Tony Hsieh was born in Illinois in 1973, but his family relocated to California shortly thereafter. He attended Branson High School in Ross, California before earning a computer science degree from Harvard University.
Tony Hsieh’s Net Worth
Tony Hsieh was an American entrepreneur, author, and venture capitalist who died in 2020 with a net worth of $850 million. Tony was best known as the visionary CEO of the online shoe retailer Zappos. He then authored the best-selling book “Delivering Happiness” about his success. He devoted his later years to transforming downtown Las Vegas.
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Tony Hsieh’s net worth is approx. $850 million
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Career
His career is very vast. He has done many jobs and details are given below.
- LinkExchange
- VentureFrogs
- Zappos
- Amazon Sale
LinkExchange
Tony’s first post-college job was with Oracle. He spent most of his time conceiving of a side project, as he disliked this position.
Tony quickly left Oracle to create a concept for an internet advertising exchange service. Ultimately, he co-founded a company called LinkExchange with a friend. LinkExchange enabled websites to display advertisements for other companies in exchange for having their own advertisements displayed across the web.
The more advertisements a site displayed, the more its own advertisements were displayed throughout the LinkEchange network. In 1998, the year Microsoft acquired the company for $265 million, LinkExchange had 400,000 members and 5 million ads were rotated daily. According to the terms of the buyout, Tony was supposed to continue working for Microsoft and earn additional compensation. He famously grew weary of “resting and vesting” and left Microsoft holding tens of millions of dollars in future payouts.
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Venture Frogs
Next, Hsieh and Alfred Lin co-founded the investment firm Venture Frogs. Among the company’s investments were OpenTable, Ask Jeeves, and, most importantly, a soon-to-be-famous shoe retailer known as Zappos.
Zappos
After learning that the footwear industry in the United States (at the time) was a $40 billion market with almost no internet sales, Hsieh became convinced that selling shoes online was at least a remotely viable idea.
In 1999, VentureFrogs provided the startup with $2 million to launch ShoeSite.com. Later that year, the company’s name was changed to Zappos, a reference to the Spanish word for shoes, zapatos.
Tony became co-CEO of Zappos alongside company founder Nick Swinmurn in 2001. In that year, the company’s revenue was $1,600,000. A little less than a decade later, the company’s annual revenue exceeded $1 billion. Along the way, Zappos earned a reputation for having an exceptional corporate culture that prioritized employee satisfaction and provided the best customer service of any retailer.
The corporate headquarters of Zappos was relocated from the Bay Area to Las Vegas, where Tony knew labor and real estate costs would be significantly lower.
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Amazon Sale
On July 22, 2009, Amazon completed an all-stock acquisition of Zappos. The transaction involved 10 million Amazon shares, which were valued at $1.2 billion on the day the deal was announced. Tony Hsieh reportedly earned $214 million from his personal stake in the company and between $100 and $200 million from his stake in VentureFrogs.
FYI, 10 million Amazon shares would be worth $32 billion today. If Tony received approximately 3 million Amazon shares as part of the acquisition and never sold a single share, his stake would be worth $9.6 billion today. Tony must have sold the majority of his holdings, as his net worth was never officially confirmed to be greater than $1 billion. We estimated Tony Hsieh’s net worth at its peak to be $850 million.
Tony resigned as CEO of Zappos in August 2020. He had been associated with the company in some capacity for twenty-one years.
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Other Ventures
In 2011, Hsieh joined the JetSuite board of directors.
Tony published his debut book, Delivering Happiness, in 2010. The book reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list and remained there for over six months.
In his later years, Hsieh became known for his association with downtown Las Vegas. Hsieh established the Downtown Project, a $350 million initiative to revitalize the area by bringing in businesses, schools, residences, and technology companies. Hsieh intended to give Las Vegas a contemporary urban center. The funding for the project is allocated to various initiatives: $200 million for real estate investments, $50 million for health, culture, and education initiatives in Las Vegas, $50 million for tech startups, and the remaining $50 million for small businesses.
Real Estate
During at least a portion of his time in Las Vegas, Tony was infamous for residing in a trailer park. This is after having earned hundreds of millions of dollars from Amazon’s sales. Additionally, he owned a home in the Las Vegas suburbs.
Tony reportedly paid $56 million in August 2020 for a collection of residential properties in Park City, Utah.
Death Cause
Tony died in a house fire on November 27, 2020, at the age of 46, while visiting family in Connecticut for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Quick Fact
Net Worth: | $850 Million |
Date of Birth: | Dec 12, 1973 – Nov 27, 2020 (46 years old) |
Gender: | Male |
Profession: | Businessperson |
Nationality: | United States of America |
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