One of my famous e- commerce character in the world

Pierre Omidyar

Pierre Omidyar is a French-American billionaire technology entrepreneur, software engineer, and philanthropist. He is the founder of eBay where he served as chairman from 1998 to 2015. Forbes ranked Omidyar as the 24th-richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $21.8 billion. And he is a one of most famous e-commerce character in the world.

Omidyar was born 21^st June of 1967 in Paris, the son of Iranian parents who migrated to France for higher education. His father, Cyrus Omidyar is a surgeon. Due to his father's work, the family moved to the US when Omidyar was a child.

Omidyar attended Punahou School in Honolulu for a couple of years. His interest in computers began while he was a ninth-grade student at The Potomac School in Mclean, Virginia. He graduated from St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, Potomac, Maryland in 1984.

He studied at Tufts University graduating with a B.S. in computer science in 1988, and the University of California, Barkeley. In 1995, Omidyar began to write the original computer code for an online venue to enable the listing of a direct person-to-person auction for collectible items. He created a simple prototype on his personal web page, and he launched an online service called Auction Web, which would eventually become the auction site eBay.

The service was originally one of several items on Omidyar's website eBay.com, which also had a section devoted to the Ebola virus, among other topics. The first item sold on the site was a broken laser pointer. Omidyar was astonished that anyone would pay for the device in its broken state, but the buyer assured him that he was deliberately collecting broken laser pointers. Similar surprises followed. The business exploded as correspondents began to register trade goods of an unimaginable variety. Omidyar incorporated the enterprise; the small fee he collected on each sale financed the expansion of the site. The revenue soon outstripped his salary at General Magic and nine months later, Omidyar decided to dedicate his full attention to his new enterprise.

By 1996, when Omidyar signed a licensing deal to offer airline tickets online, the site had hosted 250,000 auctions. In the first month of 1997, it hosted two million. By the middle of that year, eBay was hosting nearly 800,000 auctions a day. In 1997, Omidyar changed the company's name from Auction Web to eBay, and began to advertise the service aggressively. The name "eBay" was his second choice. His first choice was already registered to a Canadian mining company, Echo Bay Mines. He originally wanted Echo Bay, the name of a recreational area near Lake Mead, Nevada, because it "sounded cool". When he found out that echobay.com was taken, he simply dropped the "cho", and ebay.com was born. In 2020, Omidyar stepped down from the board of eBay as part of a broader overhaul of the company. He has, however, stayed active in the company, retaining the title of director emeritus.

Omidyar was got several awards, in 1999 EY Entrepreneur of The Year National Winner,2000, Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of achievement presented by Awards Council member Quincy Jones. And 2018's Third Most Influential French Entrepreneur by Richtopia. He has honorary doctorate from Tufts University.