who-owns-blue-origin

Who owns Blue Origin?

Blue Origin is an aerospace equipment manufacturer headquartered in Kent, Washington, and founded by Jeff Bezos in 2000. The company also sells sub-orbital spaceflight services.

Blue Origin Story

Bezos started Blue Origin because he saw a future where millions of people would live and work in space to preserve the Earth.

For humanity to survive, in other words, Bezos believed that it was important to find alternative sources of materials and energy in space so that harmful industries could be moved off-planet.

Today, Blue Origin is one of a host of companies in the civil, commercial, and defense spaceflight industries such as Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, and Axiom.

Although the company provides rocket engines and related technology to clients, it is perhaps best known for its New Shepard rocket and spaceflight system for commercial passengers.

The first crewed mission with Bezos, his brother Mark, and two other individuals launched on July 20, 2021.

Two subsequent missions took place in 2021, with each astronaut experiencing around three minutes of zero gravity at an altitude of 340,000 feet.

Blue Origin ownership structure

Blue Origin is wholly owned by Jeff Bezos, with the Amazon founder stepping down from his role as that company’s CEO in February 2021 to devote more time to building rockets, among other things.

Bezos had become enamored with space as a child and had expressed an interest at 18 in building space hotels and amusement parks for millions of people that would orbit the Earth.

In 1999, he discussed starting a space company with American fiction writer Neal Stephenson after watching the rocketry-inspired film October Sky.

Blue Origin remained more or less silent for the first fifteen years of its operation as Bezos and his team worked to refine their propulsion systems and launch vehicles.

During this period, the only possible clue to the billionaire’s intentions was his acquisition of a 30,000-acre ranch in Texas, which would later serve as the company’s operational base.

While Bezos remains the sole owner of Blue Origin in 2022, the company’s CEO is Dr. Robert H. Smith – a former Honeywell Aerospace executive with a formal education in aerospace engineering and mathematics.

Key takeaways:

  • Blue Origin is an aerospace equipment manufacturer headquartered in Kent, Washington, and founded by Jeff Bezos in 2000. The company also sells sub-orbital spaceflight services.
  • Blue Origin is one of multiple companies in the civil, commercial, and defense spaceflight industries such as Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, and Axiom. Although it provides rocket engines and related technology to clients, Blue Origin is perhaps best known for its New Shepard rocket and spaceflight system for commercial passengers.
  • Jeff Bezos wholly owns blue Origin. The Amazon founder stepped down from his role as the eCommerce company’s CEO in February 2021 to devote more time to building rockets. Former Honeywell Aerospace executive Robert H. Smith is the company’s current CEO.

Connected to Amazon Business Model

Amazon Business Model

amazon-business-model
Amazon has a diversified business model. In 2022 Amazon posted over $514 billion in revenues, while it posted a net loss of over $2.7 billion. Online stores contributed almost 43% of Amazon revenues. The remaining was generated by Third-party Seller Services, and Physical Stores. While  Amazon AWS, Subscription Services, and Advertising revenues play a significant role within Amazon as fast-growing segments.

Amazon Mission Statement

amazon-vision-statement-mission-statement (1)
Amazon’s mission statement is to “serve consumers through online and physical stores and focus on selection, price, and convenience.” Amazon’s vision statement is “to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices.” 

Customer Obsession

customer-obsession
In the Amazon Shareholders’ Letter for 2018, Jeff Bezos analyzed the Amazon business model, and it also focused on a few key lessons that Amazon as a company has learned over the years. These lessons are fundamental for any entrepreneur, of small or large organization to understand the pitfalls to avoid to run a successful company!

Amazon Revenues

amazon-revenue-model
Amazon has a business model with many moving parts. The e-commerce platform generated $220 billion in 2022, followed by third-party stores services which generated over $117 billion; Amazon AWS, which generated over $80 billion; Amazon advertising which generated almost $38 billion and Amazon Prime, which generated over $35 billion, and physical stores which generated almost $19 billion.

Amazon Cash Conversion

cash-conversion-cycle-amazon

Working Backwards

working-backwards
The Amazon Working Backwards Method is a product development methodology that advocates building a product based on customer needs. The Amazon Working Backwards Method gained traction after notable Amazon employee Ian McAllister shared the company’s product development approach on Quora. McAllister noted that the method seeks “to work backwards from the customer, rather than starting with an idea for a product and trying to bolt customers onto it.”

Amazon Flywheel

amazon-flywheel
The Amazon Flywheel or Amazon Virtuous Cycle is a strategy that leverages on customer experience to drive traffic to the platform and third-party sellers. That improves the selections of goods, and Amazon further improves its cost structure so it can decrease prices which spins the flywheel.

Jeff Bezos Day One

jeff-bezos-day-1
In the letter to shareholders in 2016, Jeff Bezos addressed a topic he had been thinking quite profoundly in the last decades as he led Amazon: Day 1. As Jeff Bezos put it “Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.”

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