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Tony Hsieh has died

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Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#251

Post by blub »

the_only_law wrote: post #245
blub wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being born somewhere and being a citizen gives you certain rights but also responsibilities. Not being loyal to your country means that you're not taking care of your responsibilities, so it would be fair that you should not enjoy the rights of citizenship. Those that dislike patriotism so much should provide the ultimate proof of their beliefs and renounce their citizenship. They shall surely be celebrated by all co…

No thanks I will continue to reap the rewards of pure chance and continue to trigger those such as yourself.

This is a bit odd that you're jumping into a discussion between two other people and you're trying to make it about yourself.

But please do carry on reaping and continuing things. :)

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#253

Post by tmsh »

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.

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#254

Post by the_only_law »

blub wrote: post #251
the_only_law wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No thanks I will continue to reap the rewards of pure chance and continue to trigger those such as yourself.

This is a bit odd that you're jumping into a discussion between two other people and you're trying to make it about yourself. But please do carry on reaping and continuing things. :)

> Those that dislike patriotism so much should provide the ultimate proof of their beliefs and renounce their citizenship.

It’s quite clear you are not referring to single individual here but instead calling out a group and [sarcastically] suggesting they take some action. If including myself in a mentioned group is “making it about myself” and odd, I’m fine with that.

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#255

Post by tomhoward »

tomhoward wrote: post #33

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 ha…

Here’s the talk:

https://youtu.be/n_qon5rAElg

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#256

Post by astura »

tyingq wrote: post #209
xoxoy wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there’s information from this article at the time of the fire: https://www.theday.com/article/20201118/NWS04/201119437 the thing that stood out to me was that it happened at 3:30 in the morning. unless he was sleeping, which it doesn’t say he was, then the time of day is certainly unusual. it also says he was trapped in the home and they had to use force to get to him, which would imply he was locked somewhere in the…

What about that article ties it to Hsieh? Other than being a recent house fire in Connecticut? It's certainly not the only one.

It is that fire - it was the only fire in New London on Nov. 18 with injuries.

https://www.courant.com/breaking-news/hc-br-tony-hsieh-zappo...

>DTP Companies spokesperson Megan Fazio said in an email that Hsieh was injured in a Nov. 18 fire in New London.

>New London Fire Chief Thomas Curcio told The Courant there was only one fire with injuries that day — at a home at 500 Pequot Ave. (Curcio declined to release the identity of the person injured in that fire.)

>Curcio told The Courant that, at about 3:30 a.m. on Nov. 18, his department received a report that a fire had trapped someone in the home. All of New London’s fire vehicles responded to the scene, Curcio said, and pulled the person out of the home

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#257

Post by benzible »

rexreed wrote: post #205
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...

And the property was only purchased a few months ago (August 2020 close date as per Redfin). In the Tech Crunch article[1] it says he was staying with his brother, so not sure if it was his or his brothers' house. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/28/tony-hsieh-iconic-las-vega... More on the Stratford fire as well: https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/man-suffers-substa... Altho I doubt it from the search of pr…

> According to publicly available property records, the home where the fire occurred was purchased in August by a woman named Rachael Brown. A woman by the same name is a longtime employee of Zappos.

per: https://www.insider.com/tony-hsieh-connecticut-fire-death-20...

Some more information about Rachael Brown (the Zappos employee) here: https://www.zappos.com/about/stories/womens-history-zappos

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#258

Post by blub »

inopinatus wrote: post #166
blub wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being born somewhere and being a citizen gives you certain rights but also responsibilities. Not being loyal to your country means that you're not taking care of your responsibilities, so it would be fair that you should not enjoy the rights of citizenship. Those that dislike patriotism so much should provide the ultimate proof of their beliefs and renounce their citizenship. They shall surely be celebrated by all co…

Ugh. That “renounce your citizenship then” jibe speaks volumes about the revulsion felt by authoritarians for nonconformists. It is bigotry 101, and repeating it labels you personally. Fortunately, I’m perfectly capable of discharging my civic responsibilities without having to believe in some animistic delusion, any more than I need a church to supply a moral compass. My loyalty belongs to people, not places, and to…

In the end nations are the quintessential form of human political organization and they rest upon the ideas of shared history, culture and patriotism. Your attempts at equating patriotism with chauvinism and aggressive nationalism don't provoke revulsion, they just cause confusion as to what could move you to assert such absurdities.

Words have clear meanings. You could save everyone some time by being precise instead of launching into pointless crusades.

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#259

Post by blub »

the_only_law wrote: post #254
blub wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit odd that you're jumping into a discussion between two other people and you're trying to make it about yourself. But please do carry on reaping and continuing things. :)

> Those that dislike patriotism so much should provide the ultimate proof of their beliefs and renounce their citizenship. It’s quite clear you are not referring to single individual here but instead calling out a group and [sarcastically] suggesting they take some action. If including myself in a mentioned group is “making it about myself” and odd, I’m fine with that.

Having positive feelings towards one's country is a pretty normal, pretty emotionally healthy thing. Their absence indicates some internal or external conflict or trauma.

Individuals which are experiencing these conflicts should not condemn patriotism in sweeping generalizations. Some countries are quite fine, in spite of a chequered past and being proud of one's country can be a nice feeling.

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#260

Post by benzible »

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.

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