{"id":347,"date":"2010-06-21T21:16:29","date_gmt":"2010-06-22T04:16:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/?p=347"},"modified":"2010-06-21T21:16:29","modified_gmt":"2010-06-22T04:16:29","slug":"tony-hsieh-at-the-commonwealth-club-overview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2010\/06\/21\/tony-hsieh-at-the-commonwealth-club-overview\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Hsieh at the Commonwealth Club – Overview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Thursday, Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos.com<\/a>, spoke about the evolution behind the culture at Zappos at the\u00c2\u00a0Commonwealth Club<\/a> in downtown San Francisco.<\/p>\n

Some quick background on Zappos.com, and then I’ll dive right into my thoughts on the evening. There was a lot of <\/em>uproar<\/em><\/a> when Zappos sold themselves to Amazon over whether they wanted to sell or were forced to sell by their investors. It ultimately was published in an <\/em>Inc. article<\/em><\/a> that the executive team of Zappos was trying to maintain their culture, and found that the best way to do it was to sell Amazon who allowed them to maintain their raison d’\u00c3\u00aatre.<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ve heard Tony Hsieh speak on video, and so the canned stories about starting a pizza business, selling LinkExchange because the culture crashed and folks asking Zappos to run the IRA\u00c2\u00a0that he started the evening with felt a bit clich\u00c3\u00a9. I understand why he has his go to stories, and the value that they bring to the conversation, but… <\/em>oh well.<\/p>\n

I thought the format was superb. Softball questions asked by the Wall Street Journal’s Jeffery Fowler. That isn’t meant as an insult as much as it allowed Tony Hsieh to just go with it, and speak. Fowler didn’t interfere, and the jabs he threw into the conversation were really witty and often very funny. I thought he did a great job personally.<\/p>\n

Some of the bigger highlights included:<\/p>\n