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From Student to Shoe Salesman: The Early Years of Zappos’ Tony Hsieh

Article Overview: When Tony Hsieh’s parents emigrated from Taiwan, they were in search of a better life, what many call the American Dream. They might not have found it themselves, but their son most definitely did. A millionaire by the time he was 26 years old, Hsieh sold his first company to Microsoft and would go on to build an even greater one in the hugely successful Zappos.com.

From Student to Shoe Salesman: The Early Years of Zappos’ Tony Hsieh

When Tony Hsieh's parents emigrated from Taiwan, they were in search of a better life, what many call the American Dream. They might not have found it themselves, but their son most definitely did. A millionaire by the time he was 26 years old, Hsieh sold his first company to Microsoft and would go on to build an even greater one in the hugely successful Zappos.com. Hsieh was born on December 12, 1973. He grew up in Marin County, California and showed early signs of an eager entrepreneurial spirit. The oldest of three brothers, Hsieh would graduate from Harvard University with a BA in Computer Science.

Straight out of university, Hsieh landed a promising job as a software engineer with Oracle, but could never really adjust to the idea of working for someone else. He quit that job and in 1996, co-founded LinkExchange with roommate Sanjay Mandan. It was a popular internet advertising network that, at its peak, reached over half of all Internet users each month. It became so successful that in 1999, Microsoft approached Hsieh with a bid to buy it.

Hsieh considered the bid carefully. "I just didn't look forward to going to the office. The passion and excitement were no longer there," recalls Hsieh. "That's kind of a weird feeling for me because this was a company I co-founded, and if I was feeling that way, how must the other employees feel? That's actually why we ended up selling the company."

The deal was made final for $265 million, and Hsieh became a millionaire. But it was far from the end for Hsieh.

"Financially, it meant I didn't have to work again if I didn't want to," he says. "So that was the lens through which I was looking at things. It's basically asking the question, what would you want to do if you won the lottery? For me, I didn't want to be part of a company where I dreaded going into the office."

At the same time, Hsieh had co-founded a small investment firm called Venture Frogs. "We invested in 20 or so different Internet companies," he says, including Ask Jeeves, MongoMusic, MyAble, and Tellme Networks.

It was there that Hsieh first learned about a young online shoe retailer called Zappos, founded by Nick Swinmurn. He invested in it like all the rest, but slowly his involvement began to change.

"Nick left a message saying he wanted to start a company that sold shoes online," recalls Hsieh. "I didn't think consumers would buy shoes sight unseen, and Nick didn't have a footwear background. It sounded like the poster child of bad Internet ideas.

"But right before I hit Delete, Nick mentioned the size of the retail shoe market - $40 billion. And the more interesting thing was that 5 percent was already being done through mail order catalogs. That intrigued me. Initially, I was just an adviser. But I got sucked in."

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Article Tags: american dream, better life, microsoft, millionaire, parents, shoe salesman, taiwan, tony hsieh, zapposcom



Related Forum Posts
What is one of your favorite sales and marketing book? - One of my favorite sales and marketing book is called Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh. It tells a story of how a guy quit a high paying corporate job after graduating from Harvard in order to pursue a business dream, while working with a group of friends. They eventually built a business that is now worth over a billion dollars called Zappos.com. The entire books concept was on how to market a successful business. I enjoyed reading the book and learned a lot from it. What is one of your favorite marketing books?
Hat's off to you- - As an owner/operator, I wear many hats...especially when employees become ill, go on vacation or resign. Here's the hat's i've worn over the years: 1) Manager (skilled) 2) Salesman (very skilled) 3) Book keeper/ Accountant (somewhat skilled) 4) Publicist (somewhat skilled) 5) Payroll officer (skilled) 6) Receptionist (very skilled) 7) Secretary (very skilled)
Seems we've got a spammer... - Shoe Perfect is going around posting ads for his site... I'm thinking rather than having a wait before somoene can post again, have a 24-hour delay from the time someone joins, to the time they can post? That might deter people who just want to "hit and run"... in a way that the post-again delay might not.
Re: Hat's off to you- - [quote="BizLoanz4u":1j1xk9p5]As an owner/operator, I wear many hats...especially when employees become ill, go on vacation or resign. Here's the hat's i've worn over the years: 1) Manager 2) Salesman 3) Book keeper/ Accountant 4) Publicist 5) Payroll officer 6) Receptionist 7) Secretary[/quote:1j1xk9p5] Hi Michele, Would you be able to rate each of your job functions on a scale of "1 = generalist" to "10 = expert" and even which tasks you outsource? Thanks
Re: What is one of your favorite sales and marketing book? - Great post. I love biographies. My favorite book is The Magic of Thinking Big. It's such a quick, easy read. But the big take away message is you should dream big because most people don't bother to dream big and actually try big. The book cites the example of a job posting for an executive position gets far fewer responses than a job for a mid level manager or a mailroom clerk. So Dream Big & Do Big because most people won't. Off to get the Zappos book.


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