Pierre Omidyar Quotes

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.

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

It is not really work if you are having fun.

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.

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.

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

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

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

I built a system simple enough to sustain itself.

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

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

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

I've been asked before, "Who are your heroes?" and these types of questions. I always find it hard to identify a single person or a single book or this sort of thing. I've always been forward looking. I was raised with the notion that you can do pretty much anything you want. You're able to accomplish anything you set out to accomplish. I was given a sense of confidence and I never really felt the need to - or I've never had the benefit, I should probably say - of being inspired by outside heroes.

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.

The personal wealth that's coming is absolutely secondary to the stories that I hear about our users who have given themselves some financial independence as well by starting businesses, and all the lives we've touched positively.

When you look at the accomplishments of accomplished people and you say, “Boy, that must have been really hard,” ... that was probably easy. 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 and do it.

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

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.

Everyone is born equally capable but lacks equal opportunity.

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.

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

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.

What we say here every day is that our success is really based on our members' success, our community's success. We've created an infrastructure and laid some basic ground rules to create this marketplace.

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

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.

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. You know, one or the other. Actually I think that the first is even more dangerous and more serious. It’s convincing yourself that it can’t be done.

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

I always kind of just went ahead and tried things.

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

In February of 1996, about six months after I created eBay, I started receiving a spate of complaints. Everyone was complaining about each other. I felt very much like I was a parent who had to adjudicate the brothers beating each other up.

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

You’ll fail at some things, that’s a learning experience that you need so that you can take that on to the next experience... What you learn from those challenges and those failures are what will get you past the next ones... I was the pretty consistent bull and the cheerleader on eBay actually.

When I started eBay, it was a hobby, an experiment to see if people could use the Internet to be empowered through access to an efficient market. I actually wasn't thinking about it in terms of a social impact. It was really about helping people connect around a sphere of interest so they could do business.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

In order to access private capital, you have to provide competitive return on investment. In order to give competitive returns to investors, you've got to operate on a profitable basis and be thinking of yourself as a business.

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.

You should pursue your passion. If you're passionate about something and you work hard, then I think you'll be successful. If you start a business because you think you're going to make a lot of money at it, then you probably won't be successful, because that's the wrong reason to start a business. 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.

Don't let people who you may respect and who you believe know what they're talking about, don't let them tell you it can't be done because often they will tell you it can't be done, and it's just because they don't have the courage to try.

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