Jack Barker: Growth. The more brilliant people we can get working here, then the faster we can get whatever's in your head out into the world. Let me tell you a story. In 1999, Google was a little startup just like we are. And when...
This reminds me of a (possibly apocryphal) story I heard about a shoe company back in the 1800s that sent a couple of their employees to a distant land for a month to scout the region and determine the market opportunity there. One of the employees came back and said, “Nobody there wears shoes! There’s no opportunity there!” The other employee came back a week later and said, “Nobody there wears shoes! There’s so much opportunity there!”Tony Hsieh[1. The Employees of Zappos and Mark Dagostino, The Power of WOW: How to Electrify Your Work and Life by Putting Service FIrst, 2019.]
Like many people in the business world, I was saddened to hear of the passing of Tony Hsieh last week. Not only did I have a lot of respect for Tony, but I was fortunate to call him a friend.
If you ever met Tony, you’d know he was definitely like the second employee in the story he recounted. Tony saw potential everywhere, not just in businesses, but also in people. Whether it was empowering Zappos employees to pursue their passion projects or listening to an artist friend around a campfire in the yard near his airstream, Tony saw possibility where others would just see half-baked ideas.