Forbes Master Of the...

When a 33-year-old Jeff Bezos took Amazon.com public in 1997, Wall Street was skeptical of the bookselling website started in a Seattle garage. One analyst even called the two-year-old company “Amazon.toast” after Barnes & Noble announced plans to go online.

“I thought they had a pretty good argument!” Bezos later joked to Forbes. “But what they didn’t understand is how the internet shifts power to the customer.”

You can forget the toast. In 1998, the year after Amazon’s IPO, Bezos made Forbes’ annual list of the 400 richest Americans thanks to his 40% stake, then worth $1.6 billion.

Two decades later, Bezos reigns supreme on The Forbes 400 for the second year in a row—despite going through the world’s most expensive divorce. After giving a quarter of his Amazon shares to his ex-wife, MacKenzie, Jeff Bezos still has a nearly 12% stake in the $230 billion (sales) e-commerce giant.

This year’s Forbes 400 rankings will be released in full tomorrow. See how Bezos went from plucky startup founder to the 21st century’s Sam Walton.