A Review of Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion & Purpose by Tony Hsieh
Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay) is the CEO of Zappos.com the largest online shoe store. Founded in 1999 Zappos.com grew rapidly and in 2008 (2years ahead of scheduled) reached a gross profit of over $1 billion. At the end of 2009 Zappos.com was acquired by Amazon in an all stock deal which was worth $1.2 billion.
Delivering Happiness tells us the story of how Tony reached this point describing his entrepreneurial ventures as a youngster (where he set up a successful badge making business, failed at selling his disappearing coin trick and managed to lose 100 earth worms which escaped through some badly placed chicken wire), how he balanced parental expectations with what he really wanted to do, to talking about the successes and failures he went through as he took on larger ventures such as founding Link Exchange which he sold to Microsoft for $265million when he was 25.
Here are my top 5 reasons why all social entrepreneurs should read this book: