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Pierre Omidyar – The Founder of eBay

Brilliant ideas are born out of the curious minds. The ideas or problems often roam around and everyone fail to notice them except some brilliant curious minds. These brilliant minds are the ones responsible for smartphones, computers, airplanes , tv, refrigerators; literally everything that has made our daily life so easy. One such extra-ordinary mind is Pierre Omidyar, a man who turned into a billionaire just at the age of 31. Omidyar, for the first time, brought the auction business on the online platform and connected hundreds of thousands of buyers and sellers through his website – eBay.

Pierre Omidyar is a French born Iranian American businessman and philanthropist. Born in 1967, Pierre’s interest in computers began from high school. He would skip the gym sessions to spend that time at the computer lab. This behavior got him his first job instead of teacher’s scolding. At the age of 14 he was put on the task to create a program that would generate catalogue cards for the library by the principal. Starting from a mere $6 per hour and earning almost 8 billion, Pierre has set a wonderful example for the whole world.

Pierre went on to Tufts University for his graduation in computer science and then joined a company to develop the Macintosh software. Before starting his software company Ink Development Corp in 1991, Pierre worked for Apple’s subsidiary Claris. His Ink Development Corp was purchased by Microsoft in 1996 and also changed its name to eShop. Just a year before that is in 1995 a multi-billion dollar idea had already taken birth in Pierre’s mind.

During the summer of 1995 Omidyar wrote a code for a portal called Auction Web on his own website. The purpose was to let people list the items for auction. Surprisingly, this idea grabbed stupendous attention that he had to set up a whole new website which was devoted just for online auctions. This site would later be known as eBay. With the launch of new website he also started charging a nominal fee for listing the items for auction. The charges would be anything from 25 cents to $2.

The pace at which eBay was growing made Omidyar to quit his job at General Magic, a company backed by Apple. Since then he started devoting his entire time to grow eBay. Omidyar was announced as the chairman of eBay in 1998 with Meg Whitman as the president and CEO of the company. Under Whitman’s leadership the company expanded its branches to Australia, Canada, Japan, UK, Germany, etc. At the end of 1998 the company had generated $750 million revenue and hosted 2.1 million buyers and sellers. The online auction strategy was then adopted by Amazon in 1999.

Omidyar is on the board of directors at ePeople, an online marketplace for technical support. He is married to Pamela Wesley and has three children. The couple also run a philanthropic firm Omidyar Network. This network is dedicated for journalism and launched the First Look Media along with Glenn Greenwald, the man who published government documents leaked by Edward Snowden. In 2014, the company published its first online copy The Intercept. Omidyar believes that journalism should have its own independent voice for the benefit of democratic society.