- All
- Deals
- Coupons
- Sales
- Expired
The AuctionWeb was founded in California on September 3, 1995, by French-born Iranian-American computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as part of a larger personal site.[7] One of the first items sold on AuctionWeb was a broken laser pointer for $14.83. Astonished, Omidyar contacted the winning bidder to ask if he understood that the laser pointer was broken; the buyer explained: "I'm a collector of broken laser pointers."[8][9] It soon became the first online auction site allowing person-to-person transactions, and its popularity boomed.
Reportedly, eBay was simply a hobby for Omidyar until his Internet service provider informed him he would need to upgrade to a business account due to his high website traffic. The monthly price increase from $30 to $250 prompted him to start charging eBay users, who continued to use the site. Chris Agarpao was eBay's first employee; he processed mailed check payments.
Jeffrey Skoll was hired as the first new president of the company in early 1996. In November 1996, the E-Commerce platform entered into its first third-party licensing deal, with a company called Electronic Travel Auction, to use SmartMarket Technology to sell plane tickets and other travel products. Growth was phenomenal: from 250,000 auctions during all of 1996 to 200,000 in January 1997 alone.
The company officially changed the name of its service from AuctionWeb to eBay in September 1997, after Echo Bay Technology Group, Omidyar's consulting firm. The domain name echobay.com was already taken by a gold mining company,[13] so Omidyar shortened it to eBay.com.[14] In 1997 the company received $6.7 million in funding from the venture capital firm Benchmark Capital.
