Hsieh touts Downtown Project’s successes, talks about Zappos reorganization

Gautham Thomas, Special to the Sun

Tuesday, May 5, 2015 | 11:41 a.m.

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh touted the success of his Downtown Project in resurrecting Las Vegas' urban core during an appearance today at the Collision technology conference.

"A couple years ago, I would have felt unsafe standing where Container Park is now," Hsieh told conference creator Paddy Cosgrave on Collision's Center Stage. "Now, it's super family friendly."

The Downtown Project has invested in more than 50 small businesses and remade downtown Las Vegas, Hsieh said. The results aligned with Hsieh's vision of downtown as local-focused. Hsieh said the Vegas Tech Fund, which he's not directly involved with, has helped launch more than 100 startup companies over the last two years.

As he recapped the project's success for visitors from around the world, Hsieh didn't address the project's layoffs last September, or his rumored intention to cease funding the project. It's still an open question whether the Downtown Project can continue to drive a surge in local-focused business in the downtown area.

But Hsieh's collaboration with Cosgrave is what brought Collision, now in its second year, to downtown Las Vegas. Hsieh said the idea of collisions — inspiring unplanned interactions between disparate people — was what brought he and Cosgrave together. The "collisionability" of new downtown businesses is one of the vital metrics for the Downtown Project, Hsieh said.

"How do we get employees off the Zappos campus to collide with the community?" Hsieh asked. To solve the problem, he said, he moved Zappos to the Old City Hall building to better integrate his employees into the community.

Hsieh also talked about reorganizing the 1,500 employee Zappos headquarters, moving from hierarchical and bureaucratic structures "in the direction of self-organization."

Though he didn't get specific, Hsieh mentioned the structure of the Internet as an example. "You need infrastructure as a basis," Hsieh said, pointing out how the Internet grew organically without a central authority.

"Holacracy is one of the main tools we're using right now," Hsieh told Cosgrave. Holacracy, a branded trademark, is a corporate governance system of self-organizing teams.