| Tony Hsieh | |
|---|---|
Hsieh in 2009. |
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| Born | December 12, 1973 |
| Occupation | CEO of Zappos.com, Inc. |
| Website | |
| http://twitter.com/zappos | |
Tony Hsieh (English pronunciation: /ˈʃeɪ/ "shay", born December 12, 1973[1]) is the CEO of online shoe and clothing shop Zappos.com. Prior to joining Zappos, Hsieh co-founded and sold the internet advertising network LinkExchange to Microsoft in 1999 for $265 million.[1]
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In 1995, Hsieh graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Computer Science.[2] While at Harvard, he managed the Quincy House Grille selling pizza to the students in his dorm (his best customer, Alfred Lin, would later be Zappos’s CFO and COO).[3] After college, Hsieh worked for Oracle.[4] After five months, Hsieh found himself dissatisfied with the corporate environment, and quit to found Link Exchange.
In 1996, Hsieh started developing the idea for an advertising network called LinkExchange.[5] Members were allowed to advertise their site over LinkExchange's network by displaying banner ads on their website. They launched in March 1996, with Hsieh as CEO, and found their first 30 clients by direct emailing webmasters.[6] 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.[7] By 1998, the site had over 400,000 members and 5 million ads rotated daily.[8] In November 1998, LinkExchange sold to Microsoft for $265 million.[9][10]
After LinkExchange sold to Microsoft, Hsieh co-founded Venture Frogs, an incubator and investment firm, with his partner, Alfred Lin.[11] 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 have yet to see any money).[12] They invested in variety of tech and internet startups, including Ask Jeeves, OpenTable and Zappos.[12]
In 1999, Nick Swinmurn approached Hsieh and Lin with the idea of selling shoes online.[3] Hsieh was initially skeptical, and almost deleted Swinmurn’s initial voice mail. After Swinmurn mentioned that "footwear in the US is a 40 billion dollar 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 and has since doubled revenues every year, starting with $1.6 million in 2000.[3] By 2009, revenues reached $1 billion.[13][14]
On July 22, 2009 Amazon.com announced the acquisition of Zappos.com in a deal valued at approximately 1.2 billion .[15] He is said to have made at least $214 million from the sale not including money made through his former investment firm Venture Frogs.[16] [17]
In June 2010, Hsieh released Delivering Happiness, a book about his entrepreneurial endeavors. It was profiled in many world publications, including The Washington Post, CNBC, TechCrunch, The Huffington Post, and The Wall Street Journal [18][3][19][20][21] It debuted at #1 on the New York Times Best Seller List, and stayed on the list for 27 consecutive weeks.[22][23]
Hsieh currently lives in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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