Tony Hsieh, the venture capitalist and Internet entrepreneur retired after 21 years as the CEO of an online clothing and shoe company, Zappos in August 2020. Hsieh sold his Internet advertising network, linkEchange, for $265 million to Microsoft in 1998 before joining Zappos.
California raised Hsieh was born to Taiwan immigrants, Richard and Judy Hsieh, who met in graduate school at the University of Illinois and moved to Lucas Valley area of Marin County, California, when he was five. Hsieh h... moreTony Hsieh, the venture capitalist and Internet entrepreneur retired after 21 years as the CEO of an online clothing and shoe company, Zappos in August 2020. Hsieh sold his Internet advertising network, linkEchange, for $265 million to Microsoft in 1998 before joining Zappos.
California raised Hsieh was born to Taiwan immigrants, Richard and Judy Hsieh, who met in graduate school at the University of Illinois and moved to Lucas Valley area of Marin County, California, when he was five. Hsieh had 3 brothers, and his father worked as a chemical engineer at Chevron Corp, and his mother was a social worker when he was growing up.
Determined, focused, and self-motivated Hsieh sold pizza to the students in his dorm and managed the Quincy House Grille pizza when he was in Harvard. His best customer, who later became Zappo's chief financial officer and the chief operating officer, was Alfred Lin. In 1995, he graduated with a degree in computer science and worked for Oracle Corporation after college, where he left after five months to co-found the LinkExchange advertising network, which allowed members to display banner ads on their site. By March of 1996, Hsieh as CEO launched the business and within 90 days, LinkExchange had grown to over 20,000 participating web pages and had its banner ads displayed over 10 million times. About 5 million ads rotated daily and almost 400,000 members by 1998, and the company was later sold to Microsoft for $265 million in November 1998.
After Linkexchange, he started Venture Frog, an investment firm that he co-founded with Alfred Lin, and he joined Zappos as an investor and advisor and eventually became CEO after Venture frogs invested in Zappos, starting with $1.6 million of total sales in 2000 and reached $1 billion in revenues by 2009.
Without a formal structure, Hsieh knew how to make the customer feel secure and comfortable buying online through Zappos with many special offers like free shipping and no question asked return policy. Zappos grew to be listed in Fortune as one of the best companies to work for beyond attracting salaries and the ability to deliver outstanding customer service. Amazon acquired Zappos in a deal valued at approximately $1.2 billion and about $214 million from the sale went to Hsieh aside from the returns on his former investments through venture frog.
After Zappos, Hsieh joined JetSuite's board in 2011 and worked on real estate rejuvenation projects in downtown Las Vegas and Park City, Utah. Hsieh was known for going extreme with his body and on some occasions he would fast until he drops under 100 pounds or starved himself of oxygen to induce hypoxia. His unhealthy use of nitrous oxide and the news about his drugs involvement surfaced late
Unfortunately, tragedy struck on the morning of November 18, 2020, when Hsieh was injured in a house fire in New London, Connecticut, where he was visiting his friends. He was trapped in the basement when the fire incident occurred and he wouldn't answer the door. Whilst undergoing treatments for burns, he died of smoke inhalation after he was rescued by firefighters and transported to the Connecticut Burn Center at Bridgeport Hospital on November 27.
