Tony Hsieh

Business speaker Tony Hsieh is an entrepreneur, author and one of the most well respected businessmen in the world of the internet. A graduate of Harvard University in the mid-nineties, Tony Hsieh started his first post-graduation project called LinkExchange, an online advertising network which allowed members to display banner ads on other websites. The first idea of its kind in an internet that was still very young, LinkExchange had attracted over 400,000 members and 5 million banner ads rotated daily after only two and a half years. It was then that Hsieh sold LinkExchange to Microsoft for a whopping $265 million.

Following the sale of LinkExchange, business speaker Tony Hsieh went on to co-found an investment firm, Venture Frogs, which would enable him to work with such startup companies as OpenTable, Ask Jeeves, and Zappos. It was Zappos.com that would change his career for the next decade. The founder of Zappos.com, Nick Swinmurn, came to Tony with the idea of selling shoes on the internet and soon after, Hsieh signed on as the CEO of the company. A decade later in 2009, the company’s revenues had reached $1 billion and the company was sold to Amazon.com for $1.2 billion. Throughout his career, Tony has won countless awards including the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year.

After Zappos.com was sold, Tony Hsieh went on to other projects including writing his #1 New York Times Bestselling book, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, which was published in 2010. The book, in which Hsieh shares stories and lessons he’s learned throughout his entrepreneurial career, stayed on the New York Times Best Seller list for twenty seven weeks in a row. It also received reviews from notable publications including TechCrunch, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, The Washington Post, and The Huffington Post.