Tony Hsieh

People reported that the Former CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh, had passed away on November 27, 2020. He was 46 at the time. He was known as an American Internet entrepreneur and a venture capitalist. Hsieh was born on December 12, 1973, in Illinois. In 1999, he put investment money in an online shoe platform owned by Nick Swinmurn, Shoesite.com. The site later rebranded itself and changed its name to Zappos, derived from the Spanish word ‘zapatos’. The company did minimal revenue in its first year but was able to gross $70 million in 2003. A year later, its revenue had grown tremendously to $183 million. Hsieh sold it to Amazon for $1.2 billion on Halloween in 2009.

Aside from Zappos, Hsieh co-founded LinkExchange, an advertising network he created with his friend, Sanjay Madan, in 1996. It was so successful that Microsoft expressed interest and eventually bought it for $265 million in 1998.