60 free Jeff Bezos trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Jeff Bezos trivia quiz follows the Amazon founder from Albuquerque to orbit. The opening questions cover his early life: the surname he was born with, the adoption that changed it, the McDonald's breakfast shift, the Princeton degree and the years at D. E. Shaw before a cross-country drive ended in a rented garage in Bellevue in 1994. From there it tracks Amazon itself: the name it nearly had, the 70 per cent chance of failure he warned investors about, the Kindle, the near-bankruptcy of 2002, and the handover to Andy Jassy. A second run of questions covers everything outside the bookstore-turned-everything-store: Blue Origin and his ten-minute flight to space, buying The Washington Post, the Google investment that turned $250,000 into billions, the Apollo engines pulled from the Atlantic, the Star Trek cameo, the superyacht, the divorce, the Venice wedding, and the leadership habits (two pizzas, six-page memos, no slides) that people still copy. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is marked on each question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. For the company rather than the man, try our Amazon and technology quizzes.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What surname was Jeff Bezos born with?
Jorgensen
His mother remarried Cuban immigrant Mike Bezos in 1968, who adopted four-year-old Jeff and gave him his name.
Q 02In which US city was Jeff Bezos born?
Albuquerque, New Mexico
His mother was a 17-year-old high-school student at the time; the family later moved to Houston and then Miami.
Q 03Jeff Bezos's biological father Ted performed as what?
A unicyclist
Ted was a Danish American unicyclist born in Chicago; he agreed to cut contact after Jacklyn remarried.
Q 04Bezos's stepfather Mike Bezos moved the family to Houston to work as an engineer for which company?
Exxon
Jeff attended River Oaks Elementary in Houston from fourth to sixth grade before the family moved on to Miami.
Q 05Bezos's maternal grandfather Lawrence Preston Gise was a regional director of which US agency?
Atomic Energy Commission
Bezos spent summers on Gise's ranch near Cotulla, Texas, which he later bought and expanded to 160,000 acres.
Q 06As a high-school student in Miami, Bezos worked the breakfast shift at which fast-food chain?
McDonald's
He was a short-order line cook, and went on to be his school's valedictorian in 1982.
Q 07In his 1982 valedictorian speech, Bezos hoped heavy industry would move to space and Earth be preserved as what?
'A huge national park'
He was 18; the same idea, keeping Earth clean by moving industry off-planet, still frames how he talks about Blue Origin.
Q 08From which university did Bezos graduate in 1986?
Princeton
He started in physics but switched to electrical engineering and computer science, graduating summa cum laude with a 4.2 GPA.
Q 09Bezos said he abandoned his dream of becoming a theoretical physicist after a classmate beat him at what?
Solving a maths problem
He told the story in 2018 about classmate Yasantha Rajakarunanayake, who solved a problem Bezos had struggled with for hours.
Q 10Bezos worked at which hedge fund from 1990 to 1994, becoming its fourth senior vice president by age 30?
D. E. Shaw & Co
He met his first wife MacKenzie there; both left the firm to start Amazon.
Q 11Bezos decided to start an online bookstore after reading that web usage was growing at what annual rate?
2,300%
That spring 1994 statistic pushed him to leave Wall Street and drive across the country to Seattle.
Q 12Amazon was founded in a rented garage in which Washington city?
Bellevue
The date was July 5, 1994; the business plan was written on the drive from New York City.
Q 13What did Bezos originally name the company that became Amazon?
Cadabra
He switched to Amazon partly because a name starting with 'A' appeared first in alphabetised web listings.
Roughly how much did Bezos accept from his parents as an early investment in Amazon?
Q 21Bezos superstitiously wears what to every Blue Origin rocket launch?
Cowboy boots
The habit began after a prototype crashed during a 2011 test flight in West Texas.
Q 22What is the name of the Blue Origin vehicle that carried Bezos to space in July 2021?
New Shepard
The NS-16 flight lasted just over ten minutes and peaked at 66.5 miles up.
Q 23Bezos flew to space nine days after which rival billionaire made his own suborbital flight?
Richard Branson
Branson flew on Virgin Galactic's Unity 22 on July 11, 2021; Bezos went up on July 20, the Apollo 11 anniversary.
$300,000
He warned early investors there was a 70% chance the company would fail or go bankrupt.
Q 15What chance of failure did Bezos warn early Amazon investors about?
70%
Amazon went public three years after it was founded, in 1997.
Q 16Bezos launched the Amazon Kindle in which year?
2007
He told Time he wanted a device that let readers reach a 'flow state' like a video game.
Q 17When Amazon nearly went bankrupt after 2002, what fraction of the workforce did Bezos lay off?
14%
The company rebounded in 2003 with a $35 million profit.
Q 18Which senator introduced the 'Stop BEZOS Act' in 2018, criticising Amazon's wages?
Bernie Sanders
Weeks later Bezos raised Amazon's US minimum wage to $15 an hour, which Sanders applauded.
Q 19Who succeeded Bezos as Amazon CEO in 2021?
Andy Jassy
Jassy had run Amazon Web Services; Bezos moved to executive chairman on July 5, 2021, exactly 27 years after founding the company.
Q 20In what year did Bezos found Blue Origin?
2000
The company kept a low profile until 2006, when it bought a large tract of West Texas land for a launch site.
Q 24Which aviation pioneer, then 82, flew to space alongside Bezos on NS-16?
Wally Funk
Funk had trained in the 1960s Mercury 13 programme but never flown; 18-year-old Oliver Daemen was also aboard.
Q 25How much did Bezos pay for The Washington Post in 2013?
$250M
He bought it in cash at the suggestion of his friend Don Graham, through a holding company called Nash Holdings.
Q 26In 2024 Bezos blocked The Washington Post's editorial board from endorsing which presidential candidate?
Kamala Harris
More than 250,000 subscribers, about a tenth of the total, cancelled in protest.
Q 27How much did Bezos invest in Google in 1998, a stake later worth about $3.1 billion?
$250,000
The early cheque bought him 3.3 million Google shares.
Q 28In 2013 Bezos Expeditions recovered F-1 engines from the seabed from which mission?
Apollo 11
The Saturn V first-stage engines went on display at Seattle's Museum of Flight.
Q 29What is Bezos's 'two-pizza rule'?
Meetings should be small enough for two pizzas to feed everyone
He also refuses to schedule early-morning meetings and bans slide decks in favour of six-page memos.
Q 30Instead of presentation slides, Bezos requires senior Amazon staff to present information how?
As six-page narratives
He has also written an annual shareholder letter every year since 1998.