Free How They Started by David Lester Page B

foray into online auctions in China ultimately proved unsuccessful (it closed the website at the end of 2006 and instead entered into a joint venture with a Chinese company), eBay had more success with Skype. In 2007 Meg Whitman said that Skype had more customers in China than in the United States, and the growth rate in China was higher than anywhere else.
    Fittingly for an Internet business, eBay has not been slow to capitalize on other technology opportunities, as it now offers a site enabled for mobile devices, text-message alerts and blogs. It has also further diversified its services to offer “Best of eBay,” a site dedicated to finding the most unusual items advertised, and “eBay Pulse,” which provides information on popular search terms and most-watched items.
    More recently the company has branched out into other international markets and expanded its auctions business into event ticketing and comparison shopping, while navigating its fair share of challenges. The company has seen the overall growth of its core auction business slow down, and it has had to deal with numerous incidents of fraud carried out on the site. What’s more, eBay has faced intense competition from search engine giant Google, which in 2006 launched Checkout, its own online payment system. Amazon, too, has begun to attract independent sellers, the core of eBay’s business.

    The company’s success has been credited in part to its ability to innovate as well as to adapt.

    The inside of eBay’s headquarters.
    Where are they now?
    As of 2011, eBay had around 100 million active users globally. Its three biggest markets are the US, the UK and Germany. In Forbes ’s 2010 list of the world’s billionaires, Pierre Omidyar was listed at number 148 with personal wealth of around $5.2 billion. He remains chairman of eBay but has kept himself busy with other ventures, such as Omidyar Network, a philanthropic investment firm.
    In April 2008, Meg Whitman stepped down as CEO (and in 2010 ran unsuccessfully for governor of California). She was succeeded by John Donahoe, president of eBay’s Marketplaces division, who remains CEO today.
    In 2009, eBay sold 70 percent of its share of Skype for $2 billion (having paid $2.6 billion for the online communications company in 2006). But in 2011 Microsoft acquired Skype for a massive $8.5 billion, valuing eBay’s 30 percent share at $2.8 billion.
    The full-year 2011 revenues showed an increase of 27 percent on 2010 levels to $11.7 billion. The company generated net income of $3.2 billion. PayPal also saw significant rise in revenue, with a 28 percent year-on-year revenue increase to $4.4 billion, with the payments provider adding a million new accounts every month in 2011.
    The company’s success has been credited in part to its ability to innovate as well as to adapt, a vision that has been with the company since the very beginning, and that continues to hold true today. The site introduced new measures to make its auctions and fixed-price listings easier to use, revamped its feedback mechanisms and strengthened its anti-fraud provisions in a bid to make eBay a safer place in which to trade. As Pierre explained in an interview in 2000:
    “What eBay did was create a new market, one that wasn’t really there before. We’ve had to evolve our strategies and policies from what I built in the beginning, which was a self-policing community of people, to one where we take a more active role in trying to help identify the bad actors”, he said.

Etsy
A handcrafted success
    Founders:   Rob Kalin (shown), Chris Maguire, Haim Schoppik and Jared Tarbell
    Age of founders:   All early to mid 20s
    Background:   New York University (Rob, Chris and Haim), New Mexico State University (Jared)
    Founded in:   2005
    Headquarters:   Brooklyn, New York
    Business type:   Online marketplace for independent creative businesses

    In 2005, Rob Kalin was a 25-year-old college student , carpenter, photographer and