Tony Hsieh has died (opens in new tab)

In 2008 I was consuming as much entrepenuriship content I could (while building my first company). For obvious reasons I ended up watching a Tony's presentation. He was sharing a lot of stories about Zappos and in the end he talked about their Culture Book (a book entirely written by Zappos employees, with no editing).

Immediately after watch it I sent an email directly for him (at the time a CEO of a company that would be sold to Amazon for 1.2B 8 months after) asking if I could have a digital version of the book since I was living in Brazil. For my complete surprise I received a response in less than 1 hour just asking for my address. One day after I received a physical copy of the book, signed by the very own Tony Hsieh. He even invited me to visit Zappos offices if I ever were in Las Vegas!

Today I woke up with this sad news. Definitely, a huge loss to the world. I'm sure you'll always be an inspiration to many.

Rest in peace Tony Hsieh, A big fan

In 2013, Tony invited me and other entrepreneurs to Vegas to give us his tour of what he and his team were doing to the Downtown area to revive it. It was amazing. But what really has always stuck with me is how fresh Tony’s ideas and thinking were. He looked past a ton of criticism and naysayers to see his new ideas come to life. Tony had the courage to try new thing after new thing. Often with great results. I’ve been back to the downtown area of Las Vegas, and the impact he’s had, whether it perfectly met his vision or not, has been remarkably improved. It’s 100 times safer. Employs a ton of people for non-gambling related things. And is a huge net improvement. I’m at a loss this morning. I didn’t know Tony very well, but the few convos I’ve had with him left me inspired to learn about something new or look at something differently. He was incredibly generous with his time and resources. I encourage all of you to go deep into the legacy Tony left behind. There’s important lessons and advice all over his work and life.

Im feeling sad. I just want to start by saying that. I think one of the most special moments in my life was going to the Zappos holiday party many years ago, where it was me and a friend from SF and all Zappos employees, including Tony. He is still one of the most humble, inspiring, kind, and impactful leaders I have met, and I have been in a room with Elon Musk and his family. Why do I remember this party of so many parties globally that I have attended? It was because how he CHANGED LIVES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR WOMEN / MEN IN VEGAS. I listened to stories of many people while riding the bus to this cowboy ranch Themed Xmas party. At the time I was a tech blogger. One story sticks out, a story of a woman who said she had no options than to work in a casino before Zappos, like many people in Vegas. She said, also many of her friends who wanted regular jobs were ostracized if they left adult industry to find jobs that were stable... Zappos was not just secure, but people mattered. Tony cared. His vision wasn’t some bullshit PR communication, he was a legit leader who cared. I left that holiday party inspired and hopeful for the downtown project... my takeaway from his death: recognize good leaders, highlight them, support them, and relèvera, when such people and companies succeed, it is not just success in funds, but more importantly communities get positive impact! Love to Tony’s family and condolences to them and all those feeling the sadness of his loss...

This is terribly sad news.

I saw Tony speak at YC Startup School in 2009, and his talk stuck with me far more than any other that day.

It was exciting and inspiring to hear that you could build a company that was sincere about being good to its employees and customers whilst also being large and commercially successful, and that’s influenced how I’ve gone about trying to build products and businesses ever since.

I haven’t managed a big success that accomplishes this yet, but if I ever manage to do it, it will be in no small part thanks to Tony.

Thanks and blessings to Tony, and love and strength to his family and friends.

I never met Tony but I saw him speak at an event in 2009 (Startup School 2009) in Berkeley.

I just remember before his presentation he had TechCrunch up on his laptop and one could tell he didn’t have the pretense of any other speaker (and all the speakers that day were very successful like him). His talk on Delivering Happiness was good. It was memorable how unique and kind of a culture he had created throughout Zappos. That was unique in that it was the only talk about doing moral things, from the only startup that was successfully employing these practices.

But before he started, the most memorable part — and to be honest the saddest thing now - was just seeing him browsing TechCrunch real quick on the screen in the auditorium in front of everyone. I remember thinking — whoa he is just one of us. Nor was he concerned about not being who he was in front of other people. You could tell he was very good at socializing but slightly introverted (moved quickly around the room but wasn’t much for small talk).

And that behind a very successful entrepreneur was just a person trying to figure it out like everyone else and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the point (ie unconsciously or not if leaving TechCrunch up on the projector briefly wasn’t intentional).

It meant a few things to the audience: (a) it doesn’t matter what people think (b) we’re all human (c) there’s nothing special about my success (d) other than I’m so focused on doing important things with it it doesn’t matter what you think.

And that was way more of a leadership by example situation — for a few brief moments — than anything else (and there were a lot of great talks that day).

Rest In Peace.

Reading "Delivering Happiness" inspired me to quit a legal career I hated, learn to code on nights and weekends. Today, I'm the CTO of a promising startup. Thank you, Tony.

It's interesting to me that every thread about Tony Hsieh prior to this one was filled with criticism and skeptics. Why does it take someone's death to start appreciating his body of work? I think many skeptics believe they're speaking truth to power and therefore making the world a better place. There's certainly an element of truth to this, but I think if you take the ten thousand foot view, you'll find that we can be a more powerful agent of change by building good people up rather than tearing bad people down (or even worse, tearing net-good people down).

My condolences go out to Tony's family and friends. As a fellow founder who's faced similar challenges as Tony, I remember tearing up in the airport reading Delivering Happiness. Rest in peace.

He arguably played have played a tangential role in the establishment of Google's business model. Some really interesting history from Ali Partovi, cofounder of Tony's first startup, LinkExchange: https://techcrunch.com/2010/08/29/bubble-blinders-the-untold...

It's worth reading the whole thing but the summary is: Scott Banister, then founder of a startup called Submit-It, seems to have been the first person to have conceived of an AdWords-like business model...

> In 1996, he brilliantly conceived an idea he called “Keywords”: to sell search listings based on pay-for-placement bidding – more or less the same as today’s AdWords. Banister began pitching the idea to anybody who would listen to him, including, among others, Bill Gross of IdeaLab, and the principals of LinkExchange: Tony Hsieh, Sanjay Madan, and me.[...] Tony, Sanjay, and I also loved the idea, because we had the benefit of the right context. [...] LinkExchange proceeded to acquire Submit-it; and I became obsessed with the idea of realizing Banister’s vision via deals with the world’s top search drivers [...] In late 1998, Microsoft bought LinkExchange for $265 million, telling us they liked the “Keywords” vision. As Microsoft employees, we continued pitching the Keywords deal not only to Yahoo, but also to the up-and-coming Google. I wasn’t surprised to find that these companies were wary of partnering with Microsoft.

This is crazy, he's a veritable legend (and so young). RIP. My condolences go out to his friends and family. Maybe related to his stepping down 3 months ago[1]?

My comment from that 3-month-old thread, regarding Hsieh: From 2015-2017, I worked at Edmunds.com which was (to put it lightly) a bit obsessed with "Delivering Happiness" and Zappos' culture. So much so, that the leadership team visited Vegas to get a tour of the Zappos HQ (this was before I joined). But Edmunds based their entire cultural approach, including hiring, interviewing, and onboarding on Zappos.

The Edmunds onboarding experience has been by far the best out of any company I worked at. Sure, it was silly games and scavenger hunts that didn't really have anything to do with "work," but I look back at the entire experience with a lot of nostalgia. I loved the onboarding so much, I've been contemplating doing a startup that literally just focuses on improving cultural onborading at companies. It made my first few months at Edmunds not only incredibly productive, but also intellectually and socially stimulating.

And they were doing something right. Over there, I had the honor of working with one of the best managers I ever had (he's now at Amazon), and with one of the best software architects I've ever worked with (he's now at Facebook). My team was made up of motivated, smart, folks from all walks of life (recent grads to data science PhD's in their 50s). I still keep in touch with my old team even though we're spread all over these days: doing our own startups, at Facebook, Uber, Amazon, and beyond.

I have the utmost respect for the cultural revolution that entrepreneurs like Tony Hsieh brought to the fore. People that call it a "cult" are missing the point. It's no more a cult than cheering for your school mascot or being in a club. We seem to forget that people are inherently social and need a sense of belonging.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24268522

Las Vegas Review-Journal says he “died Friday after being injured in a house fire.”

https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/tony-hsieh-key-figure...

What a tremendous loss to the startup community and to the world.

Tony was an innovator not just in terms of product vision, as almost all successful founders have to be, but also in the very idea of what business should be.

It is striking to me that this happened the same day as pg's essay on thinking differently from your peers came out, as I can imagine no greater example. As founders we spend time thinking about how our product can change the way things are done, but the way that companies themselves are structured and run is largely formulaic and taken for granted. This makes Tony truly special, as someone who decided to rethink what a company should be and how it should impact people's lives.

Even before Zappos he was wildly successful: the first company he co-founded, LinkExchange, sold to Microsoft for $265MM in 1998. In spite of this, he lived in a trailer in Las Vegas. He just didn't think about things in the way most people do.

He is, and will continue to be, an example and inspiration to look to for any founder, especially those who have a nagging feeling that the way companies are run should be better. May he rest in peace.

This makes me really sad.

10 years ago around Thanksgiving, I got my first Kindle - the keyboard one with an AT&T 3G card, one of the first few books I read was his "Delivering Happiness". Amazon was not the juggernaut it is today, the book stayed in my mind for such a long period was unprecedented.

My current Kindle Oasis is much better than my first Kindle, a lot of books have been read as well. However, I might never able to get same experience / inspiration again.

RIP.

The Zappos website now has a Steve Jobs-like tribute on the first page (as well as a banner), which seems appropriate given how amazing Hsieh has been (not merely founding Zappos, but the renewal of DT Las Vegas, plus cool stuff he did back in SF before Zappos -- the 1000 Van Ness place was quirky and awesome.) A really amazing person.

Really sad , I remember when I was setting up Myntra (Indian zappos) customer experience department, Tony and his book were a huge influence and everything that we did was measured up with the zappos way of customer experience. We were one of the few large companies having in house call centre with a five day week and training period of one month to all customer cate executives, plus a mandatory call listening session once a quarter for all senior leadership.

There are still some question marks on the ROI of trying to ensure customer delight especially via call center since discounts are such a huge factor in buying shoes and clothes online that even an NPS of 60 will not help if you don’t price lower especially for the value conscious Indian buyer however he definitely brought a new dimension of thinking for a lot of customer care folks

Yesterday, God told me to pray for Tony Hsieh without any knowledge of his condition. I am ashamed to admit that I often forget to pray at all, so this was very striking. Tony has had a huge influence on me from working for startups downtown and at Zappos. The Lord told me he needed love and prayers sent his way. I sent him a message that I don't think he got. I'm praying he was well received in heaven. He was one of the good ones- full of light that radiated to everyone he met. He knew how to have fun, not take life or work too seriously and always treated people better than himself. He lived in a trailer with his friends downtown for years, even though he had unlimited resources. He understood servant leadership, supported the dreams and aspirations of thousands of employees, small business owners and entrepreneurs around the world. He helped the poor and unfortunate. He invited my kids to play at his airstream park for a community breakfast. He was generous, kind, welcoming, visionary, and had an incredibly contagious vibe about him. He will be remembered and honored by countless thousands for a long time to come. I cannot believe he is gone. It is too unreal and sad to contemplate. I want everyone who reads this to pray, have faith, and be inspired. Tell your friends and loved ones how much you care because we never know what will happen next. We are here only a short while. Rest in peace, Tony. We miss you.

Seems short on details, so I was curious. These articles [1,2,3] may be referring to the fire in question. And this [4] seems to be the property.

[1] https://www.theday.com/article/20201118/NWS04/201119437

[2] https://www.fox61.com/article/news/local/new-london-house-fi...

[3] https://www.wfsb.com/news/crews-rescue-person-from-burning-n...

[4] https://www.compass.com/listing/500-pequot-avenue-new-london...

Oh wow, this is so sad. An incredible entrepreneur. I met him once in Vegas and struck me as such a simple guy, yet, so bright.

The family hasn’t reveal any details, he was surely very young.

Died from a house fire. Terrible way to go.

Source: https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/tony-hsieh-key-figure...

Huge loss. His book Delivering Happiness is a must read for any entrepreneur.

Hsieh's Downtown Project building a startup city in Downtown Las Vegas had some very dark aspects, as this 2014 article detailed.

https://www.vox.com/2014/10/1/11631452/the-downtown-project-...

46. RIP.

"Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day. … The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.” - Seneca

More details and a touching biography: https://www.wsj.com/articles/former-zappos-ceo-tony-hsieh-di...

I didn't know much of Tony TBH, but a simple customer service interaction with Zappos still ranks as the best experience I've had. It was pre-Amazon, so directly influenced by the culture he put into place.

RIP, his book Delivering Happiness was such an inspiration early in my career

RIP Tony Hsieh, his philosophy of delighting the customer will live on. It has influenced the culture at my company. Thank you for the wisdom.

Did Tony used to have a Twitter account? I recall exchanging tweets with him, but can't seem to find his account anymore.

He was a great, humble guy. When he said he'd email you back (when I was a perfect stranger), he meant it. RIP Tony Hsieh

Didn’t know much about the dude but reading about Holocracy was definitely a huge impact on my career and leadership / org principles. Damn. Rest In Peace. Wow. Wow. Wow. Didn’t think to connect it to the guy but it’s probably only Valve and Zapppos that actually cared enough to push it on the org design front. Legends.

One thing I admired about this guy where his stoic tendencies.

He was worth $800 million bit he slept in an airstream[0].

[0]: https://www.businessinsider.com/llamapolis-las-vegas-trailer...

I'm sad cause he's younger than me and I feel that I'm not done with my life yet. He probably other dreams he wanted to pursue and based on his history, he would have succeeded. We will never see what he wanted to do next.

What a loss for us all.

Another article from CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/28/us/tony-hsieh-zappos-dies/ind...

I really loved his work, he was my personal hero. Great thought leader and entrepreneur, but also humble and caring human being. I would often ask myself, what would Tony do, when I have some business challenge or problem.

Rest in peace Tony.

What a shame. He was the rare combination of great businessman and great guy.

I came across Tony in his Mixergy interview in 2008, he was always inspiring. Even though I didn't meet him it hit home when I saw the news. Rest In Peace, you inspired millions.

What a terrible way to die. Seems like deep suffering. I hope not.

He really was a visionary who was able to take action.

I’m gutted to hear this news. His gentle demeanour and the awe and wonder I experienced reading his book in one sitting has left a lasting impression on me.

Rest In Peace

I will always remember the Zappos culture and the way the company interacted with customers and supported them. It’s rare to see companies of that kind.

Horrible news. Like many others here his book Delivering Happiness reached me. He was one of the good ones. He won't be forgotten.

My condolences to his friends and family.

spoken in 2017

they discussed the hypothetical question, "If your house was on fire and you could only save one thing, what would it be?" As Hsieh surveyed his possessions, he couldn't think of a single item he cared about enough to single out.

www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/05/08/why-multi-millionaire-zappos-ceo-tony-hsieh-lives-in-a-trailer-park.html

I didn’t know him personally, but I always thought he was a great guy. What a loss for the community. RIP Tony, you will be dearly missed.

Sobering. If you died at his age, would you be satisfied with your life? I wonder if he was. Entrepreneurs can be hard on themselves.

I loved his How I Built this Episode - probably one of my favorite podcast. This is so sad and shocking.

Makes me so sad, he was as much (if not more) a humanitarian as an entrepreneur. Thankful for his impact.

Everything I read about this guy had positive things to say.

I'm sad I didn't get the chance to meet him. :(

Will we remember tony in 100 years? What will be his legacy in society?

This is sad and unexpected, condolences to his loved ones, he will be missed.

Life is short. Rest in peace.

Tony Hsieh has died at the age of 46. He died of injuries sustained during a house fire in Connecticut. Tony Hsieh is most well-known for his work as the former CEO of Zappos, a company that sells shoes on the web. His family, friends and co-workers mourn his loss.

Was holacracy at Zappos his idea or it came from the original founder?

Wow that's a young age to pass away. Really shocking.

Such a precious life; gone like a blow of wind

Very sad...A great loss for industry. :(

Shocking! His book, "Delivering Happiness" is one of the best book about establishing a business and giving awesome customer support.

Hope HN management will set a black bar in his honor.

RIP, Tony Hsieh.

A person of color, he proved that a business doesn’t have to be souless in order to be successful.

humble leadership at its best. too early. RIP Tony.

> It's no more a cult than cheering for your school mascot

To just react to this part: from the perspective of someone growing up in a country without school mascots or inter-school sports competitions, the whole US treatment of school sport teams and their mascots (or, at least, their depiction in media) is rather cultish behaviour.

Where could I learn more about the onboarding practices? Sounds super interesting!

Are the circumstances suspicious or is there nothing to worry about here? So sad and sorry for your loss.

RIP, can't believe 2020 is this hard

<img src="s.gif" height="5" width="100%" title="Tony Hsieh has died.">

Please.

I was moderated for commenting about stuff like this in response to someone comparing him to Jobs. Not enough of us old guard spoke up when Jobs died, a book was released and kids started dropping acid and pulling Theranos scams on all different levels because of the distortions in it. Speaking up now with facts about Hsieh, whom I have first hand knowledge of, but since my own opinion cost me, here is history lesson...

https://www.vox.com/2014/10/1/11631452/the-downtown-project-...

When a prominent person in their 40s dies and there's no information released as to the cause of death, it's always a challenge not to make assumptions.

Wow, the fire was about 5 minutes from me. The single family style house which caught fire was recently purchased by a former Zappos employee about 3 months prior. Tony was the only fatality, Fire fighters extracted him from the basement.

https://www.theday.com/local-news/20201128/tony-hsieh-retire...

https://www.redfin.com/CT/New-London/500-Pequot-Ave-06320/ho...

Cause of death should be standard information when someone has passed away. If we're not supposed to talk about cause of death, then why should the age be mentioned? Why should the location where the person passed away be said? Why include next of kin -- surely that's completely irrelevant unless you are part of the family? Every single Wikipedia entry for a person who isn't living gives cause of death. If it's so bad to talk about causes, then why isn't Wikipedia being criticized for this? We need to get over this taboo. It is not gossip. It is relevant and important information.