Pierre Omidyar Quotes

You can invest in companies, you can help grow companies, you can be a venture capitalist - and be a philanthropist at the same time.

Pierre Omidyar

• Time
• Help

Advertisers don't want to put their ads next to the investigative story; it's extremely difficult to do that. And very few people today actually read those serious news stories on the Web now.

Pierre Omidyar

• People
• Today
• Serious

I'm a technologist by origin and by training, but I'm focused on philanthropy.

Pierre Omidyar

• Training

News organisations that have been around a while have a lot of traditions and ways of doing things that may have served them for many years but perhaps make them less flexible in the digital era. As an entrepreneur, it just makes more sense to start something new.

Pierre Omidyar

• May
• Entrepreneur

In terms of my belief that one individual can make a difference - that belief comes from my parents.

Pierre Omidyar

• Parents

I had the notion that, OK, so now we have all of this wealth, we could buy not only one expensive car, we could buy all of them. As soon as you realize that you could buy all of them, then none of them are particularly interesting or satisfying.

Pierre Omidyar

• Interesting
• Car

I developed an interest in supporting independent journalists in a way that leverages their work to the greatest extent possible, all in support of the public interest.

Pierre Omidyar

• Work
• Support
• Independent

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.

Pierre Omidyar

• People
• Fly

When I started eBay, it was a hobby, an experiment to see if people could use the Internet to be empowered through access to an efficient market. I actually wasn't thinking about it in terms of a social impact.

Pierre Omidyar

• People
• Thinking