Jason Del Rey

Recent Posts by Jason Del Rey

How to Spend $25 Billion the Jeff Bezos Way: Newspapers, Rockets and 3-D Printers

While media and tech circles are still digesting news of Jeff Bezos’s $250 million purchase of the Washington Post, the Amazon founder and CEO has been spreading his gilded wings outside of Amazon for several years.

With a reported net worth of $25.2 billion, Bezos has some pocket change at his disposal. And he has used some of it to fund Bezos Expeditions, his private investment firm.

It’s the investment vehicle through which Bezos has funded the recovery of engines from Apollo 11. But it has also been how he has placed bets on promising startups in a variety of industries.

The firm’s investments have included bets on big-name disruptors, such as Twitter, Uber, Airbnb and Makerbot, as well as a cash infusion in digital media company Business Insider.

Among Bezos Expeditions’ less sexy investments: MFG.com, an online exchange for manufacturers and suppliers; Domo, a business intelligence software startup from Omniture co-founder Josh James; and Qliance, a medical clinic startup.

If Bezos ends up breathing new life — and growth — into the Washington Post, it may be the most impressive of them all.

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Just as the atom bomb was the weapon that was supposed to render war obsolete, the Internet seems like capitalism’s ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again. It’s especially hopeless for those whose work is easily digitized and accessed free of charge.

— Author Tim Kreider on not getting paid for one’s work