100 Entrepreneurs Who Changed The World
15. Tony Hsieh
“We asked ourselves what we wanted this company to stand for. We didn’t want to just sell shoes. I wasn’t even into shoes – but I was passionate about customer service.”
Tony Hsieh is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist. While attending Harvard, he worked as a manager of a local pizza house. Hsieh co-founded the internet advertising network LinkExchange, which he sold to Microsoft for $265 million in 1999. Prior to that, while working at the pizza house, he had met Alfred Lin, whom he would later invest in Zappos with. Zappos is an online shoe and clothing retailer of which Tony is CEO. If you’re a girl into shoes or have ever dated a girl into shoes, you’re probably aware of them. Tony nearly passed on the opportunity until he learned that the US footwear market rakes in $40 billion annually.
