Hsieh, former Zappos CEO, dies after house fire in New London
Tony Hsieh, the former CEO of online shoe store Zappos, died in Connecticut on Friday after he was injured in a New London house fire.
Hsieh, 46, retired from Las Vegasbased Zappos over the summer — but his impact continued with DTP Companies, an organization that he launched with the goal of revitalizing the urban center of Las Vegas.
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 said 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.
The responders initially transported the person to Lawrence + Memorial hospital, Curcio said, but the person was later transferred to Bridgeport Hospital in a Lifestar helicopter.
Curcio said the fire is “still an active investigation.”
According to online property records, the home at 500 Pequot Ave. was purchased in August by Rachael Brown. And according to a post on the Zappos website, a woman by the same name has worked for the company
since 2004, when Zappos had only 100 employees.
Hsieh, who lives in Las Vegas, was with his brother in Connecticut when he was caught in the fire, according to TechCrunch. When Hsieh died Friday, his family was by his side, according to Associated Press.
When Hsieh stepped down from Zappos in August, Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman called Hsieh’s work in downtown Las Vegas “energized, mesmerizing and exciting for our city,” according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
And on Friday, in a statement on the Hsieh’s death, current Zappos CEO Kedar Deshpande hailed Hsieh as “a tremendous visionary and an incredible human being.”
Hsieh had worked with Zappos for about 20 years, after joining the start-up in 1999. After spending a decade focusing on putting his employees first, Hsieh sold the company to Amazon for $1.2 billion.
Hsieh famously embarked on endeavors
that were unusual by just about any corporate standard. Beginning in 2013 or 2014, he shifted Zappos to a decentralized management system — meaning he got rid of manager positions and job titles. More than 200 of the company’s 1,500 employees took buyouts as a result of the transition.
A few years later, according to Quartz, Hsieh shifted the company away from the system, and instead
adopted another new idea — a “marketplace system,” where teams within the company operated as separate business units.
Hsieh’s novel ideas didn’t always work exactly as planned — but his innovation earned him a reputation.
Former venture investor Chris Sacca tweeted early Saturday morning that Hsieh was probably “the most original thinker I’ve ever been friends with.”
“He questioned every assumption and shared everything he learned along the way,” Sacca said in his tweet. “The earth has lost a beautifully weird and helpful person.”