He was there at the height of the dot-com explosion, and he was there when reality hit. In his first book, Delivering Happiness, you can read about the untold story of how Tony Hsieh (pronounced “Shay)” poured his heart, soul and his early fortunes to risk it all for a start-up called Zappos.com, which back then was considered to be odd and sounded ridiculous. I mean, come on, who would have thought that people wanted to buy shoes online?
But that was then, because today Tony can proudly show that with persistence, focus and integrity, you can turn your business into a success. And that’s exactly what Tony did with Zappos.com, now a multi-billion-dollar business that was acquired by Amazon in 2009.
Delivering Happiness – a path to profits, passion and purpose goes on sale in June 2010 and tells the story behind Tony’s success starting with his early endeavours as a child selling stickers. Shortly after graduating from Harvard, he started a short-lived career at Oracle and eventually went on to apply his entrepreneurial talent to the web. Tony struck gold with one of his first ventures with his online service LinkExchange, which was eventually bought out by Microsoft for a whopping $265 million – not a bad start for a graduate still in his 20′s. Hungry for more, he starts his own venture fund which would eventually lead him to becoming CEO of the most popular online retailers.
Whilst the book covers some of Tony’s early adventures and experiments, the focus is mostly on Zappos’ early days and the lessons learned in managing a fledgling business. One of the interesting aspects of his story is despite its early and continued success, the problems that were encountered ranged from logistical issues to cash-flow and staffing complications which threatened to bring Zappos to the brink of death.
Delivering Happiness is an interesting read that colourfully describes the timeline of events that Tony has led. You can pre-order this book on Amazon today.