Pierre Omidyar Interview (page: 6 / 8) Founder and Chairman, eBay	Print Interview

What about the other issue that has come up, in terms of the goods and collectibles that are transacted on eBay? Whether it's AK47s or pornography, what is your responsibility for that and what do you do about it?

Pierre Omidyar: The founding standards again, were that it was a self-policing community and the community would decide for itself what was appropriate and what was not appropriate. And I created a system of the feedback forum, which I'm very proud of, because it has been copied gazillions of times and it was my idea. It allows people to kind of rate each other and give feedback on how their transaction went. And if they don't like something that somebody is doing, and enough people don't like it, that person is automatically kicked off of the system.
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That worked very well in the early days. As we grew, and the community became more diverse, we found that there are certain categories of goods that the majority of the community just didn't want to see. Even though it's protected, or even though it's legal. First of all, illegal goods were never allowed on eBay. Never. Legal but questionable goods we've had to be more active on, and you mentioned AK47s.

So firearms, for example, we decided a while back, I think in '98, pretty early on to -- actually I'm not sure about the date frankly, but we decided to remove those from the site, to say, "You know what, eBay is no longer an appropriate venue to trade firearms." And the reason is that the regulations in all the states are so different and so varied that it was hard. It was very easy for a member to accidentally trip over a regulation, and we didn't want them to get into trouble, and at the same time, frankly, Meg's point of view was if somebody buys a gun on eBay and uses that to harm somebody, we don't actually want that. So in her mind she was uncomfortable with it, actually from the day she joined the company, so we got rid of that.
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Adult items is another interesting issue.

We actually surveyed our members once, a while back in a broad survey about a number of things, but it turned out that we asked whether or not this category -- this adult category should be removed, because there is an adult category on eBay that is segregated from the rest. And 70 percent of them said, "No, keep it." This was a general broad survey, you know. So we think community standards have to be respected, and as long as we segregate this category away from minors -- not only minors, because minors aren't supposed to use the site anyway -- but we prevent a minor from even viewing the items, then I think we're doing a good job there and addressing that concern.
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What do you say to a young man or a young woman who comes to you for advice and says, "I want to do what you did."?

Pierre Omidyar: Well if they say, "I want to do exactly what you did and compete with eBay," I say, "Don't bother. Don't quit your day job." That's pretty rare.

You should pursue your passion. If you're passionate about something and you work hard, then I think you'll be successful. If you start a business because you think you're going to make a lot of money at it, then you probably won't be successful, because that's the wrong reason to start a business. You have to really believe in what you're doing, be passionate enough about it so that you will put in the hours and hard work that it takes to actually succeed there, and then you'll be successful.
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