Pierre Omidyar
![Pierre Omidyar](/assets/img/authors/pierre-omidyar.jpg)
Pierre Omidyar
Pierre Morad Omidyaris a French-born Iranian-American entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is the founder of the eBay auction site where he served as Chairman from 1998 to 2015. He became a billionaire at the age of 31 with eBay's 1998 initial public offering. Omidyar and his wife Pamela are well-known philanthropists who founded Omidyar Network in 2004 in order to expand their efforts beyond nonprofits to include for-profits and public policy...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth21 June 1967
CityParis, France
CountryFrance
When you don't know what to expect, prepare for the unexpected.
You'll fail at some things - that's a learning experience that you need so that you can take that on to the next experience. What you learn from those challenges and those failures are what will get you past the next ones...I was the pretty consistent bull and the cheerleader on eBay actually.
I just kind of had this naïve approach to - well, gee, you know, why not. I'll just go ahead and do it.
The personal wealth that's coming is absolutely secondary to the stories that I hear about our users who have given themselves some financial independence as well by starting businesses, and all the lives we've touched positively.
eBay's business is based on enabling someone to do business with another person, and to do that, they first have to develop some measure of trust, either in the other person or the system.
I do like to fly under the radar. When I walk around town, the only people I want to recognise me and call me by my name are the folks at Starbucks.
We believe that business can be a tool for social good, ... Microfinance has already shown that enabling the poor to empower themselves economically can be good business.