To look at eBay
today you'd never guess that it sprang from a modest, even comical
beginning. Lacking is the glamour of the hotshot enterpreneurial firm
and high-voltage venture capital so commonly seen in other companies
that are babies of the dot-com bubble. Instead, eBay can be traced back
to a home page and a broken laser pointer.
Sometime before September, 1995, 28-year-old software developer Pierre
Omidyar, who had previously worked with Claris developing software for
Apple computers, sat down to write the code that would eventually evolve
into what we know as eBay today.
Originally called AuctionWeb and hosted on the same server as Pierre's
page about the ebola virus, the site began with the listing of a single
broken laser pointer. Though Pierre had intended the listing to be a
test more than a serious offer to sell at auction, he was shocked when
the item sold for $14.83. Pierre knew that he'd created something big as
soon as he contacted the winning bidder to ask if he understood that
the pointer was broken.
"I'm a collector of broken laser pointers," came the reply.
AuctionWeb soon took over Pierre's entire domain, www.ebay.com, short
for Echo Bay, which was the name of his consulting firm at the time. By
1996 the company was large enough to require the skills of a Stanford
MBA in Jeffrey Skoll, who came aboard an already profitable ship. Meg
Whitman, a Harvard graduate, soon followed as president and CEO, along
with a strong business team under whose leadership eBay grew rapidly,
branching out from collectibles into nearly every type of market. eBay's
vision for success transitioned from one of commerce—buying and selling
things—to one of connecting people around the world together.
With exponential growth and strong branding, eBay thrived, eclipsing
many of the other upstart auction sites that dotted the dot-com bubble.
By the time eBay had gone public in 1998, both Omidyar and Skoll were
billionaires.
The rest, as they say, is history.
