.
My advice is never let a publicist call you a visionary... I'd choose
*entrepreneur* over visionary every time.
-- Bob Metcalfe, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.11/visionaries.html