The bold master plan of Jeff Bezos

The take-no-prisoners Amazon founder may have 'won capitalism' – but for one of the world's wealthiest men, space has always been the final frontier.

Jeff Bezos, founder of the all-conquering Amazon, expects all employees to share his world view: there are no limits to the company's potential for expansion and every sector of the economy is fair game. AP

Franklin Foer

Updated Dec 13, 2019 – 11.40am, first published at 10.07am

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Before Jeff Bezos settled on the name Amazon.com, he toyed with calling his unlaunched online store MakeItSo.com. He entertained using the phrase because he couldn’t contain a long-standing enthusiasm. The rejected moniker was a favoured utterance of a man Bezos idolises: the captain of the starship USS Enterprise-D, Jean-Luc Picard.

Bezos is unabashed in his fanaticism for Star Trek and its many spin-offs. He has a holding company called Zefram, which honours the character who invented warp drive. He persuaded the makers of the film Star Trek Beyond to give him a cameo as a Starfleet official. He named his dog Kamala, after a woman who appears in an episode as Picard’s “perfect” but unattainable mate.

Atlantic