Tony Hsieh 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. This Timeline was created to reflect on his life and notable career.
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Join MemoriesMary Carr Tony won the World Champions - ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest.
Mary Carr Tony completed a computer science degree at the prestigious Harvard University.
Mary Carr Tony speaking at the Harvard Club of Nevada during his time at the university.
Mary Carr Since leaving Harvard, Tony commenced working at Oracle for 6 months before moving onto his next role.
Mary Carr Tony founded an advertising network, LinkExchange. The idea was to advertise the sites of those interested in LinkExchange website.
Mary Carr With 400,000 members and 5 million ads being rotated daily by 1998, LinkExchange was a huge success. It was sold to Microsoft for 265 million USD in November, the same year.
Mary Carr Tony joined Zappos as the CEO at aged 46.
Mary Carr Tony moved onto to co-found Venture Frogs, funding several companies including Zappos. This is where Tony was first introduced to the company that would shape is career.
Mary Carr Tony started his career at Zappos.
Mary Carr Tony was awarded with The Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2007.
Mary Carr Revenue for Zappos reached $1 billion by 2009 as the company continued their success.
Mary Carr On July 22, 2009, Amazon.com announced the acquisition of Zappos.com in a deal valued at approximately 1.2 billion dollars.
Mary Carr Tony then joined the board of JetSuite and also led an investment of 7 million USD.
Mary Carr Tony at Jetsuite
Mary Carr 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
Mary Carr Tony retired as the CEO of Zappos after 21 years.
Mary Carr Two weeks and one day before his 47th birthday, Tony Hsieh died from complications from burns and smoke inhalation sustained in a house fire that occurred nine days earlier on November 18.