Background and career
Anthony Hsieh ( SHAY; December 12, 1973 – November 27, 2020) was an American Internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He retired as the CEO of the online shoe and clothing company Zappos in August 2020 after 21 years. Prior to joining Zappos, Hsieh co-founded the Internet advertising network LinkExchange, which he sold to Microsoft in 1998 for $265 million.
Hsieh was born to a Taiwanese American family in Urbana, Illinois. His parents were Richard and Judy Hsieh, immigrants from Taiwan who met in graduate school at the University of Illinois. Hsieh's family moved to the Lucas Valley area of Marin County, California, when he was five. His mother was a social worker, and his father a chemical engineer at Chevron Corp. He had two younger brothers, Andy and Dave. Hsieh attended the Branson School. In 1995, Hsieh graduated from Harvard University with a degree in computer science. While at Harvard, he managed the Quincy House grill selling pizza to the students in his dorm; his best customer, Alfred Lin, would later become Zappos's chief financial officer and chief operating officer. After college, Hsieh worked for Oracle Corporation. After five months, he left to co-found the LinkExchange advertising network.
In 1996, Hsieh started developing the idea for an advertising network called LinkExchange with his college classmates Sanjay Madan and Ali Partovi. LinkExchange allowed members to advertise on other members' sites in exchange for placing LinkExchange banner advertisements on their own sites. 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 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; Hsieh personally netted $40 million from the sale.
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.
