the story of ebay Pierre Omidyar had bought the la ser pointer on a whim He used it to play with his cat for two weeks then discovered it didn’t work any more But instead of tossing it out he decided to use it as an experiment In the fall of 1995 Omidyar listed it on AuctionWeb a new part of his personal Web page under the heading Broken Laser Pointer A week went by with out any interest But then bids started coming in When the two-week auction period ended Omidyar was surprised to see that someone had bid 14 83 for something that didn’t work He contacted the buyer to make sure he un derstood it was broken I’m a collector of bro ken laser pointers the man replied Omidyar packed it up shipped it out and completed his first online auction sale built for success
b u i l t f o r s u c c e s s 6 p a g e the story of ebay chapter one On a Friday afternoon in 1995 Pierre Omidyar planted himself in the office of his home in Campbell California Omidyar a 28-year-old software engineer had decided to spend Labor Day weekend creating the perfect online mar ketplace a venue where buyers and sellers could connect directly and through the process of bid ding agree upon an appropriate price for an item In four days he finished designing a rather stark gray-colored text-heavy Web site that would host online auctions for free Then he posted a note about his new site which he named AuctionWeb on a pair of online announcement sites After a few days listings for non-computer-related items such as a metal Superman lunchbox and an autographed Michael Jackson poster showed up Within a week more than 30 items had been listed By the end of the year AuctionWeb had hosted thousands of auctions which had attracted more than 10,000 bids in all At first Omidyar offered the auction service for free on his own Web site www ebay com which also hosted a homepage for the small biotechnology firm where his fiancée worked a homepage for a group of people his fiancée went to Start the Bidding
Pierre Omidyar was born in France to Iranian parents the family moved to the U S six years later ebay
