How did such a seemingly utopian idea work?
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. It’s really this “of the people, by the people, for the people” environment. It’s a very bottom-up environment. It’s not the kind of approach that’s top-down, centrally directed. Q: Are there certain ways of doing things at eBay that can be applied more broadly? A: There are 120 million people who are members of eBay, and over the last 10 years, they’ve learned how to trust a complete stranger. 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. eBay’s business could not have been successful unless it had that impact. We looked at that, and we said, “Heck, eBay can clearly have this impact, maybe there are other businesses and other business models that can only be successful if they have a
