Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh opened up in a lengthy interview appearing in Playboy today to talk about his interest in revitalizing downtown Las Vegas, the benefits of selling out to Amazon and even his sex life (duh, it’s Playboy!).
On the first point, Hsieh explains how he’s spending $350 million of his own fortune on the Downtown Project, which is trying to create an environment akin to the “TED conference meets SXSW meets Burning Man.”
On the topic of Amazon, however, he has surprisingly little to say about the big e-commerce giant gobbling up the small shoe e-tailer for $1.2 billion in stock, other than characterizing it as a “marriage has worked well for us.”
What he does like about the 5-year-old arrangement, he says, is that Amazon has kept its promise to keep Zappos independent, but isn’t so hands off that Zappos doesn’t benefit from Amazon’s massive scale.
“From our point of view it’s basically as if we swapped our previous board of directors with a new one,” he said. “Then on top of that we get access to all this free technology from Amazon.”
In terms of Hsieh’s relationship with Amazon Chief Jeff Bezos, it’s not as complicated as personal life (which Playboy’s Contributing Editor David Hochman grills him about extensively).
“I don’t know him that well,” Hsieh admits. “I probably see him randomly, I would guess, once a year for less than five minutes.”
In terms of Hsieh’s personal life, the Playboy interview does attempt to get to know him outside of the boardroom, asking for his opinion on monogamy, taking ecstasy and seducing girls. But despite Hsieh’s reputation for going to raves and throwing frequent parties, he comes off as a shy entrepreneur who is really good at dodging those types of questions.
