Zappos CEO worked to bolster Las Vegas

Tony Hsieh, the technology entrepreneur and venture capitalist who built Zappos into a $1 billion internet shoes and clothing powerhouse, died Friday. He was 46.

The cause was injuries suffered in a house fire Nov. 18 in New London, Conn., according to Megan Fazio, a spokesperson for the Downtown Project in Las Vegas, a revitalization effort that Hsieh oversaw.

Hsieh (pronounced shay) was apparently visiting family at the time. His death was confirmed by Zappos in a statement from the company’s chief executive, Kedar Deshpande. Further details were not immediately available. Hsieh stepped down as chief executive in August after 21 years with the company, which began selling shoes online in 1999.

Having sold his first company, LinkExchange, an online advertising network, to Microsoft in 1998 for $265 million, Hsieh became a venture capitalist and invested in a San Francisco retail shoe startup, then called ShoeSite.com. He quickly took over as CEO and focused his efforts on building the company into an internet giant.

In the nascent period of internet commerce, Hsieh was a visionary who realized that getting customers to feel comfortable and secure buying online was the key to success and growth. To do that, employees in the call center had to engage customers as if speaking to an old friend, with authenticsounding welcoming banter.

Hsieh surprised the Silicon Valley world by moving the company from San Francisco to a suburb of Las Vegas, where he built a culture of “fun and a little weirdness” that resulted in skyrocketing growth. From $1.6 million in sales in 2000, Zappos surpassed $1 billion in revenues by 2009. In July 2009, Hsieh sold the company for $1.2 billion to Amazon.

Hsieh, a softspoken and introspective executive, developed a philosophy of business built around the idea that happy employees were the conduit to satisfied customers who would return again and again.

During his tenure at Zappos, Hsieh launched the Downtown Project, aimed at revitalizing the onceneglected section of Las Vegas and turning it into a vibrant area. The effort grew beyond Hsieh’s original concept, and the area has attracted thousands of technology workers and entrepreneurs.

Hsieh was born Dec, 12, 1973, in Illinois to Richard and Judy Hsieh, who were immigrants from Taiwan. He grew up in the Bay Area, graduated from Harvard, and after a short stint at Oracle Corp., he cofounded LinkExchange.