Tony Hsieh

At 46 years old, Tony Hsieh physical status not available right now. We will update Tony Hsieh's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

In 1996, Hsieh started developing the idea for an advertising network called LinkExchange with his college classmates Sanjay Mandan and Ali Partovi. Members were allowed to advertise their site over LinkExchange's network by displaying banner ads on its website. They launched in March 1996, with Hsieh as CEO, and found their first 30 clients by direct emailing webmasters. The site grew, and within 90 days LinkExchange had over 20,000 participating web pages and had its banner ads displayed over 10 million times. By 1998, the site had over 400,000 members and 5 million ads rotated daily. In November 1998, LinkExchange was sold to Microsoft for $265 million.

After LinkExchange sold to Microsoft, Hsieh co-founded and owned Venture Frogs, an incubator and investment firm, with his business partner, Alfred Lin. The name originated from a dare. One of Hsieh's friends said she would invest everything if they chose "Venture Frogs" as the name, and the pair took her up on the bet, although they had not seen any money as of 2011. They invested in a variety of tech and Internet startups, including Ask Jeeves, OpenTable and Zappos.

In 1999, Nick Swinmurn approached Tony Hsieh and Alfred Lin with the idea of selling shoes online. Hsieh was initially skeptical and almost deleted Swinmurn's initial voice mail. After Swinmurn mentioned that "footwear in the US is a $40 billion market, and 5% of that was already being sold by paper mail order catalogs," Hsieh and Lin decided to invest through Venture Frogs. Two months later, Hsieh joined Zappos as the CEO, starting with $1.6 million of total sales in 2000. By 2009, revenues reached $1 billion.

Without a precedent to guide him, Hsieh learned how to make customers feel comfortable shopping for shoes online. Zappos offered free shipping and free returns, sometimes of several pairs. Hsieh rethought Zappos structure, and in 2013 it became for a time a holacracy without job titles, reflecting his belief in employees and their ability to self-organize. The company hired only about 1% of all applicants. Named for the Spanish word for shoes, "zapatos", Zappos was often listed in Fortune as one of the best companies to work for, and beyond high salaries and being an inviting place to work it delivered extraordinary customer service.

Hsieh loved the game of poker and moved Zappos headquarters to Henderson, Nevada, and eventually to downtown Las Vegas.

On July 22, 2009, Amazon announced the acquisition of Zappos.com in a deal valued at approximately $1.2 billion. Hsieh is said to have made at least $214 million from the sale, not including money made through his former investment firm Venture Frogs.

On August 24, 2020, Hsieh retired as the CEO of Zappos after 21 years at the helm.

Hsieh joined JetSuite's board in 2011. He led a $7 million round of investment in the growing private "very light jet" field with that company. The investment allowed JetSuite to add two new Embraer Phenom 100 jets which have two pilots, two engines and safety features equivalent to large commercial passenger jets but weigh less than 10,000 pounds (4,500 kg) and are consequently highly fuel-efficient.

From 2009 until his death, Hsieh, who was still running the downtown Las Vegas-based Zappos.com business, organized a major re-development and revitalization project for downtown Las Vegas, which had been for the most part left behind compared to the Las Vegas Strip's growth. Hsieh originally planned the Downtown Project as a place where Zappos.com employees could live and work, but the project grew beyond that to a vision where thousands of local tech and other entrepreneurs could live and work. Projects funded include The Writer's Block, the first independent bookseller in Las Vegas.

After stepping down as CEO of Zappos in August 2020, Hsieh bought multiple properties in Park City, Utah, with a total market value around $56 million.

Source