Pierre Omidyar Quotes

What makes eBay successful.. the real value and the real power at eBay is the community. It's the buyers and sellers coming together and forming a marketplace.

It is not really work if you are having fun.

Build a platform - prepare for the unexpected...you' ll know you're successful when the platform you've built serves you in unexpected ways.

You should pursue your passion. If you're passionate about something and you work hard, then I think you will be successful.

Be an enzyme - a catalyst for change. As a slogan, I don't know if that's ever going to be right up there with Ich Bin Ein Berliner, or “I Have A Dream,” but there's a lot of truth to it.

I've got a passion for solving a problem that I think I can solve in a new way. And that maybe it helps that nobody has done it before as well.

We have technology, finally, that for the first time in human history allows people to really maintain rich connections with much larger numbers of people.

I was just pursuing what I enjoyed doing. I mean, I was pursuing my passion.

Long-term sustainable change happens if people discover their own power.

We believe people are basically good. We believe everyone has something to contribute. We encourage you to treat others the way that you want to be treated.

When you don't know what to expect, prepare for the unexpected.

Everyone is born equally capable but lacks equal opportunity.

By building a simple system, with just a few guiding principles, eBay was open to organic growth.

To truly prepare for the unexpected, you've got to position yourself to keep a couple of options open so when the door of opportunity opens, you're close enough to squeeze through.

Whatever future you're building, don't try to program everything.

Microloans enable the poor to lift themselves out of poverty through entrepreneurship.

I started eBay as an experiment, as a side hobby basically, while I had my day job.

I built a system simple enough to sustain itself.

You have to really believe in what you're doing, be passionate enough about it so that you will put in the hours and hard work that it takes to actually succeed there, and then you'll be successful.

eBay's business is based on enabling someone to do business with another person, and to do that, they first have to develop some measure of trust, either in the other person or the system.

You’re able to accomplish anything you set out to accomplish.

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.

I always kind of just went ahead and tried things.

In the same way that you're driven in your business to keep innovating - Facebook is a wonderful example of constant innovation - think about doing that in philanthropy.

If you can get over this initial distrust that people have of strangers, you can do remarkable things.

We ought to be looking at business as a force for good.

In 1991, I co-founded my first start-up, Ink Development, which made software for an early tablet computer.

I never had it in mind that I would start a company one day and it would really be successful. I have just been motivated by working on interesting technology

I just kind of had this naive approach to - well, gee, you know, why not. I’ll just go ahead and do it.

I was raised with the notion that you can do pretty much do anything you want. I always kind of just went ahead and tried things.

We believe that business can be a tool for social good.

Give the individual the power to be a producer as well as a consumer.

An honest, open environment can bring out the best in people.