eBay vs PayPal - Going Once, Going Twice | 1
Business Wars
Audible
4.6 • 13.5K Ratings
🗓️ 24 July 2018
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At the dawn of the dotcom era, a Silicon Valley tech geek on a personal vendetta rolls out the world’s first e-commerce site. Vintage lunchboxes? Second-hand guitars? B-list celebrity autographs? It all finds a home on AuctionWeb, and before long the site’s growth is skyrocketing.
But founder Pierre Omidyar isn’t prepared for the infrastructure challenges that come with turning his pet project into a real company. Brownouts and site outages soon follow, raising the ire of customers. And without a way to close transactions online, AuctionWeb might be doomed before it takes off.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, prime members. You can listen to business wars at free on Amazon music. Download the app today. |
| 0:08.2 | A Saturday morning in June, 1996. At his townhouse in the Bay Area, Pierre Omidiar is just getting his day started. |
| 0:17.6 | Omidiar is a young Iranian-American computer programmer with a ponytail and a laid-back hippie vibe. |
| 0:23.3 | He lives in San Jose, California right there on the fringes of Silicon Valley's beating heart. |
| 0:28.8 | A few months earlier, he started a website called Auction Web, and it's going strong. |
| 0:33.7 | It's a basic website where people can buy and sell items from one another. |
| 0:38.6 | Looking for a Superman lunch box or a used laser pointer? A good Auction Web and make a bid. |
| 0:44.4 | All the site asks for us a small donation when something sells. |
| 0:48.7 | Over the last several months, contributions from customers have been trickling into Omidiar through the mail. |
| 0:54.4 | In his first month, the peeling for help, he even took in enough cash to cover his $250 hosting fee. |
| 1:01.6 | Omidiar realizes he forgot to check the mail last night. It's been a few days, actually. Time to get it over with. |
| 1:09.3 | He looks down and... |
| 1:11.6 | Oh my god. |
| 1:14.4 | There on his porch is a mailbag brimming with envelopes bearing his name. Inside, |
| 1:20.8 | our crumpled-up dollar bills and nickels dimes and quarters taped to index cards. |
| 1:26.0 | And it doesn't stop. In the weeks ahead, more mailbag stuffed with money arrive at his doorstep. |
| 1:32.6 | So many, in fact, Omidiar can't find time to open them all. |
| 1:37.4 | By the time he finally does finish going through all the envelopes, |
| 1:41.6 | he discovers he's taken in a whopping $10,000. |
| 1:46.0 | And that's just for June. |
| 1:48.8 | The message is clear. |
| 1:51.0 | Auction web is no longer just a hobby. This thing's a business. |
... |
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