“He’s going to die,” Jewel said.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the famous folk singer was unable to see her friend Tony Shay, an Internet innovator and CEO of Zappos.com, who sought to transform corporate America with a spirit of joy for several months. When she finally visited him in August 2020, the scene at his luxurious complex in Park City, Utah terrified her.
The floors of the house were covered with empty canisters of nitrous oxide, a mind-altering gas that Xie, 46, constantly inhaled. His emaciated body trembled with excitement as he chattered about plans to found a new country and bring peace to the world.
The sink and shower faucets were running day and night causing the waterfall to roar. Dog droppings lay wherever Hsi’s precious terrier, Blizzy, left them — they were “parts of nature,” the tech guru said.
Fascinated by the fire, Hsi lit hundreds of candles throughout the house as the fireplace in his bedroom blazed open. The dozens of paid hangers-on who lived with him in the mansion he called “The Ranch” seemed oblivious to their bizarre surroundings.
Xie, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, was the founder of Zappos. Danny Moloshok.
Jewell, who ran a nonprofit mental health organization after the rise of pop music in the 1990s, could see that Xie needed help. But he brushed aside her attempts to discuss his unstable mental state.
“If he kills himself and everyone else in a big fire,” she said as she left, “you can’t say you weren’t warned.”
Three months later, Xie was dead, suffocated by a fire he lit in a locked barn, a coronavirus victim that would never be counted on the official list of pandemic victims.
“He was an absolutely direct victim of COVID,” author Kirsten Grind told The Post. “When the world shut down in March 2020, it robbed him of his entire purpose in life: to be among the people.”
She’s friend Jewel, a singer, was shocked at his living conditions before he died. Here she is speaking at his eulogy.YouTube/Jewel
In Happy at Any Cost (Simon & Schuster), out Tuesday, Grind and co-author Kathryn Sayre, colleagues at the Wall Street Journal, tell the devastating story of a genius man whose hidden mental illness condemns him to prison. Peace.
Xie, the son of Taiwanese immigrants who raised him in Marin County, California, was the founder of Zappos. The online shoe company valued the happiness of its employees and was fueled by extravagant parties and a love of “weirdness”. Xie asked potential employees, “How weird are you on a scale of 1 to 10?”
“The number one priority for us as a company is corporate culture,” he said in 2010. He believed that joy in the workplace would first create business success and then heal the world’s ills.
The first part really worked. Happy Zappos employees have sold millions of shoes, and Hsieh made an estimated $840 million by selling Amazon in 2009. He remained the CEO of Zappos.
Xie’s philosophy was fueled by the rave culture.
Xie’s philosophy has been fueled by rave culture and the annual Burning Man festival, where thousands of techies and artists gather for a shared week of wild expression. He reveled in the power of what he called the “hive switch,” the emotional charge he felt when he was part of a large crowd.
“When you experience it, it’s pure awe,” Xie said in 2014.
He spent $350 million buying a run-down part of Las Vegas and turning it into a permanent Burning Man community. His whimsical life there, in the Airstream trailer park, among a loyal team of creatives, a steady stream of visitors, and a pet alpaca named Marley made headlines.
Happy Zappos employees have sold millions of shoes, and Xie made an estimated $840 million when the company was sold to Amazon in 2009. Xie remained CEO.
But behind the holiday façade, Hsieh hid untreated mental health issues, including social anxiety, depression and what he considered a form of autism spectrum disorder.
“He was so controversial,” Grind said. “With so much social anxiety, you would think he would avoid group situations. But instead, Tony got joy from them.
“He drew on other people’s energy like a drug.”
According to Happy At Any Cost, Hsih suffered from untreated mental health issues, including social anxiety, depression, and what he considered a form of autism spectrum disorder. Bloomberg
Xie never sought professional therapy, but self-medicated, initially with alcohol. At Zappos, “It wouldn’t be weird if the CEO took a picture in the middle of the day or in a meeting,” Grind and Sayre write, or if his employees were invited to do the same.
“I need a drink,” Xie once said to his girlfriend. “This is the only way I can live now. It’s the only way to get me out of my head.”
By early 2020, his heavy use of the hallucinogen ketamine had worried close friends. Xie went delirious, talking with manic intensity about ketamine’s ability to save humanity from the Matrix-like simulation that controlled the world.
Xie’s sprawling estate in Utah became his refuge during the pandemic as he invited others to stay with him.
In February of that year, She agreed to a short stay at a rehab facility in Park City, where he had a small vacation home that he used during the Sundance Film Festival each year.
“He acted promiscuously and he was the CEO of Zappos,” Grind said. “He had to be very strongly convinced that his behavior could reflect badly on the company. But he didn’t think he needed rehab.”
Two weeks later, he showed up drug-free and eager to start a plan to build a chain of car rentals in Park City. He settled there temporarily to buy houses.
Then the pandemic hit. The communal lifestyle of his city trailer park was shattered when restrictions and stay-at-home orders went into effect.
“Initially, you saw him rise to the occasion,” Grind said. Shay led Zappos’ response to COVID-19 from Utah, overseeing the smooth transition of its Las Vegas employees to remote work.
Shay poses with his autobiography Delivering Happiness. Bloomberg
But within weeks, “things just fell apart,” she added. “By the end of March, he was basically calling everyone he had ever met – and he had hundreds of acquaintances – and basically saying, ‘Damn COVID, we’re just going to bring people here.
Xie paid almost $16 million to buy a mountain complex where he could create a utopian COVID-free community with his growing surroundings. The main house with nine bedrooms and 13 baths was located on 18 acres of land with a private beach on the lake. The deal included a million dollar temptation for the owners to move out immediately.
Hsih soon offered to double the salary of anyone who agreed to join his group in Park City. The deal attracted a bunch of lackeys who were busy concocting reckless business schemes, such as launching balloons from the ranch’s backyard, generously financed by the crazy Xie.
“These people just didn’t have the incentive to help him get well,” Grind said.
Shay was living at ex-girlfriend Rachel Brown’s home in Connecticut when he barricaded himself in an attached barn (to the right of the house) where a mysterious fire led to his death. AP
And the small group couldn’t satisfy Sei’s need to interact with dozens of different people every day. He soon swapped doses of nitrous oxide — also known as the whippet and used by dentists as an anesthetic and by chefs to make whipped cream — to achieve the high he once got from human contact. He was inhaling 50 canisters a day when Jewel saw him in August.
By then, Amazon had quietly lost patience with its wayward superstar. Grind and Sayers report that Hsi’s inconsistency in a June phone call with Jeff Wilk, the Amazon executive who oversaw Zappos, caused alarm at the parent company.
“Wilke didn’t put him on official leave,” Grind said. – He just said, in general, get together, come back, and then we’ll figure it out. And Tony just couldn’t come back.”
Firefighters at the scene of the house fire that killed Xie. Twitter
In late August, the Las Vegas Review-Journal ran a short note: “Zappos CEO Tony Shay, Las Vegas Downtown Champion, Retires.” The party-loving founder didn’t get a farewell speech or even an official announcement that he was leaving the company he created.
“The Amazon didn’t quite kick him out,” Grind said, “but they forced him.”
That fall, Shay took his entourage on a frenzied journey from Utah to Alaska, Puerto Rico, and Connecticut, where they stayed at the waterfront home of Rachel Brown, a former friend who lived on a ranch.
As the group prepared to head to Hawaii for the next leg of their journey, Xe Blizzy, an elderly dog half blind and ill, had to be euthanized. The animal was buried in Brown’s backyard.
“Tony was depressed,” write Grind and Sayre. “He believed he had lost his only real partner.”
She’s death was later ruled an accident. STEVE MARCUS
Three days after Blizzy’s death, Hsieh locked himself in a small shed filled with pool equipment and folding chairs, steps from a dog grave. He lit a candle and lit the propane heater, inhaling the nitrous oxide. The staff checked on him every few minutes, bringing pizza, water, and more hounds.
Brown’s backyard security system recorded the moment at 3:15 a.m. Xie took one last look at the outside world. Wisps of smoke escaped as he opened the door. He closed himself in the smoldering flame again.
He was unconscious but not badly burned when the New London Fire Department burst through the door 15 minutes later. But the smoke he inhaled caused catastrophic brain damage.
Hsi still didn’t wake up. He died at a nearby hospital on 27 November. The cause of death was ruled an accident.
A few days later, Jewel posted a touching tribute to him on Instagram. She remembered their conversation about the meaning of success.
“His answer was: willingness to lose everything,” she said through tears. “That’s what it really takes – you have to put your whole heart into something that you believe in.”
Looking into the camera, she sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.
“Tony, be over the bluebird rainbow,” she said. And your worries are far behind you.