This book fits better in a biography category than a business book. I was very much disappointed to learn almost nothing except two things out of it. There is an experience of Tony in the early days of Zappos with a company called eLogistics. Tony discussed all the problems he and Zappos had to go through with that
company. The whole situation emphasizes one of the fundamental strategic blunders to avoid – “Never ever outsource your core competence“.For Zappos and most, if not all of the e-retailers, warehouse management is one of the core business activities. Zappos did a mistake by outsourcing it to eLogistics and they had to suffer greatly as a result. This is an outright lesson to take from the book.

When it comes to Tony’s personal qualities there is a couple of qualities that impressed me. Those are among those qualities that I want to acquire.

1. Tony was an angel investor that supported Zappos in its early days. At the starting it was not in profits and often was on the brink of going out of business. Despite all the problems he committed to the company and hence to his faith. He is so persistent that he put in all the money he was left with after selling LinkExchange. That kind of self-confidence is something worth having a victory like Zappos.
2. Whether it is at LinkExchange in Sanjay Madan or at Zappos in Fred Mossler, he was always able to identify talented people and make them work for him (or his company). That’s something a successful leader must be good at. Organizations cannot be built on one person, no matter how smart he/she is. To build a successful company one needs to find right people and make them buy his/her vision. That’s what Tony excelled at.

Those are the two qualities I loved in Tony. Otherwise, he sounded to be a normal person with some natural interest in business. Especially a couple of things wondered me. He pretty much sounded like a normal youngster after gaining around 40 millions out of LinkExchange. He was unable to spend a full year with LinkExchange after it has become part of Microsoft.He left before the contract of 1 yr ended. That cost him around 8 million. Still he left the company and what he did after that, for the next year or so is pretty much nothing.

He lost interest in LinkExchange even before it got acquired by Microsoft. He was unable to spend more than 2 years at the company that he established himself with his own idea. Exit Strategy is one of the important decisions to be made by any Entrepreneur. He was just good at that. He took the company to 265 million worth, but I won’t see it a success big enough to keep him outstanding. If you ask me whether he could be a role model, my answer would be “No, not at this time”. I recommend this book to those reads fast and won’t spend more than a day or two to finish a 200+ page book.