A readable, sobering study of entrepreneurial brilliance laid low.
A somber rags-to-riches, genius-to-madness story.
Tony Hsieh (1973-2020), the founder of Zappos, was a born capitalist, making $200 per month in middle school with a machine that made pin-on badges. A natural introvert, he was committed to overcoming isolation and prejudice, emerging before his Harvard classmates as “a young man who was full of adventure and curiosity and was destined for greater things.” Some classmates stayed with him as he launched his first tech firm, a complicated brokerage for internet advertising that was successful enough that he was able to sell it to Microsoft for $265 million. He might have walked away and spent the rest of his life enjoying the wealth. However, as Wall Street Journal reporter Au-Yeung and Forbes investigative reporter Jeans write, Hsieh wanted to do something more, sinking most of his fortune into an endeavor based on the premise that, given the opportunity and the option of easy returns, customers would buy shoes online without trying them on for size. That led to Zappos, “first a customer service-oriented company, a shoe seller second—an ethos its new values set in stone.” After Amazon came calling, buying the company for $1.2 billion in 2009, Hsieh spun off into an effort to remake downtown Las Vegas into a business incubator while falling into a cycle of drug and alcohol abuse, shedding old friends and surrounding himself with people who were content to watch his self-destruction as long as they got a piece of the action. Said Hsieh to one old friend who tried to caution him, “If you don’t question me again, I’ll give you half my net worth.” The story has an inevitably tragic end, though the authors offset the self-doomed, mentally ill Hsieh’s downward spiral with his generosity and well-intentioned efforts to do well by doing good.
A readable, sobering study of entrepreneurial brilliance laid low.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9781250829092
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
A rags-to-riches how-to as entertaining as it is wise.
In this debut memoir, Bahamian millionaire Bastian offers insight into building a business.
The author was a millionaire by the time he was 19, an impressive feat considering he began his working life filling stockpots and rolling napkins in his father’s Nassau restaurant, a locals’ hole-in-the-wall far from the city’s tourist hotels. “In many ways, I started ten steps behind the starting line in a world where opportunities felt few and far between,” writes Bastian in his introduction. A poor student with a gambler’s risk tolerance and a salesman’s eye for an unserved market, the author dropped out of college to launch his own satellite installation business—the first of its kind in the Bahamas—eventually expanding into prepaid phones and other electronics. With this book, Bastian uses his personal experiences to illustrate the steps aspiring entrepreneurs should consider when building their own empires. “My goal isn’t just to tell my story,” he explains; “it’s to provide you with a starting point, a strategy, and the encouragement you need to take your first step toward something bigger.” The book alternates between memoiristic chapters describing the author’s youth and career and instructional chapters outlining the best practices to “become a lion” (his preferred metaphor for a brave, risk-taking captain of industry). From evaluating one’s skill set and choosing a suitable goal to the practicalities of regulation and taxes, Bastian walks the reader through the complicated processes of starting and maintaining a successful enterprise. While much of the advice is of the boilerplate variety, the author offers it with clarity and candor, devoting an entire chapter, for example, on how to fail productively. It is the biographical material that lends his advice unusual weight—Bastian’s stories of flying back and forth between the Bahamas and Miami to personally import satellite dishes are fascinating enough to stand on their own. Readers may be unable to replicate his success, but there is no denying that his tale is inspiring.
A rags-to-riches how-to as entertaining as it is wise.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9798891882485
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Advantage Media Group
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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