Pierre Omidyar

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Microfinance initiatives are very high-touch models. The loan officer meets with local groups of borrowers every week, they share tips and techniques. There's a lot of training and learning that goes on, which adds to the cost of the model.
- Pierre Omidyar
Collection: Learning
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I had the notion that, OK, so now we have all of this wealth, we could buy not only one expensive car, we could buy all of them. As soon as you realize that you could buy all of them, then none of them are particularly interesting or satisfying.
- Pierre Omidyar
Collection: Car
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If you give people the opportunity to do the right thing, you'll rarely be disappointed.
- Pierre Omidyar
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Everyone is born equally capable but lacks equal opportunity.
- Pierre Omidyar
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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.
- Pierre Omidyar
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If you can get over this initial distrust that people have of strangers, you can do remarkable things.
- Pierre Omidyar
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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.
- Pierre Omidyar
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When you have mass surveillance, it's impossible to meet the intent of the First Amendment because reporters can't talk to sources because sources are afraid to talk.
- Pierre Omidyar
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I do like to fly under the radar. When I walk around town, the only people I want to recognise me and call me by my name are the folks at Starbucks.
- Pierre Omidyar
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What I'm really focused on is connecting people around shared interests, so together they can make good stuff happen. I'm more focused on helping people discover their power as individuals, but through those connections with one another.
- Pierre Omidyar
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A lot of people don't just go ahead and try things.
- Pierre Omidyar
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News organisations that have been around a while have a lot of traditions and ways of doing things that may have served them for many years but perhaps make them less flexible in the digital era. As an entrepreneur, it just makes more sense to start something new.
- Pierre Omidyar
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In 1991, I co-founded my first start-up, Ink Development, which made software for an early tablet computer.
- Pierre Omidyar
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I had always been interested in markets - specifically, the theory that in financial markets, goods will trade at a fair value only when everyone has access to the same information.
- Pierre Omidyar
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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.
- Pierre Omidyar
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As a philanthropist, I try to help people take ownership. Everything I've done is rooted in the notion that every human being is born equally capable. What people lack is equal opportunity.
- Pierre Omidyar
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I'm a technologist by origin and by training, but I'm focused on philanthropy.
- Pierre Omidyar
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Technologists come at a problem from the point of view that the system is working a certain way, and if I engage in that system and actually change the rules of the system, I can make it work a different way.
- Pierre Omidyar
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Advertisers don't want to put their ads next to the investigative story; it's extremely difficult to do that. And very few people today actually read those serious news stories on the Web now.
- Pierre Omidyar
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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.
- Pierre Omidyar
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You can invest in companies, you can help grow companies, you can be a venture capitalist - and be a philanthropist at the same time.
- Pierre Omidyar
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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.
- Pierre Omidyar
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I developed an interest in supporting independent journalists in a way that leverages their work to the greatest extent possible, all in support of the public interest.
- Pierre Omidyar
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Long-term sustainable change happens if people discover their own power.
- Pierre Omidyar
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My parents made me believe I could do anything I wanted to do. They were really into empowering me.
- Pierre Omidyar
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In terms of my belief that one individual can make a difference - that belief comes from my parents.
- Pierre Omidyar
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My dad was a physician. As a kid, I remember driving around with him on weekends so he could do his rounds at the hospital and talk to patients. We'd spend time in the car talking about what was going on with them, their stories.
- Pierre Omidyar
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A well-functioning microfinance bank can actually be a profitable business as well. So it became a perfect proof point that, through business, you can provide an experience that leads to individual self-empowerment.
- Pierre Omidyar
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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.
- Pierre Omidyar
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Ebay's success as a company depends on the success of the community of sellers.
- Pierre Omidyar
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In the early days of eBay, I articulated for the very first time this belief that people are basically good.
- Pierre Omidyar
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Companies in Silicon Valley invest a lot in understanding their users and what drives user engagement.
- Pierre Omidyar
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I have always been of the opinion that the right kind of journalism is a critical part of our democracy.
- Pierre Omidyar
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Build a platform - prepare for the unexpected...you' ll know you're successful when the platform you've built serves you in unexpected ways.
- Pierre Omidyar
Collection: Successful
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You should pursue your passion. If you're passionate about something and you work hard, then I think you will be successful.
- Pierre Omidyar
Collection: Success
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People were doing business with one another through the Internet already, through bulletin boards. But on the Web, we could make it interactive, we could create an auction, we could create a real marketplace. And that's really what triggered my imagination, if you will, and that's what I did.
- Pierre Omidyar
Collection: Real
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It is not really work if you are having fun.
- Pierre Omidyar
Collection: Fun
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When you don't know what to expect, prepare for the unexpected.
- Pierre Omidyar
Collection: Unexpected
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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.
- Pierre Omidyar
Collection: Business
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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.
- Pierre Omidyar
Collection: Passion
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Whatever future you're building, don't try to program everything.
- Pierre Omidyar
Collection: Trying
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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.
- Pierre Omidyar
Collection: Thinking
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Give the individual the power to be a producer as well as a consumer.
- Pierre Omidyar
Collection: Giving
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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.
- Pierre Omidyar
Collection: Mistake
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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.
- Pierre Omidyar
Collection: Business
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An honest, open environment can bring out the best in people.
- Pierre Omidyar
Collection: People
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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.
- Pierre Omidyar
Collection: Believe
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You’re able to accomplish anything you set out to accomplish.
- Pierre Omidyar
Collection: Able
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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.
- Pierre Omidyar
Collection: Believe
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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.
- Pierre Omidyar
Collection: Couple