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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos holds a slide show controller and applauds at the start of the launch event for the new Amazon Fire Phone on June 18, 2014, in Seattle.

Amazon has forever changed the way people shop online, but it wasn’t always the juggernaut that it is today. In fact, once upon a time it was just a tiny startup with a big vision. So, how did it end up as the giant online retailer that it is now?

It’s hard to say, but one thing founder Jeff Bezos was very intentional about was how he hired for the company. In fact, in his 1998 letter to shareholders, just four years after Amazon was founded, Bezos wrote, “It would be impossible to produce results in an environment as dynamic as the Internet without extraordinary people…

Image: TED S. WARREN/ASSOCIATED PRESS