Pierre Omidyar's Success Story

Founder of eBay

On 21 of June, 1967, in Paris is born a man of Iranian origin, who later in his course of life would change the way Internet is developing and the way people buy and sell stuff online. His name is Pierre Omidyar and today is famous for being a Founder and Chairman of eBay, the biggest auction web site in the world, and also for his well-known philanthropic activity.

But how did it all start? Pierre is brought up in a humble family, his parents were Iranian immigrants, who went to France, both sent by his grandparents, to attend a university. By coincidence, when Pierre was six, the family moved to the United States, where on the age of 21 the young student graduated with a degree in computer science from Tufts University, and later worked for a couple of companies, including Apple. In 1991 he co-founded Ink Development with a few friends.

But the most interesting part of the story is yet to come…Believing in the power of Internet’s community, Pierre Omidyar decided to take the initiative in his own hands. It was a long holiday weekend, when he wrote the basic source code of what we call eBay today. His idea was to encourage citizens to participate through the web so that complete strangers could make business online, by exchanging merchandise for money. And he did it.

At the beginning the online project was named “AuctionWeb”, but later, maybe because of his company “Echo Bay”, the name eBay popped up in Pierre’s mind and he renamed it.

The year is 1996. The web site was gaining popularity, maybe because the first vendors were selling exceptionally rare and strange things. Ebay took as a commission small amount of every sale, and Pierre reinvested every single dime back in the website, which was irresistibly succeeding with every past month. Since then millions of people from all around the world buy and sell via eBay.

According to Forbes magazine, Pierre Omidyar is the 156th richest person in the world (US $5.5 Billion (2009)), and is also well-known as the richest Iranian.