Today, Amazon’s market cap is hovering around $2.2 trillion, and founder Jeff Bezos is one of the world’s richest men, worth nearly $219 billion. Plus, Amazon just snagged the top spot on the Fortune 500 from Walmart, dethroning it from a 13-year reign.
But about 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’s Dealbook Summit, Bezos told Andrew Ross Sorkin those early fundraising efforts were an absolute slog, with dozens of meetings with angel investors—the vast majority of which were “hard-earned noes.”
“I had to take 60 meetings,” Bezos said, in reference to the entrepreneurial effort required to convince angel investors to sink tens of thousands of dollars into his company. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, basically.”
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—and those 40 noes were particularly soul-crushing because before getting an answer, each back-and-forth required “multiple meetings” and substantial effort.
