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.