Pierre Morad Omidyar is an American entrepreneur, businessman, and philanthropist. He is the founder of eBay and served as its chairman from 1998 to 2015.
Early life and education
Pierre Morad Omidyar was born in Paris on June 21, 1967. Omidyar is the son of Iranian parents who immigrated to France for higher education. Omidyar’s father, Cyrus Omidyar is a surgeon at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who worked as a urologist and now practices in Aliso Viejo, California. Due to his father’s work, the family relocated to the US when Omidyar was a child. Omidyar’s mother is an academic, who did her doctorate in linguistics at the Sorbonne.
When Omidyar was a ninth-grade student at The Potomac School in McLean, Virginia, he began his interest in computers. Omidyar graduated from St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, Potomac, Maryland, in 1984. Omidyar graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from Tufts University in Medford/Somerville, Massachusetts in 1988. Omidyar studied at the University of California, Berkeley during his undergraduate years.
Shortly after, Omidyar went to work for Claris, an Apple Computer subsidiary, where he served on the team that enhanced MacDraw to MacDraw II. In 1991, Omidyar co-founded a pen-based computing startup called Ink Development. They later rebranded the startup as an e-commerce company and renamed it eShop Inc. On June 11, 1996, Microsoft obtained eShop for less than $50 million, and Omidyar made $1 million from the deal.
eBay
Omidyar was 28 when he started to write the initial computer code for an online venue in 1995, to facilitate the listing of a direct person to person auction for collectible items. Omidyar designed a simple prototype on his web page; and on Monday, September 4, 1995, Labor Day, he launched Auction Web, an online service, which would eventually become the auction site eBay.
The service was one of the several items on Omidyar’s website eBay.com, which also had a section dedicated to the Ebola virus, among other topics. A broken laser pointer for $14.83 was the first item sold on the site. Omidyar was astounded that anyone would spend for the device even if it’s in a broken state, but the customer assured him that he was actually into broken laser pointers. Similar astonishments followed. The business exploded as contributors started to register trade goods of an incredible variety.
Omidyar incorporated the business; the small charge he received on each sale supported the development of the site. The revenue soon exceeded his salary at General Magic, and nine months later, Omidyar decided to commit his full attention to his new enterprise.
eBay’s first employee
eBay was reportedly just a side hobby for Omidyar until his internet service provider notified him that due to the high amount of traffic to his website, he would need to upgrade to a business account. The resulting rate increase (from $30/month to $250) required him to begin charging those who used the website and was not satisfied with any animosity. It resulted in the hiring of eBay’s first additional employee, Chris Agarpao, to process mailed checks coming in for fees.
By 1996, when Omidyar contracted a licensing deal to grant airline tickets online, the site had hosted 250,000 auctions. In early 1996, eBay hired Jeffrey Skoll as the first new president of the company. In November 1996, with Electronic Travel Auction, a company to use SmartMarket Technology to sell plane tickets and other travel products, eBay began into its first third-party licensing deal. Growth was remarkable; in January 1997, the site hosted 2,000,000 auctions, compared with 250,000 during the whole of 1996.
In 1997, Omidyar replaced the company’s name from AuctionWeb to eBay and started to promote the service aggressively. The brand name eBay was the second choice that Omidyar wanted for the website. The first choice Echo Bay Mines was already registered to a Canadian mining company. When Omidyar found out that echobay.com was already taken, he shortened it to his second choice, and eBay.com was born. In 1997 the company secured $6.7 million in funding from the venture capital firm Benchmark Capital.
In March 1998, the board hired Meg Whitman as the company’s president and CEO. The company had half a million users, 30 employees, and profits of $4.7 million in the United States at the time. Whitman remained to manage the company until January 2008, when she declared her retirement. eBay launched a successful public offering in September 1998, making both Omidyar and Skoll billionaires. Omidyar’s 178 million eBay shares were worth approximately $4.45 billion as of July 2008. In addition, Omidyar is also a part of the Berggruen Institute’s 21st Century Council.
Omidyar and Skoll became instant billionaires after eBay went public. eBay’s target share amount of $18 was all but disregarded as the price went to $53.50 on the first day of trading.
As the company increased product categories beyond collectibles into nearly any saleable items, the business grew instantly. eBay had 12 million registered users, and on any given day, a cyber-inventory of more than 4.5 million items on sale in 2000. In February 2002, eBay obtained iBazar, a similar European auction web site founded in 1998, and then acquired PayPal on October 3, 2002.
By early 2008, the company had grown worldwide, including 15,000 employees as well as hundreds of millions of registered users and almost $7.7 billion of revenues. Whitman decided to enter politics after nearly ten years at eBay. The company announced on January 23, 2008, that Whitman would step down on March 31, 2008, and John Donahoe was elected to become the new president and CEO. Whitman remained on the board and continued to advise Donahoe through 2008. In late 2009, eBay made the sale of $2.75 billion for Skype, but still owned 30% equity in the company.
Personal life
Pierre Omidyar is married to Pamela. Omidyar and his wife own properties in Honolulu, Hawaii, and Henderson, Nevada. At the age of 31, Pierre Omidyar became a billionaire with eBay’s 1998 initial public offering. According to Forbes, Omidyar’s net worth was $10.9 billion as of February 2018.