Pierre Omidyar
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
What I'm really focused on is connecting people around shared interests, so together they can make good stuff happen. I'm more focused on helping people discover their power as individuals, but through those connections with one another.
As a philanthropist, I try to help people take ownership. Everything I've done is rooted in the notion that every human being is born equally capable. What people lack is equal opportunity.
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.
A lot of people don't just go ahead and try things.
If you give people the opportunity to do the right thing, you'll rarely be disappointed.
Advertisers don't want to put their ads next to the investigative story; it's extremely difficult to do that. And very few people today actually read those serious news stories on the Web now.
People naturally gravitate towards eBay because it's the largest marketplace. We're the original. We've been around the longest and so far, we've been able to hold our own.
In the early days of eBay, I articulated for the very first time this belief that people are basically good.
I want people to be entrepreneurs, but I want them to do it for the right reasons, because they think they can change the world, because they think they have got something of value to give to the world. Not because they think they can make a lot of money.
One of the things I tend to do is open myself up to a variety of voices. I try to expose myself to the kind of culture shock that occurs when you talk to people who speak a different language.
If you can get over this initial distrust that people have of strangers, you can do remarkable things.
A lot of people don't just go ahead and try things. They'll have an idea and they'll say - they'll convince themselves or other people will convince them that it can't be done... the first is even more dangerous and serious. It's convincing yourself that it can't be done.
When you look at the accomplishments of accomplished people and you say, 'Boy, that must have been really hard,'...that was probably hard. And conversely, when you look at something that looks easy, that was probably hard. And so you're never going to know which is which until you actually go out and do it.
An honest, open environment can bring out the best in people.