Nick made quite an impression with his personal story of wanting to sell the broadest selection of shoes on the internet because he couldn’t find the right pair after the hassle of going from store to store. In 1999, it sounded like the poster child of money losing internet companies. But then he started to describe the fragmented $40B US shoe market, and how $2B was already being sold through mail order. It wasn’t rocket science to believe that the internet would be bigger than mail order. When we needed capital, Sequoia was our first call because we had worked together before at a previous company. It took a while for the partnership to come around, and they passed on Zappos the first couple of times, which just goes to show that they have no problem admitting to being wrong and correcting mistakes.