| Book Review
The Perfect Store: Inside eBay
reviewed by: D. Manggala (May 15, 2005)
I was an active buyer in eBay, trying to find some cheap
stuffs like gadget (PDA, wi-fi card, or else) and sometimes
cheap books (but for books, Amazon's market place
is much better). I am not a heavy user of eBay, but I know
some friends who buy more things from this online company,
including cars (!). They are not buying a car once, but several
cars in different occasion...:) One thing that amazed me about
its business model is eBay could connect people from almost
anywhere in the world to make a huge market for supply-demand
on almost anything, anytime (anyone read a story about a ghost
or a fighter jet sold on eBay?).
Adam Cohen wrote a nice read book about
this successful dotcom titled "The Perfect Store:
Inside eBay". This book is a fun read; I like
the writing style and also the amount of research and facts
backing up the whole writing. In addition, Cohen provides
us a multidimensional outlook of eBay (maybe a little bit
skewed in favor of eBay); from the start up until its heydey
post IPO (inital public offering), from the positive side
to the bad side of this online auction company. I think he's
quite balance on each side.
One thing that especially good to know is the story about
the transitional of a start up company from a place of all
geeks to the incoming of MBAs from ivy league universities.
The author put some interesting story about this transition
including the effects (both positive and negative) of Meg
Whitman's coming as the CEO.
According to this book, the first three full time employees
of eBay are a perfect mix: Pierre Omidyar
(an Iranian-French whose parents migrate to US when he was
a child), Jeff Skoll ( a Canadian Jewish),
and Mary Lou Song (a Korean-American). In
the era of the buzzwords such as "globalization"
and "diversity", I think these three people are
perfect examples of those words. The common ground for them,
I think, are that they were young (mid twenties or so), and
believe in that internet could give something good for the
societies. Or in Omidyar's words " it's about empowering
people.."
If you are just joined as an eBay user recently, this book
provides some historical information about many things in
the system; for instance, the feedback forum, bulletin board,
etc. For me, it helps me a lot to understand more about its
business. And also it gives us a story about the Half.com,
Paypal and others companies related to online
auction which bought out by eBay.
We know that, eBay was having profit from its first day when
it was called AuctionWeb. In the early days,
they even had to hire a part time employee to open the envelopes
from users who send their transactions' fees to their office
(whic is Omidyar's apartment) and many envelopes were still
unopened. Until years later they have been pretty self sufficient
in funding till the time of the IPO came.
One thing that disturbed me a little bit is the timeline
in this book. Because Cohen wrote this book by subject, I
sometimes confused about the period because it goes back and
forth from chapter to chapter (it does not in chronological
order); which is ok, but I think it needs time reference somewhere
in the writing in each chapter.
My key takeaway from this book is Pierre Omidyar's and his
idealism on using internet to empower people. There are a
lot of stories and anecdotes about it such as his repetitive
words "use the money wisely just it as yours" or
his belief to treat all eBay user as a "community".
In the early days, almost all eBay employees share the same
belief with Pierre (for sure, we don't know about now). Omidyar
believes that "people is generally good" and that
is the basis of his ethical groundrule for eBay community:
"treat others as you want them to treat you" (and
yes, that is the golden rule).
So, it is a really interesting book and also a good one,
if you do like eBay. There are some interesting real characters
also mentioned in detail in this book, such as Jim Griffith,
who was known as Uncle Griff, the most helpful
person in the bulletin board in the early days, Patty Ruby
or Aunt Patty, Skippy, Mary
Lou Song and other characters (well you should read the book
from here...)
Lesson learned from eBay: Omidyar took a humble start as
a start up company, maintain low-key play and almost never
spend too much on anything that is not productive. Keep it
low profile, high profit...:)
Related article in this site:
eBay Model: The Future of Global Economy?
|
