EBay’s Founder on Innovating the Business Model of Social Change
by Pierre Omidyar
Pierre Omidyar is the founder and chairman of eBay and a cofounder and chairman of Omidyar Network.
The Idea
Omidyar was inspired by eBay’s social impact to create a hybrid model for his philanthropic Omidyar Network: a combination of nonprofit and for-profit.
My journey as a philanthropist began in September 1998, on the day eBay went public. I’d spent two weeks helping with the pre-IPO road show, and we’d arrived at the New York office of Goldman Sachs. I was exhausted. The actual moment was pretty anticlimactic. We’d always assumed that when you go public, your stock starts trading the moment the market opens, but it doesn’t work that way. You have to wait ...
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