Bike shop owner discovers he's father of Amazon founder

Alistair Barr | USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — Ted Jorgensen, a 69-year-old bike shop owner in Arizona, is the biological father of Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, but Jorgensen never knew until he was told late last year by the author of a new book about the Internet billionaire.

"I didn't know where he was, if he had a good job or not, or if he was alive or dead," Jorgensen told Brad Stone, a Bloomberg Businessweek reporter and author of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, which will be published later this month.

When shown photos of Bezos, Jorgensen's eyes filled with sorrow and disbelief, according to an excerpt of the book released Thursday.

"I wasn't a good father or a good husband," said Jorgensen, who plans to re-establish contact with the Bezos family. USA TODAY could not reach Jorgensen.

This is one of several revelations from a book that delves deeply for the first time into the inner workings of Amazon, the world's largest Internet retailer, and how Bezos runs the $140 billion company.

The book describes how Amazon tried to weaken the business of start-up Quidsi to put pressure on founders Marc Lore and Vinit Bharara to sell, which they finally did in late 2010.

Bezos sees Amazon employees as an expendable resource, allowing him to make rational business decisions on how to allocate capital, where another executive might let emotion and personal relationships get in the way, Stone reports in the book excerpt.

Bezos also goes on rants, known inside the company as "nutters," when colleagues and other Amazon staff underperform — although the CEO is almost always right, according to the excerpt.

These things might have contributed to an employee retention record that is among the worst of major tech companies, Stone writes.

Amazon spokesman Craig Berman did not respond to an e-mail requesting comment Thursday morning.

Bezos' unforgiving management style is similar to that of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who was also estranged from his biological father.

Jobs was placed for adoption as an infant by his biological parents, Joanne Simpson and Abdulfattah Jandali. In the mid-1980s, after Apple became successful, Jobs tracked down and met his biological mother and sister, according to a biography by Walter Isaacson.

Jobs and his biological father never knowingly met, although the tech visionary ate at a Silicon Valley restaurant that Jandali ran, according to the book.

Bezos was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen in early 1964 to Ted Jorgensen and Jackie Gise, who were still teenagers at the time. By June 1965, his mother filed for divorce and later met and married Miguel Bezos. In 1968, she moved to Houston and asked Jorgensen to let Miguel adopt Jeff and not to interfere in their lives.

Jorgensen approved the adoption, deciding his son would have a better life with Jackie and Miguel Bezos. After a few years, he lost track of the family, then forgot their last name, according to the excerpt of Stone's book.

In 1974, Jorgensen moved to Phoenix, and six years later he bought the bike shop, eventually moving it to Glendale.

Like his son, Jorgensen seems to focus on good customer service and competitive prices. The bike shop has five 5-star reviews on local business website Yelp.

"Ted is always kind with a nice word and nice prices to boot!" wrote one customer in November 2012. "Once he didn't even charge me for a quick fix and another time he charged me a dollar or two for a patch and sent me on my way. He makes the other stores in the valley look bad."

Another reviewer said in March 2012 that Jorgensen's store was at least $50 cheaper than other bike shops in the area.

"The old guy that runs this is always there and you can tell he loves to fix and sell bikes," said another in 2011. "He also is the cheapest place I have ever taken a bike for a service, I think sometimes he runs a special for $30! That's insane!"