4 ms·

Maybe it's just me but when I look at eBay I see a combination of luck and turning a blind eye to counterfeiting. You're right they make a lot of money but it d

• jariel 6y ago
  'Genius' would be the wrong word. She was lucky to be hired at EBay, but growing a small company into $8B in revenues is a highly credible act that validates a certain set of qualifications that are essentially rare. Nobody really knows what the next big thing is going to be, but some people are strong in some areas. They theoretically make a good team on paper. But it's hard to know what the reality is. He is content oriented, she is operations oriented, I'm not sure if anyone was behind the end-to-end experience.
  • ponker 6y ago
    Yes, but the eBay flywheel was already in place when she arrived. In a marketplace business it's hard to get started but hard to be disrupted, so while growing the company to $8B revenue demonstrates great managerial skill, it doesn't have anything to do with the skill of being the CEO of a startup without product-market fit. She hasn't ever demonstrated the skill of breathing life into a company.
    • toast0 6y ago
      It looks like she was running it while Yahoo Auctions was competing; in that time frame, Yahoo was a force to be reckoned with, and they had some scaling issues to manage (which is mostly a tech thing, but management can screw up tech things). So, while ebay did have market fit, it wasn't a sure thing.
• sbarre 6y ago
  Luck factors more into most successful enterprises than said enterprises will ever admit.. That said, hard work and good decisions are also important. =)