First the facts: Tony Hsieh is smarter than your average guy, and willing to work hard. He had an early dot com success, made some money, and squandered most of it partying. He gave Zappos its first funding, then later became the company's CEO, and led Zappos to tremendous success before it was purchased by Amazon for over one billion dollars. This book chronicles those events.
If you know anything about Zappos, you know they have an almost insane commitment to customer satisfaction. You may not know that they have an intense corporate culture around the theme of "Delivering Happiness." This book also explores both of these topics in some detail.
However, this is NOT an in-depth analysis of how to run an internet retailer. While IT, inventory, financing, drop shipping, vendor relationships, pricing, etc. are all discussed as the story unfolds, none are covered in any detail. This book is about Tony's experiences and growth in building Zappos. He does not attempt to instruct you how to do the same.
I enjoyed the book, and learned a number of useful lessons. Tony's analogies comparing poker and businesses were somewhat of an eye opener. What particularly shocked me was how little preparation or research went into some of their most important decisions. It seems that, at least in Zappo's case, smart people with the ability to quickly change direction after recognizing a mistake can do as well or better than most companies who do deep analysis and diligence in advance.
Highly recommended insider tale of how Zappos succeeded. Just don't expect any analysis, because there isn't any.Get more detail about Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose.
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