When the business icon died in a fire last week, questions abounded. The answers seem rooted in a Covid-period spiral, where he turned to drugs and shunned old friends. In August, shortly after Tony Hsieh, the legendary entrepreneur behind Zappos, moved to Park City, Utah, he eagerly awaited a visitor: the singer Jewel. The longtime friends originally met the way fellow rock stars should, on Richard Branson’s Necker Island, and Hsieh, who had been buying up properties around the mountain town, was planning to spend the next week showing her around. Soon after arriving, Jewel played a private acoustic set for around 50 residents of the community Hsieh was building there—a reprise of sorts of the city-within-a-city of artists and entrepreneurs that Hsieh had famously created in downtown Las Vegas. It should have been a magical moment, according to a person who was there, with the Grammy nominee seated in front of a fireplace and views of the Wasatch Mountains framing the performance. “He fostered so much human connection and happiness, yet there was this void. It was difficult for him to be alone.” But within a day, Jewel abruptly left. Shortly after, the singer sent Hsieh a letter via FedEx, since he had forsworn email and texts as part of a digital cleanse. “I am going to be blunt,” she wrote in the letter, the content of which was shared with Forbes. “I need to tell you that I don’t think you are well and in your right mind…. Click below to read the full story from Forbes
Read More
Tony Hsieh’s American Tragedy: The Self-Destructive Last Months Of The Zappos Visionary
