TIL Jeff Bezos made $280M from a $250k Google investment because an acquisition he made totally flopped

Pretty random but thought I’d share (just read the book about Amazon). Bezos made a TON of money as an angel investor into Google.

TLDR: In 1998, Amazon acquired a startup called Junglee and the acquisition was basically a disaster. But one of the employees, Ram Shriram, ended up intro’ing Bezos to Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They show him a prototype, and he wrote a $250k check on the spot into their $1M seed round.

Fast forward to Google’s IPO in 2004, that $250k was worth $280M. If he had held on to it, that would have been $20B today (I heard that on the Acquired podcast).

Pretty much the reality of investing in startups. If you're already meeting smart people and building relationships, the opportunities show up in your workflow. Not from "deal hunting."