No documented IQ score exists for Jeff Bezos, and no consistent number even circulates. Any figure you find is reverse-inferred from Amazon's success, which is not how IQ is measured.
Summers fixing windmills with his grandfather
Born in Albuquerque in 1964 to a 17-year-old mother, he took the surname of his stepfather, Miguel Bezos, a Cuban immigrant. Summers were spent on his grandfather's ranch in Cotulla, Texas, repairing windmills, laying pipe and fixing a bulldozer, a self-reliance he credits for much of what followed.
His grandfather, a former regional director of the US Atomic Energy Commission, fed his interest in science; as a toddler, Bezos reportedly took apart his crib with a screwdriver.
The education receipt
The receipt is his strongest cognitive evidence, but the most telling detail isn't on it.
He arrived at Princeton planning to be a theoretical physicist. In a quantum-mechanics class he watched a classmate solve in moments a problem he'd struggled with for hours, concluded he would never be among the very best at physics, and switched to electrical engineering and computer science. It's a rare first-hand account of someone clearly gifted recognising a ceiling, and choosing a field where his abilities would count most.
The regret-minimisation framework
A 30-year-old senior vice-president at a hedge fund, he read that web use was growing 2,300% a year. To decide whether to quit, he imagined himself at 80 and asked which choice he'd regret. Pick one.
“I knew that if I failed I wouldn't regret that. But I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried.”
Order history: everything he's launched
11 orders, oldest first.
Sources
- Stone, B. (2013). The Everything Store. Little, Brown
- Amazon shareholder letters (1997–2020)
- Princeton University records