In Delivering Happiness, Tony Hsieh gives a narrative on the path that he took from starting his own web consultancy to selling Zappos for 1.2 billion dollars to Amazon. He candidly talks about his time at Oracle, how he started LinkExchange, and then finally how he took all that he learned to build Zappos. On his journey to the top, Tony reflects on three critical aspects of business that he feels are the key to success: customer service, culture, and employee training and development. These three points culminate in Zappos, and that is why he believes he can deliver happiness to his customers through his company.

What really struck me when I read this book is how even when Tony achieved success by modern day standards he still was not fulfilled. He wanted to build a company that fit his ideals. He sold off LinkExchange for 265 million dollars, but the whole narrative found a 20-something year old Tony that was aloof and disinterested. LinkExchange found its beginnings with a close band of 20 friends or so that stuck together, liked each other, and lived life together.  Everyone wanted LinkExchange to succeed at all costs for the collective. However, nearing the end of the sale the company became something quite different. LinkExchange disregarded their tight-knit culture in order to hire as many people they could in order to grow. Consequently new employees had a different agenda than the original members: they wanted stock options to make money at the sale of the company, or wanted to join as a resume builder for a few years, and so on. This was completely against the close knit, caring community that Tony envisioned and took for granted at the beginning of LinkExchange. So when Tony sold off the company, it was more of a sigh of relief rather than excitement: he was so disinterested that he left money on the table by quitting LinkExchange before the contract dictated that he could leave. This is why culture is one of those critical aspects of business: the culture of a company could have more bearing on what is perceived as success than what its stock price could ever show.

-Kay