Chairman and founder Pierre Omidyar and CEO Meg Whitman of EBay.com, the online auction service, in California on June 15, 1998.James D. Wilson—Getty Images
The origin story of eBay—which was founded 20 years ago, as AuctionWeb, on Sept. 3, 1995–is fairly well-known: other tech giants have their garages, eBay has its Pez dispenser. Or, rather, founder Pierre Omidyar’s then-fiancée didn’t have a Pez dispenser. It was her desire to more easily expand her collection that inspired Omidyar to create a way for her to arrange sales and purchases online.
But, as any number of start-ups have found, a good idea and good code do not a profitable business make. And the reason for eBay’s transition from small project to a functioning company is much less cute than the Pez story. Omidyar was running the business at home, and his Internet provider started to charge him more, as TIME explained in a 1999 story about the rise in online auctions:
eBay started out free, but it quickly attracted so much traffic that Omidyar‘s Internet service upped his monthly bill to $250. Now that it was costing him real money, Omidyar decided to start charging. He concocted a fee scale similar to the one eBay uses today: a nominal fee for listing an item (10¢back then, as little as 25¢ now) and a percent of the final sale price.
The payments that arrived with Omidyar‘s daily mail were small–in some cases dimes and nickels taped to index cards. But those little payments were coming in piles. eBay took in $1,000 the first month, more than it cost to run. Omidyar really knew he was onto something when he put up a listing for a broken $30 laser pointer that he was about to throw out. He fully disclosed that it didn’t work–even with new batteries–and started it at $1. Inexplicably, a bidding war ensued, and someone ended up taking it off his hands for $14. Meanwhile, the site’s revenues kept doubling: they were $2,500 the second month, then $5,000, then $10,000. Omidyar eventually had another insight. “I said O.K., I’ve got a hobby that’s making me more money than my day job,” he recalls. “So it might be time to quit the day job.”
As of May 2015, Forbes placed eBay’s market value at nearly $69 billion.
Read more from 1999, here in the TIME Vault: The Attic of E
See The 7 Most Important Tech CEOs You Wouldn't Recognize
Jack Ma, founder of Chinese Internet giant Alibaba, stepped down as that firm's CEO in 2013. But he's still the company's most public face, and after Alibaba's September IPO, China's single richest man.Scott Eells—Bloomberg/Getty ImagesLarry Ellison stunned the tech world in September by announcing he's stepping down as CEO of Oracle, the enterprise software company he co-founded in 1977. Since Oracle doesn't sell products to the public like Apple or Microsoft, Ellison's a little less-known outside Silicon Valley: But he's a hugely important figure, having heavily influenced Steve Jobs and a host of other tech leaders.Tomohiro Ohsumi—Bloomberg/Getty ImagesTony Hsieh, CEO of shoe-tailer Zappos.com, is a controversial figure in the world of tech chief officers. He's pouring money into Zappos' corporate home of Las Vegas, Nevada, which is welcome by some locals but spurned by others. Still, Zappos is known for being a very fun and very different place to work, thanks in part to Hsieh setting those qualities up as priorities for the company.Noah Berger—Bloomberg/Getty ImagesSatya Nadella just took over the reins at Microsoft earlier this year from now-Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, but he's already making his presence known through sizable layoffs and simultaneous acquisitions. Nadella's Microsoft has let go of nearly 15,000 employees this year — a chunk of whom were made redundant when Microsoft closed an approximately $7.2 billion deal for Nokia's device wing. Also on Microsoft's tab? $2.5 billion for the Swedish gaming company behind top-hit Minecraft.Microsoft/CorbisLinkedin CEO Jeff Weiner, formerly a longtime Yahoo employee, has grown the "Facebook For Professionals'" user base and revenue exponentially since coming becoming CEO in 2009. He's got quite the fan base, too: His workers, 100% of whom support him as CEO, according to Glassdoor.Robert Galbrath—Reuters/CorbisJohn Donahoe has been president and CEO of eBay since 2008. He's now guiding the company in a time of deep uncertainty: In early 2014, eBay settled a nasty public feud with activist investor Carl Icahn, who wants eBay to spin off payment service PayPal as an independent business — and Icahn isn't the only one who thinks that's a good idea.Paul Morris—Bloomberg/Getty ImagesDon Mattrick became CEO of Zynga, the social gaming company that brought us FarmVille, in 2013, coming over from Microsoft. He's been tasked with leading Zynga through a tumultuous period — the now publicly-traded company hasn't been able to replicate its FarmVille success, leaving many to wonder about the company's future.Michal Czerwonka—Getty Images
