Pierre Omidyar – Founder of the eBay
Pierre Omidyar was born on the 21st of June, 1967 and is an Iranian-American entrepreneur born in France. His birth-place was Paris, France and his parents were Iranian immigrants. His father was a surgeon and his mother had earned reputation as an academic. The family immigrated to US when Omidyar was six years of age. He grew up at Washington D.C. and his interest in computers developed when he was at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Potomac, Maryland. He graduated in computer science from the Tufts University and soon after he began his career with Claris, a subsidiary of Apple Computers. In 1991, Pierre co-founded the Ink Development. It was a pen-based computing startup that later came to be known as e-commerce company and rechristened as eShop.
When Pierre was on a holiday weekend, he was busy developing the original computer code for what came to later known as eBay, the super-brand auction site. On the 4th of September 1995, Labor Day, eBay was officially launched. The services in the site were initially free but charges were introduced later on to meet the internet service provider expenses. In 1996, Jeffery Skoll joined the company and two years later, a public offering was launched and Pierre and Skoll both evolved as billionaires. Currently, the shares owned by Omidyar are an estimated $2.65 billion. The Omidyar Network with his wife Pam, is another of his achievements.
Written by srini on September 20th, 2009 with no comments.
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