The Candyman - Pierre Omidyar

What's in a name? In Pierre Omidyar's case, hope. The meaning of Omidyar, in Farsi, is "someone who has hope on his side." That seems an understatement given that the 31-year-old founder of eBay, the Web's most popular person-to-person auction house, ranks among the Web's richest.

Omidyar owns 31.2 percent of eBay's common stock. The price of the shares tripled on eBay's first day of trading in September 1998, and in little more than six months it surged nearly 25-fold. That makes Omidyar worth some $4.8 billion as of April 1. Sure, many other Internet startups boast nose-bleeding valuations, but what accounts for eBay's dizzying heights is not just an Internet feeding frenzy, but its rare status as a company profitable since its inception. eBay's meteoric valuation and phenomenal growth have brought heightened public and regulatory scrutiny on the company, which may in part explain Omidyar's low profile today. "eBay is a very nervous company because there's so much money there," says an Internet executive who asked to remain anonymous and who is familiar with eBay and Omidyar. "Employees are desperately trying to hang on to their jobs. There's a real tension there."

Omidyar declined requests to be interviewed for this article and is reportedly not doing any interviews this year. He turned day-to-day operations over to Meg Whitman (see p88) in early 1998 so that he could focus on long-term strategy from behind the scenes and preserve some semblance of a life outside work. "Pierre knew from day one that he wanted balance," says Matt Hamilton, founder of ThinkWave, an education-oriented Internet community, and a close friend of both Omidyar and eBay Vice President Jeff Skoll. "One of the first things he said was 'I think I want to hire a president and let him or her run the company so I can go play.' Control was never an issue for him."

Adoring throngs of Pezheads

The one chance for face time with Omidyar came in March, when he made his only scheduled appearance for 1999 - addressing a gathering of several hundred collectors of Pez dispensers in Los Angeles. Industry folklore by now, Omidyar conceived eBay to fulfill his desire to create a person-to-person trading community and the wish of his fiancee, Pam, to find more people who trade those nostalgia-inducing spring-loaded candy dispensers. "I wanted something not just for businesses but for individuals, so Pam and I put our ideas together," he said in a brief encounter before his Los Angeles Pez address - and before his public relations handler brushed this reporter away.

"What eBay is today is what you've built," the soft-spoken, ponytailed Omidyar, wearing an eBay-logo denim shirt, told the throng in Los Angeles. "What eBay will be tomorrow is what you'll create." The crowd, ranging from children whose feet dangled above the floor to seniors with canes, wildly applauded and whistled. eBay's huge reach has helped many Pezheads not only find more models but turn hobbies into home businesses. Pez dispensers share space with 1.8 million different items, ranging from ancient Roman coins to Beanie Babies, listed for sale by eBay's 2.1 million members, who place more than a million bids a day on the site. Omidyar has carefully and generously cultivated the Pezheads - partly because he recently married Pez-enthusiast Pam. After a determined search on eBay, Omidyar himself found a special Pez set - an extremely rare bride and groom he nabbed for $3,000 from Adamstown Antique Gallery in Denver, Penn. - to present to an overjoyed Pam after their private wedding at the swank Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas in February. Omidyar himself is far from flashy. He drives the same VW Jetta he has owned for years. He dresses simply. He lives in the same home he has been renting for years in Campbell, Calif., near San Jose.

"Pierre is very low-key and unassuming. I don't think money has changed their lives," says Stephanie Hamilton, a college friend of Omidyar's wife. "I see them using their money more for the private foundation than for themselves." Even rivals speak of Omidyar's graciousness and modesty. "He and Jeff [Skoll] and other people at eBay are very fair-minded," says Andy Rebele, founder of San Francisco-based CityAuction, now part of Ticketmaster Online-CitySearch. "As for rivalry, it's like playing tennis with friends. You want to kick their butt, but don't cheat them."

Little resistance

Omidyar's nice-guy disposition is being tested now as new rivals enter the field. CityAuction, Amazon.com, and Yahoo! are among eBay's chief competitors. Soon after Amazon announced its assault, Skoll sounded cool, saying Amazon will have to learn how to facilitate trade between people rather than act as a merchant. "It's a whole different ball of wax," Skoll says. "They clearly have studied eBay a lot and have copied much of our structure, our pricing, and so on. We'll see what happens."

No doubt, eBay will dip into its coffers to secure its dominance in the sizzling marketplace. It has already established Websites in the United Kingdom, Canada, and through joint ventures in Australia and New Zealand, and appears poised to forge a formal presence in Europe as well, judging by Omidyar's frequent trips to the continent. Marketing and distribution partnerships with several portals - the largest and most expensive of which is a $75 million, four-year deal with America Online - are helping build the company's brand and capture more traffic.

Omidyar's own rise to riches was fueled at least in part by his focus on making computing accessible to ordinary people. He was born in Paris, and moved with his parents to Washington, D.C., when he was still a child. In high school, he developed a passion for computer programming. His first program was a card catalog for the school library, which paid him $6 an hour. He studied computer science at Tufts University, graduating in 1988. Not long after, he joined Claris, an Apple subsidiary, where he wrote the MacDraw application. In 1991, he caught the entrepreneur bug and co-founded Ink Development (later renamed eShop), which developed an ecommerce platform. Later that year, he joined General Magic as a software engineer, remaining until mid-1996.

Omidyar started eBay as a part-time hobby while still at General Magic. For the first several months, he offered the service, which grew strictly by word of mouth, free. In February 1996, his ISP, Best Internet, told him he'd have to upgrade his service because his site was creating too much traffic. Instead, Omidyar began charging a listing fee to members. He met little resistance. People kept flocking to the site. Still working out of his home, he incorporated the company in May 1996, and began searching for a partner who could help execute his vision. He convinced his friend Skoll to join him. Together they worked out of Omidyar's living room until, as Skoll relates, Omidyar's future wife reached her patience threshold. "So we moved to my living room," Skoll laughs. Later that summer, a Stanford classmate (and former housemate) of Skoll's, Philip Levinson, brokered a deal for them to work out of an office in the NASA ATCC/TEN incubator in Sunnyvale. Eventually they found an office in San Jose, where eBay has been since.

Levinson, director of business development for the NASA incubator, recalls something very different about Skoll and Omidyar. "What stood out was that both Jeff and Pierre had a very purposeful approach," he says. "They had a very quiet confidence about them and seemed to know just what they were doing."

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