Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh Presents on “The Path to a Billion”

Tony Hsieh, the 34 year old CEO of Zappos is giving a talk at the Underground web marketing seminar in Los Angeles. He sold LinkExchange to Microsoft for $265 million in 1998.

His speech is titled The Path to $1 Billion as they are on track to hit $1B in sales this year as a private company that started in 1999, did $8.6 million in 2000 and $32 million in 2001. They have 1,600 employees today and a 500 person call center.

Tony is emphasizing the importance of ‘above and beyond’ great customer service more or less regardless of cost. 75% of his orders are from repeat customers. He talks of ’surprise upgrades.’

Tony shared that they orient new team members with 4 weeks of customer loyalty training at their headquarters in Las Vegas plus week in Kentucky for warehouse training for every single employee. He tells the story of when a customer ordered pizza from their customer service line at 3am and the customer rep found the nearest pizza places in Santa Monica that were still open.

He encourages entrepreneurs to train great people if you want the company to scale as ‘you can’t do everything yourself.’ He provides a culture book to their team members each year. Every single team member writes a couple employee on what the culture means to them.

Their core company values are:

1. Deliver WOW through service
2. Embrace and drive change
3. Create fun and little weirdness
4. Be adventurous, creative, and open-minded
5. Pursue growth and learning
6. Build open and honest relationships with communication
7. Build a positive team and family spirit
8. Do more with less
9. Be passionate and determined
10. Be humble

I am wondering what their customer acquisition cost and customer lifetime value is and what their monthly CPM and CPC spend is and what networks they use to acquire customers via CPA.

Two More Interviews on Entrepreneurship

Here are two more recent podcast/radio interviews on entrepreneurship done by Dr. Alvin Jones and Start-Up Spark. Enjoy!

Dr. Alvin Jones Radio Interview with Ryan Allis - (9min 17sec, WMA file) - A March 26, 2008 radio interview on WCBQ-AM 1340 and WHNC-AM 890 with Dr. Alvin Jones from the Paradise Radio Network about:

• Starting in business
• Going to UNC
• Being the son of a priest
• What iContact does
• The quote about taking action by Scottish Mountaineer W.H. Murray
• Setting big goals
• Understanding the entrepreneurial system
• Evaluating business ideas
• The three questions to ask prospective buyers
• Accessing the world of equity capital

Start-up Spark Interview with Ryan Allis (17 min 38 sec) - A discussion with Shannon Cherry from Start-up Spark about:

• Growing up in Florida
• Advantages/disadvantages of young entrepreneurs
• The MAR system
• Bootstrapping and living in the office
• Doing whatever it takes to keep expenses low
• How we hired our first employee
• Using equity initially to reduce cash burn
• The importance of systems and building a team when scaling
• How to avoid creating a job for yourself
• Why hiring people smarter than you is critical
• The definition of an entrepreneur
• Figuring out the purpose of your life
• What will motivate you to get through the hard times
• The mission of The Humanity Campaign

Podcast Interviews on Entrepreneurship

Here are two recent podcast interviews on entrepreneurship done by Written Voices and Daxle. Enjoy!

Written Voices Podcast Interview With Ryan Allis (17min 38 sec) - A discussion with Allan Hunkin from Written Voices about:

• Building a team
• My personal motivation
• The importance of finding mentors
• An overview of Zero to One Million including opportunity evaluation, raising capital, marketing and creating sales, giving back, and setting goals
• Finding your core motivation
• Focusing on providing a great product
• Social responsibility
• The Entitlement Generation vs. The Enlightenment Generation
• The Enlightened Entrepreneur
• Finding Your BHALG - Your Big Hairy Audacious Lifetime Goal

Daxle Interview with Ryan Allis (17 min 02 sec) - A discussion with Brian Oates from Daxle about:

• The entrepreneurial itch
• Finding a partner
• Evaluating entrepreneurial opportunities
• Ensuring demand for your business idea
• The value of teamwork
• How internet sales are different from door-to-door sales
• Generating leads from the web
• Bootstrapping and doing what it takes to keep expenses low

What We Did in Berlin Today

Today in Berlin we met up at 3pm for a walking tour of the city, then ended up at 5pm at the British Council office at Alexanderplatz 1 in East Berlin next to the Fernsehturm television tower that was a major symbol of the GDR in the communist era.

We began at 5:30 with a brilliantly led introduction and ‘The Great Transatlantic Debate.’ We lined up in order of height, grouped into teams of 5, and then separated into planning rooms.

Each of the six teams (we were team 3) had a provided thesis they had to prepare to prove in the upcoming debate. Our team was tasked to prove that ‘the relationship between America and the E.U is strong and getting stronger.’

In our five minutes, Peter Macleod from Canada played the American husband and Angela Brunete from Spain played the European wife. Peter allegorically referred to the EU/US relationship as a marriage in which there were ups and downs but at the end of the day we would always be together. Angela accused Peter of cheating on her with India, and Peter accused Angela of cheating on him with China. But they reconciled as Rabah Ghezali from France shared the cultural and historical ties including the core values of liberal democracies and the Marshall Plan, Dragos Pislaru from Romania shared the strategic and military ties including our recent learnings of what can happen when we don’t truly work together in global conflict, and I shared the economic ties including trade and FDI growth. Team Four proceeded to present the other side of the argument for five minutes, followed by a one minute rebuttal.

Following the debates, we discussed issues including the identity challenge, citizen media, technology and mobility, E.U. enlargement, the relative stasis of the U.S., whether there were 4, 5, or 7 continents in the world (Europeans learn 5), red blue and purple America, the Stockholm consensus, lateral relationships between the U.S. and Eurozone countries, whether the West or East would most define the 21st century, demography, and our shared history.

After the group discussion we held a reception and dinner and followed on with about three hours of networking in the lounge of the British Council’s office. Around 10, Jeff Johnson and I worked to persuade the group to go to ‘Weekend‘ the dance club across the street in the Sharp Aquos building until we found out that GMF was not name of the Sunday night DJ but rather meant that Sunday night was Gay Night–so we headed to Bar Wave at the Novotel instead.

We’re all building some tremendously valuable connections that will help our businesses, non-profits, and public service organizations for many decades to come while broadening our understanding of global challenges and global entrepreneurial opportunites.

I’m off to get back to work on my Sunday night email catchup.

Breakdancing in Denver With The Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour

Last Thursday afternoon in Denver at Metro State College we decided to break it down in the quad in front of the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour Bus with Doug Fath, Arel Moodie, Sheena Lindahl, and Michael Simmons. After falling underneath Carla the Metro State professor we recover and finish with the avante garde high-five of our generation–the ‘pound explosion.’ Can’t I get a Ye-Ah?

Soundtrack: Crush by Paramore

Building Bridges Across the Atlantic

What’s up, what’s up. It’s Sunday at 3:34am but I feel like I’m still on EST. I’m over in Berlin this weekend doing some analysis of the usage of email marketing in German small businesses and attending a pretty cool conference put together by the a group called the British Council.

They’re calling it Transatlantic Network 2020. They’re basically bringing together 100 people from N. America and Europe for each of the next 12 years until 2020 to build relationships among future world leaders from the NATO countries between 23 and 36 years old. 2008 is the first year of the program.

The attendees are off the heazy. The 15 or so U.S./Canandian participants got together tonight at 6 in the hotel bar and then we headed off for dinner at a biergarten and had the traditional bratwurst, sauerkraut, and potatoes.

I met some mad smart people tonight–including social activist Jeff Johnson from BET, Washington Post “How the World Sees America” blogger Amar Bakshi, NASA public affairs specialist Stephanie Schierholz, Bethan Jenkins, a 26 year old Welsh Parliament member, and David Kirby from America’s Future Foundation and KSG at Harvard where’d I’d love to be at in a few years.

It’s wonderful to have a dinner in which we can get wide-ranging perspectives on topics like ice cap melting, microfinance, U.S. space program research, asteroid path projections, bilateral aid inefficiency, fuel cell physics, U.S. rural poverty, nationalism vs. internationalism, global health, genocide, the role of colonialism and Nation-State border creation in global poverty, Barack Obama’s triangulation of internationalism, government efficiency, and social liberalism, and the degenerative devolution of hip hop since Dr. Dre’s Chronic album in 1992.

I can’t wait until the outlook and ideas of the participants from Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, France, Scotland, Portugal, Poland, Spain, Romania, The Netherlands, N. Ireland, England, and Turkey are added tomorrow.

The other cool thing that keeps happening is that I keep running into iContact customers wherever I go. I ran into three our four while speaking at Metro State College in Denver on Thursday and here at the conference David Kirby from America’s Future Foundation uses iContact to send newsletters to the supporters of his non-profit. Word is spreading.

We just got back from a dance club called Tresor in a former communist-era power plant in East Berlin that seemed to just be getting started at 3am when we left. Man it’s harder to dance to techno than hip-hop, especially with the unvarying/long beats of underground Berlin trance.

Tomorrow afternoon we’ll be meeting the European participants and doing a guided walking tour of the city. The main conference runs from Mon-Wed.

If you are interested in being considered for the Dublin Transatlantic 2020 Conference in September check out their site and contact Jacqui Allan.

From their site:

ABOUT THE PROGRAM
Transatlantic Network 2020 (TN2020) seeks to create sustainable, multilateral networks that span the Atlantic by engaging future leaders from North America, the UK, and the rest of Europe to collaboratively address global issues. Building on the history and shared values of the transatlantic relationship, the program aims to foster long-term relationships among future leaders and to incite grassroots action on important global issues. It is designed to run until 2020.

WHY FOCUS ON THE TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONSHIP?

North America and Europe share a common set of interests – in the advancement of fundamental rights and liberties, education, science and technology. Reports indicate that North America and Europe need to strengthen the transatlantic relationship and work together more closely to best tackle global issues like climate change, immigration, and security. TN2020 will foster collaboration between the next generation of North American and European leader

HOW WILL THE PROGRAM WORK?

TN2020 will feature initiatives that give a voice to the next generation of leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, encouraging them to work together to explore common solutions to current and future global issues.

Eve Carson: A Wonderful Woman Who Will Be Missed

It’s a beautiful, yet sad day in Chapel Hill. Eve Carson’s passing is truly a tragedy. She was a wonderful and brilliant woman. You’ve probably heard, but if not, she was shot and killed yesterday in the early morning in what seems like a random carjacking, something so rare in Chapel Hill.

I had a chance to meet Eve a few times when she was co-chair of Nourish International a couple years ago and on February 8th at a Carolina for Kibera event. It’s really a tragedy when someone who does everything right in life gets taken from us so abruptly and for seemingly no reason whatsoever.

I just got back from Chancellor Moeser’s speech at Polk Place at UNC. There were about 10,000 people there, helicopters overhead, and about 20 news cameras from all the major stations. Mayor Kevin Foy, Chief of Police Brian Curran, and Chamber of Commerce President Aaron Nelson were all standing together. Thousands and thousands of students, faculty, staff, community members, pastors, business leaders–it seemed like the whole town was there.

The Chancellor’s speech (one of his last as Chancellor) was absolutely uplifting. He spoke about the Carolina community, and how as a university and town we should come together in the spirit of true love to continue the work that Eve began. He encouraged us to hug one another, and held a moment of silence followed by the belltower playing ‘Hark the Sound of Tar Heel Voices’.

The Chancellor then directed the students who had been given flowers to place them within the makeshift memorial, fittingly right behind the Campus Y, the center for Social Justice on campus. There will be a candlelight vigil at 7pm in the Pit. The Facebook Group is here.

Eve, you will be missed, and your memory and work will live on.

From Bio on UNC Website: Eve Marie Carson, 22, was elected student body president at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in February 2007. Her term would have ended in April.

A native of Athens, Ga., Eve was born Nov. 19, 1985. She came to Carolina in the fall of 2004 as the recipient of a prestigious Morehead Scholarship.

A member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society, she was a pre-medicine student majoring in both political science and biology. As a North Carolina Fellow, she was part of a four-year leadership development program for undergraduates.

While at UNC-Chapel Hill, she was extremely active in both leadership and service roles. As student body president, she was also a member of the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees.

She served as co-president of the Honors Program Student Executive Board and as a member of the Committee on Scholarships, Awards and Student Aide; the Academic Advising Program; and the Chancellor