One of the best ‘startup story’ books ever written—perhaps only if for the tale and story of its founders, early employees, Powersellers, and consumers who have benefited from the birth and growth of eBay.

I would love to meet the man behind eBay someday. He sounds like the kind of guy that truly has not been changed by success.

... simply put, a must read for any aspiring entrepreneur!!!

Pierre Omidyar, the eBay founder, is on the board of my company, and turns out to be just the kind of thoughtful, modest billionaire you’d want next-door. Pierre, I think, would shovel snow from his sidewalk, and later go door-to-door to get the block association to sponsor stem-cell research. This book shows how the philosophy behind his early decisions shaped the company so strongly. Some fundamental Omidyar assumptions, which were not obvious to all at the time he started out:
People are basically good.
People are generally capable of working out disputes without god-like intervention.
Reputation is worth something in itself.
Transparency helps a system regulate itself.
People value what they pay for more than stuff that comes for free.

Come to think of it, these notions share something with the constitution-hashing I’m reading about in Alistair Cooke’s book.

Is this stuff as fascinating to someone who hasn’t been through the startup world? I’m a sucker for little company stories, whether they make it or not. This one I read it over a couple of evenings. Part of the fun was a villain of the piece was Jerry Kaplan, himself author of the classic baby company story Startup. And another part was reading it the week after I sat in a board meeting with the eBay founder, a director of my company. I was glad this hadn’t shaped my opinion in advance, and more glad to find that the self-effacing good guy of this book is real.

Completed 2004/10/20 – awesome book