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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.