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Tony Hsieh has died

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Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#191

Post by bmmayer1 »

nate wrote: post #169

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 b…

I was on this tour as well (Nate -- that's where we met!) and really enjoyed it. He was so busy with his company and his development project, but he still seemed to have infinite time for us scrappy entrepreneurs. We had a tour of downtown LV and his apartment, lunch and dinner with Tony and we got a deep dive into a lot of his visionary ideas, even ones that didn't really make sense to me (I fondly remember a brief argument I had with him about the merits of holacracy vs traditional company hierarchies). You have to admire someone who can think out of the box all of the time. Some of his ideas didn't work, but he was always willing to experiment, and the ideas that did work will have a lasting impact. I learned so much from Tony in that short time about urban development, real estate, customer happiness, the entrepreneurial spirit, and even the finer details of Nevada gaming licenses.

Thank you, Tony. You are a real loss to the world. RIP.

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#192

Post by airstrike »

rmk wrote: post #43
hauget wrote: post #21

46. RIP. "Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day. … The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.” - Seneca

How does one accomplish a semblance of this? Has someone tried and written down what worked (or did not work)? I'd love to read up more on this.

One approach is to live every day as if you would live it forever again until eternity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return#Friedrich_Nietz...

The concept of "eternal recurrence"––"the idea that all events in the world repeat themselves in the same sequence through an eternal series of cycles"––is central to the mature writings of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Nietzsche calls the idea "horrifying and paralyzing", [citation needed] referring to it as a burden of the "heaviest weight" ("das schwerste Gewicht") imaginable. He professes that the wish for the eternal return of all events would mark the ultimate affirmation of life:

> What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' [The Gay Science, §341]

To comprehend eternal recurrence in his thought, and to not merely come to peace with it but to embrace it, requires amor fati, "love of fate":

> My formula for human greatness is amor fati: that one wants to have nothing different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely to bear the necessary, still less to conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness before the necessary—but to love it.

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#193

Post by ceilingcorner »

inopinatus wrote: post #144
ceilingcorner wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing the Pledge of Allegiance to North Korean indoctrination is exactly the sort of absurd nonsense that I'm talking about. It's a basic tradition that helps instill patriotism, which from a purely practical point of view, is almost a political necessity in a country as diverse as America. Criticizing one's own country, which is probably one of the most American things one can do, is absolutely not possible in N…

Joe McCarthy says Hi. Did you forget about the horrifying legacy of both literal and figurative witch trials? How about the US only very recently abandoning the idea that one person could own another? The idea that patriotism is a necessity makes me nauseous, particularly given the ghastly scars of full-on repression and brutality the US wears on its face for anyone with the temerity to speak the wrong opinion. Frank…

I'm sorry, but if you reply in such a hostile manner, I really have no interest in a discussion. You don't seem open to actually discussing anything and would rather pontificate for upvotes.

My suggestion: read more history books and learn to appreciate the sacrifices that your forebears made so that you have the privilege of having your current opinion. A lot of people died for you to to be able to have the freedom to write unappreciative, snarky comments on the Internet. America certainly isn't perfect, but even a cursory reading of history will show you that the alternatives were far, far, worse. Unless you think Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or the Confederate States would have been better moral leaders?

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#195

Post by wyldfire »

Seems short on details, so I was curious. These articles [1,2,3] may be referring to the fire in question. And this [4] seems to be the property.

[1] https://www.theday.com/article/20201118/NWS04/201119437

[2] https://www.fox61.com/article/news/local/new-london-house-fi...

[3] https://www.wfsb.com/news/crews-rescue-person-from-burning-n...

[4] https://www.compass.com/listing/500-pequot-avenue-new-london...

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#196

Post by jliptzin »

KineticLensman wrote: post #119
nostromo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Live each day like it’s your last.” “Live like you’ll never die.” The more I think about these two sentiments, the more I think the more popular one is bad advice, and the less popular one is good advice.

"Live like you’ll never die" can be a reason to put things off because you'll do them in the future. And then the world changes and possible paths are suddenly closed to you. Anecdata: my father died relatively young in his 50s after a decade of ill health that had forced him to give up some of the things that he loved, like sailing. This made a very big impression on me (I was in my mid-20s), specifically that you o…

Good luck!

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#197

Post by malshe »

adi2907 wrote: post #34

Really sad , I remember when I was setting up Myntra (Indian zappos) customer experience department, Tony and his book were a huge influence and everything that we did was measured up with the zappos way of customer experience. We were one of the few large companies having in house call centre with a five day week and training period of one month to all customer cate executives, plus a mandatory call listening sessio…

I don’t find it surprising given that NPS is a terrible metric. Check out this article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1509/jmkg.71.3.039

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#198

Post by xwdv »

wyldfire wrote: post #195

Seems short on details, so I was curious. These articles [1,2,3] may be referring to the fire in question. And this [4] seems to be the property. [1] https://www.theday.com/article/20201118/NWS04/201119437 [2] https://www.fox61.com/article/news/local/new-london-house-fi... [3] https://www.wfsb.com/news/crews-rescue-person-from-burning-n... [4] https://www.compass.com/listing/500-pequot-avenue-new-london...

I've never been in a raging fire, but the property seems to be very open and spacious with no obvious choke points, how does one end up so trapped, and without realizing a fire is breaking out?

My guess is he passed out from the smoke inhalation first while asleep and was burned.

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#199

Post by morley »

nate wrote: post #169

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 b…

The think that stucks out to me about trying idea after idea is how many of them are abject failures. If you get a run of bad beats, it can seem like you're just headed in the wrong direction, even if on average you'd make winning ideas. Having the fortitude to make a bunch of smart bets AND to not be results-oriented if they don't break your way is such a strong, difficult-to-identify skill.

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#200

Post by mongodbhater »

marcusziade wrote: post #142
marcbarbosa wrote: post #104

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 wo…

Beautiful words. Thanks for sharing.

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