Born : December 12, 1973 (age 39)
Residence: Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Alma materHarvard University (B.S.)
Occupation : Internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist
Known for : CEO of Zappos.com
Home town ：San Francisco Bay Area
Net worth : US$ 840 million
Tony Hsieh born December 12, 1973. His parents came from Taiwan. He was born in Illinois and grew up in the San Francisco Bay area of California. In 1995, he graduated from Harvard University with a degree in computer science.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. After college, Hsieh worked for Oracle Corporation. After five months, Hsieh found himself dissatisfied with the corporate environment and quit to found LinkExchange.
- LinkExchange
Career
In 1996, Hsieh started developing the idea for an advertising network called LinkExchange. Members were allowed to advertise their site over LinkExchange's network by displayingbanner ads on their 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 sold to Microsoft for $265 million.
- Venture Frogs
After LinkExchange sold to Microsoft, Hsieh co-founded 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 have yet to see any money). They invested in a variety of tech and Internet startups, including Ask Jeeves, OpenTable and Zappos.
- Zappos
In 1999, Nick Swinmurn approached Hsieh and 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 in 2000. By 2009, revenues reached $1 billion. On July 22, 2009, Amazon.com 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.
- JetSuite
Hsieh Joined JetSuite's board in 2011. He led a $7 million round of investment in the growing private Very light jet concern. 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 and are consequently highly fuel efficient.
Hsieh has long been an active Twitter user with a substantial following. He has been widely noted as an influential figure in how Twitter can be used among C-level executives to build a connection with customers, partners and employees.
- Downtown Project - Las Vegas, NV
Since 2009, Hsieh, who still runs the Henderson, NV based Zappos.com business, has been organizing a major re-development and revitalization project for downtown Las Vegas, which has been for the most part left behind compared to the Las Vegas strip's zooming growth. Hsieh originally planned the Downtown Project as a place where Zappos.com employees may live and work, but the project has grown beyond that to a vision where thousands of local tech and other entrepreneurs may live and work
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