By Samantha Bandasack

Tony Hsieh is an Asian-American, of Taiwanese decent, who was born on December 12, 1973. Growing up the eldest of three boys in California’s BayArea, he attended the prestigious Branson School in Marin County. Like his career now, Hsieh was able to make the make the grades, but still know how to have fun. After high school, Tony attended and graduated from Harvard, where met Alfred Lin, who would become his business partners.

After graduation Hsieh went to work for Oracle and five months later found he was not a fit for the corporate world. Soon after leaving Oracle, he founded LinkExchange, which was a popular internet advertising cooperative. By 1997 the company had received $3 million in funding from Sequoia Capital. The company was growing at a rapid rate and in 1998 Microsoft bought it from Hsieh and his partners for $265 million dollars. Read the rest of this entry »