Pierre Omidyar Quotes
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As a philanthropist, I try to help people take ownership. Everything I've done is rooted in the notion that every human being is born equally capable. What people lack is equal opportunity.
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In order to access private capital, you have to provide competitive return on investment. In order to give competitive returns to investors, you've got to operate on a profitable basis and be thinking of yourself as a business.
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If you give people the opportunity to do the right thing, you'll rarely be disappointed.
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When you have mass surveillance, it's impossible to meet the intent of the First Amendment because reporters can't talk to sources because sources are afraid to talk.
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Everyone is born equally capable but lacks equal opportunity.
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Companies in Silicon Valley invest a lot in understanding their users and what drives user engagement.
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What I'm really focused on is connecting people around shared interests, so together they can make good stuff happen. I'm more focused on helping people discover their power as individuals, but through those connections with one another.
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What makes eBay successful - the real value and the real power at eBay - is the community. It's the buyers and sellers coming together and forming a marketplace.
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My parents made me believe I could do anything I wanted to do. They were really into empowering me.
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Technologists come at a problem from the point of view that the system is working a certain way, and if I engage in that system and actually change the rules of the system, I can make it work a different way.
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eBay's business is based on enabling someone to do business with another person, and to do that, they first have to develop some measure of trust, either in the other person or the system.
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I have always been of the opinion that the right kind of journalism is a critical part of our democracy.
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A well-functioning microfinance bank can actually be a profitable business as well. So it became a perfect proof point that, through business, you can provide an experience that leads to individual self-empowerment.
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Ebay's success as a company depends on the success of the community of sellers.
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In the same way that you're driven in your business to keep innovating - Facebook is a wonderful example of constant innovation - think about doing that in philanthropy.
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In February of 1996, about six months after I created eBay, I started receiving a spate of complaints. Everyone was complaining about each other. I felt very much like I was a parent who had to adjudicate the brothers beating each other up.
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In the early days of eBay, I articulated for the very first time this belief that people are basically good.
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In 1991, I co-founded my first start-up, Ink Development, which made software for an early tablet computer.
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My dad was a physician. As a kid, I remember driving around with him on weekends so he could do his rounds at the hospital and talk to patients. We'd spend time in the car talking about what was going on with them, their stories.
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If you can get over this initial distrust that people have of strangers, you can do remarkable things.
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You can invest in companies, you can help grow companies, you can be a venture capitalist - and be a philanthropist at the same time.
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A lot of people don't just go ahead and try things.
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I do like to fly under the radar. When I walk around town, the only people I want to recognise me and call me by my name are the folks at Starbucks.
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I'm a technologist by origin and by training, but I'm focused on philanthropy.