Delivering Misery
Reflections on late-Zappos.com founder, Tony Hsieh, and other miserable, successful people.
I met Zappos.com founder Tony Hsieh a few times through my job at the micro-housing startup, LifeEdited. We were working with Hsieh on the Downtown Project, an effort to transform Las Vegas’ former main strip into a startup mecca. Much of the project’s $350M budget, which went both into real estate development and supporting startups, was financed by Hsieh with the money he made after Amazon bought Zappos for $1.2B in 2009.
Hsieh was considered a startup visionary. Zappos brought a theretofore unknown level of humanity to an internet business. Zappos did not discount their shoes unlike many internet sellers, and instead drove sales through free shipping and returns and amazing customer service. Zappos also had a strong corporate culture and was known to have extremely dedicated employees —something I witnessed in my interactions with several of Hsieh’s posse of assistants.
I did not think the Downtown Project was a good idea, first, because I fear and loathe Las Vegas and its iniquitous culture, and secondly, because it attempted to overlay the urban dynamics of older, geographically and culturally unique cities like New York and San Francisco onto the sprawling, scorching, readymade desert metropolis. That’s not how cities are made. Despite my aversion to his project, Hsieh seemed like a nice, albeit quiet, guy.
While never reaching Bezos or Zuckerberg wealth or influence, Hsieh was held as an unambiguous success. He was profiled countless times, and his book, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose, was a 2010 New York Times’ best seller. There were few people aspiring tech entrepreneurs looked up to more than Hsieh circa 2010.
Tony died in a fire in 2020 just before his 47th birthday. The fire followed years of mental decline, drug use, and social isolation that involved shedding real friends and colleagues for hangers-on and sycophants. Though he wrote a book about delivering happiness, I don’t think that delivery made it to his door.
I’ve known many millionaires and a handful of billionaires. Most of these folks obtained their money through a combination of opportunism, privilege, and often dishonesty. None of them got ahead by being happy or decent people. In fact, the things that make people happy and decent —generosity, low stress, good health, strong relationships —are hindrances to success, at least in the popular sense of the word. It might be time to create new definitions of success and be far more skeptical of today’s standard bearers of that moniker.
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A worthy overall point re what/how is success, with the very interesting example of Tony Hsieh. Indeed, he was revered. I didn't meet him when I visited Zappos, but the corporate culture you describe was unforgettable - my guide proudly told the story of a Customer Service rep on the phone with one customer for 9 hrs 35 mins. They epitomized the era of bullpen office seating, with Tony supposedly in one the chairs in a big long row. The annual company party was moved to a new location each year because they trashed the place. They were young, and very good at ping pong. I have no idea what it's like now.