Pierre Morad Omidyar Founder of eBay
Pierre Morad Omidyar Founder of eBay

Biography of Pierre Morad Omidyar

Early Life

Pierre Morad Omidyar Founder of eBay was born on 21st of June in 1967 in Paris, France. He was born in the family of Iranian immigrants to the France. His family migrated to United States after his birth. He went to The Potomac School, McLean, Virginia for his early education. After that he went to St. Andrew’s Episcopal School. He graduated in 1988 from Tufts University of Somerville, Massachusetts in computer science.

Interest in Computer Technology

He was interested in computer sciences since from the beginning of his school. Soon after his graduation he started working for a subsidiary of Apple Computer, Claris. He was in the team which was working on up gradation of MacDraw to MacDraw II. He started Ink Development Company in 1991 which was later on renamed as e-Shop.

Founder of eBay

In 1995 when he was of 28 years old, he started to write real computer codes for a website. His purpose was to connect persons for online buying and selling of items. In same year on 4th September he made a sample of website and introduced it as an online service provider named as “Auction Web”. Later on that little effort was grown to a huge online auction site which is popular with the name of “eBay”.

First ever item which was sold through this website was a broken laser pointer. He was very much surprised to see the results that everyone wanted to purchase that broken laser pointer. After that his business started progressing and a number of products were registered on that website for auction purpose.

The eBay Inc.

It is a multinational American Company. It works as the transaction agent between consumers. It is based on consumer to consumer business strategy. It’s headquarter is at San Jose, California, United States. Its business is being operated in more than thirty countries.

This company is operated through a website “eBay.com”, in which auction for the variety of goods take place and people buy and sell over internet. They charge some commission on each transaction.

Later Career

He financed the company from the collected amount of commission which was charged on the transaction occurred on the website. And slowly and gradually his website earned enormous profits. In 1996, he signed a licensed deal with an airline company to sell its tickets online. The number of auctions started from 25000 auctions in the first year to 800,000 auctions in the middle of next year. This amount was a per day transaction amount.

He renamed his company to eBay in 1997 and aggressively advertised it. In 1996, Jeffrey Skoll, a celebrity, joined the company. Meg Whitman also joined the company in 1998 as president and CEO. She worked on this designation until 2008. In 1998’s September both of the partners became billionaires.

He launched online investigative news reporting service in 2010 as “Honolulu Civil Beat”. In 2013 a weblog was introduced with the collaboration of “Honolulu Civil Beat” and “The Huffington Post”. According to a report of 2013, he has the wealth of 8.5 billion USD which made him the world’s 123rd person in terms of wealth.