The Entrepreneurs Who Shaped 2015

The entrepreneurs who shaped 2015.

- Jason Ankeny

Another year is in the books. Big ideas, big gambles and big changes dominated 2015. Some businesses looked to the cloud; others looked to the stars. Emerging brands broke into the mainstream, established firms reinvented themselves and a 25-year-old pop phenom tangled with almighty Apple— and won. Here are the entrepreneurs behind the milestone moments that defined the year that was.

Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO, Amazon

JEFF BEZOS CONTINUED rewriting the book on retail in 2015. Long the world’s largest internet retailer, Amazon.com in the second quarter toppled brick-and-mortar goliath Wal-Mart to become Earth’s biggest retailer, reaching a valuation of $272 billion. The company credited its growth spurt to increased product selection in emerging categories like fashion, as well as citing a direct correlation between higher spending and accelerated delivery options, including the one-hour Prime Now, launched in late 2014.

Amazon is no longer solely about physical merchandise, of course. The Amazon Prime streaming platform has emerged as a viable rival to Netflix, HBO and other prestige content providers thanks to acclaimed original series like Transparent (winner of Amazon’s first-ever Emmy Awards) and Catastrophe. Amazon is also a cloud giant: Its AWS unit, which sells cloud computing and data storage services, grew 81 percent year over year in Q2 to $1.8 billion.

Not all news was good news. A bombshell New York Times exposé published in August depicted Amazon as a cutthroat environment that rewards staffer cruelty and backstabbing. In a memo to employees, Bezos said he doesn’t recognize the “soulless, dystopian workplace” described in the article and requested that anyone experiencing abuse report it immediately to HR or directly to him.