Pierre Omidyar (2024)

FAQs

What did Pierre Omidyar find? ›

An early internet pioneer, Pierre founded eBay in 1995, transforming the way people thought about trust. Improving systems and challenging what's possible continues to drive Pierre's work and inspire the diverse collection of organizations, initiatives, and ventures of The Omidyar Group.

eBay's main shareholder is its founder, the billionaire Omidyar, who stepped down from the board of eBay. By 2020 he owned (and might still own 4.69% of the company's stock) followed by other institutional investors, such as Vanguard (8.17%), Blackrock (7.98%), and FMR (Fidelity Investments) with 5.86%.

Today, Pierre Omidyar is hailed as the architect of a new age of digital commerce, but the founder of eBay, the world's largest personal online trading community, became a web entrepreneur almost by accident. In 1995, he created the prototype for an online auction site as an experiment on his personal web page.

eBay is a publicly traded company, which means its shareholders own it. The largest shareholders of eBay Inc. by May 2023 were institutional investors like State Street Corporation, The Vanguard Group, and BlackRock. eBay's co-founder, Pierre Omidyar, still holds a massive chunk of the company.

The e in eBay stands for “echo” which is the company name. This is commonly miss-quoted as meaning “electronic Commerce”. There are billions of items sold through the platform on a daily basis. That's why eBay is such an important part of our digital world today & will remain so into the future!

Despite the rise in ecommerce, the platform is still going strong, with more than $10.2 billion in revenue in 2020 and more than 1.5 billion active listings. However, selling on eBay can be tricky, especially for beginners.

Why eBay abandoned PayPal. eBay says it's moving from PayPal to Adyen in order to “improve its customer experience” by intermediating payments on its marketplace. “In doing so, eBay will manage the payments flow, simplifying the end-to-end experience for buyers and sellers,” the company said in a statement.

8.9 billion USD (2023)

Pierre Omidyar / Net worth

Who wrote the code for eBay? ›

After spending Labor Day weekend at home writing code on his personal computer, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar launches AuctionWeb, a site "dedicated to bringing together buyers and sellers in an honest and open marketplace."

Pierre Omidyar is a technology entrepreneur and founder of eBay. As of 2020, before he stepped down from the company's board of directors, he still owned 4.69% of the company's stocks, valued at over one billion dollars. Yet, over the years, he sold a good chunk of his stocks, making him a billionaire.

In 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock, of which Musk—the largest shareholder with 11.72% of shares—received $175.8 million.

eBay, global online auction and trading company launched by American entrepreneur Pierre Omidyar in 1995. eBay was one of the first companies to create and market an Internet Web site to match buyers and sellers of goods and services.

Established in 2004 by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, Omidyar Network has committed over US$1.5 billion to nonprofit organizations and for-profit companies across multiple investment areas.

eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became a notable success story of the dot-com bubble.

The History of eBay

The real deal is that Omidyar founded eBay in his San Jose home on Sept. 3, 1995. He was interested in the potential for web-based commerce and began testing that potential with his own online marketplace that would sell goods and services to the masses – if he could get the masses interested.