This is an extra ordinary novel written by Tony . At the beginning of the novel itself , Tony clearly mentions that this is neither an auto biography of Z
appos or his . He wrote this novel as if he is speaking to a friend . I found the narration very captivating .
Tony comes from an oriental background . Like most of the Asian parents Tony's parents took pride in showing their kid's achievements .They made him to prepare for SAT, right from the sixth grade . Tony had always been entrepreneurial from childhood , he started a personalized button making business in his childhood and it was a success . Tony finally made to Harvard. Though, Tony used to pick and attend most his classes and procrastinating many . He manages to pass out with manageable grades . Tony along with his friend room mate Sanjay joined Oracle . He did not fancy his job at oracle and resigned oracle within six months . Along with his friend Sanjay Tony for the first time venture into making a web designing company by name Link exchange . Link exchange becomes a huge success later on he lost interest in the company and sold it off to Microsoft for whopping 250 million $ . Microsoft offered a 40 million $ to Tony on stipulation that he continues in Microsoft for one year . But he could not continue in the company because he was passionate about it .
After a few months of dillydallying , Tony finally decides to start a investment fund company . He wanted to help buzzing entrepreneurs with his sources . He along with some of his friends invest in many small companies . But , very few companies gave returns Tony and his team expected . One of the firm he invested was Zappos . Fred who actually came up with the original idea of selling shoes online, which was and is the whole point of Zappos . But , world and industry was not ready for that concept . Zappos was loosing lots of money. Tony poured almost 40 million $ from his investment fund into Zappos . But , it still was not sufficient to keep his company afloat . Tony and his friends looked for external investments . Neither major investors nor any banks were not interested in investing in Zappos . Zappos started doing well but not making enough money to avoid insolvency . On the brink of insolvency , to save Zappos Tony even sold his own house to inject funds into Zappos .
Finally , looking at Zappos good track record WellsFargo decided to give credit line to Zappos . From that point of time , Zappos started doing really well . From 2003 , transformation of Zappos quickened . It transformed from an online shoe company to a customer centric company . Tony fixed an overwhelming goal of crossing the gross sales of 1billion $ by 2010 . He and his entire company worked diligently towards this goal . Tony built a very transparent culture in Zappos . All the managers heed to their employees and customers. Entire company worked passionately about one thing that is delivering happiness to its customers . Tony came up with a culture book that showed entire Zappos culture and what it meant to customers and its own employees and vendors . During 2008 recession , Zappos also got affected but trues to its core values the entire firing process was kept transparent . This had helped to keep the employees morale up even during the down time . Slowly , the entire ecosystem around eCommerce had changed and Zappos had become leader in online shoe sales . Zappos achieves its goal of crossing 1 billion $ gross sales two years ahead of its deadline . Finally , Amazon showed interest in buying Zappos . After pondering for a lot of time , Tony and his team thought it was good for future of Zappos to merge with Amazon . Zappo's is a cinderalla story but its been carefully built by passionate people . It stands true to the fact that faith can do wonders . ..!
Manoj
12/31/2013
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