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.”
