They turned it down and eventually sold the company to Microsoft for $265mm. Business was booming! The two recent grads soon had an offer in front of them for $1mm.

This was a site built for profit through ad placements. Their first adventure as real business owners fizzled, but they soon founded LinkExchange. His manager congratulated him and assumed that he got a job at a startup.Ĭlick here to learn how to get your book reviewed! Soon after getting their first customer he had to quit Oracle. They named their business IMS (Internet Marketing Solutions) and it quickly absorbed all their enthusiasm. As you might imagine he quickly started a business on the side with his buddy Sanjay. He ran a couple tests and was bored all the time. He was making $40K and doing better than his peers. He cooked up a few other schemes in college as well.Īfter college Tony grabbed a job at Oracle. He selected Harvard and ended up creating a way to crowdsource notes from classes and sell them for a profit. There were many other schemes that failed, but Tony was always trying something.Īs a high IQ individual, Tony had his pick of the college litter: UCB, MIT, Stanford, etc. He began delivering newspapers, began a letter selling business, learned about computers and even worked as a programmer in high school. What really had Tony excited was making money and starting businesses.

Admitting this only for the first time in his book. Tony had no interest in musical instruments, he considered it to be a waste of time, so he recorded himself playing once for an hour and used to play the recording loud enough for his parents to hear. His Asian-‐American parents had his schedule packed though and big plans for him to become a doctor. SHOP NOW Delivering Happiness Book SummaryĮver since his childhood, Tony used to come up with many business ideas, which he actively pursued. This is the story of the trials and tribulations that Tony Hsieh went through to get Zappos from $0 to over $1b.

Zappos ceo book